drawing day

 Thursday in our home is Drawing Day.

   As I've mentioned before, I have never "taught" Naiya how to draw.  I generally stay away from coloring books and don't instruct her on the how-to of figure rendering or architectural outline.  I do draw alongside her, but I have always been interested to see what would happen in her art if she were just given the tools and then been allowed to let color, movement and imagination be her ultimate guides.

   When we gave her a permanent dedicated art area in our home, her interest increased significantly as did the quantity of beautiful works she produced.  (She, of course, draws, paints and models wax on her own even when those activities are not a specified part of our daily rhythm.)  As in many homes, we've found a novel way to display a plethora of her lovely creations but struggle with what to do with the excess.  I have such a difficult time just throwing them away.

   It's been interesting to see her human forms evolve and then revert back to some previous stage.  (A while back the people had legs but they have now returned to the classic single peg.)  Sometimes they have heads and even faces; on other days they're simple stick crosses with hair.  Mostly she draws people, houses and gardens (both vegetable and flower).  I suppose that's because those are her primary interests and, having limited drawing skills myself, those are my own default subjects.
   One thing we've done that has inspired new subject matter and some interesting variations in her work is to change the size and shape of the paper on which she draws.  We make them long and skinny and lay those both horizontally and vertically or we cut triangles, circles, butterflies, pumpkins or even just odd organic forms.  When I give her a tiny, tiny piece of paper to draw on she squeals with delight and then laughs and laughs.  She loves drawing tiny pictures.

Vivid swirling radiant hues
Reds and yellows, greens and blues
From heart and mind down through my hand
On the page the colors land
Light and shadow then appear
Forming pictures bright and clear