Body Outlines

Rainbow's art is starting to include bodies for her people. You can see it in her pancake man and also her 'poor man's glitter' person. She's also been experimenting with these elongated head/bodies which are interesting in that I don't believe they are part of the usual progression. This one is a pig - see the snout and curly tailAs yet this isn't coming out in her drawings so I thought we'd have a play around with some body outline art. Here's some things we've had a go at.



Full body artline. We used a large roll of paper that came with the easel. We don't ever use it on the easel but it is great to have on hand for large scale projects. I don't have any photos of these in production as it was a bit of a feat for me. For that reason I probably wouldn't recommend this for the under twos. I had to basically hold Moonshine still with one hand while I traced around her. And when I traced around Rainbow, Moonshine unsupervised got hold of the textas (who knew she could take lids off!) and drew on Rainbow, Rainbow's picture and herself. As you can see this was a surprise for Dadda's birthday. so all's well that ends well. Rainbow enjoyed being traced and seeing her picture but wasn't that fussed on decorating it. In the end we decorated with potato stamps and then Rainbow further decorated hers with watercolours. '

Rainbow's overalls are one of her winter outfits I made. The swirly ruffle that travels down the top and one of the legs is simply the fabric selvage chopped off and sewn on.
I love this photo - Moonshine was so very proud of hers. Have a look at how much of Rainbow's hem is rolled up. I always add a few inches on at the top and bottom of pant patterns when I sew to cover the bulkier cloth nappies and also her long legs. Moonshine on the other hand is of average height.

The speech bubbles are birthday messages for Dadda. He was delighted when he came home to find these 'girls' waiting for him. Rainbow has named hers Laura and says it's her big sister. They've now gone to live at Dadda's work. I was relieved because I kept walking past the inside of this window and getting a fright because I thought someone was looking in.

This is also fun to do with the child lying in different positions.


Toy Outlines
A few days later Rainbow asked me to trace around one of her dolls. This isn't a completely new idea for us as I am regularly asked to trace around bilby and Rainbow's hands on the etch-a-sketch. Here it is from behind so you can see roughly what it looked like.


Rainbow then painted it with watercolours and 'dressed' it with fabric scraps. I'm thinking this time I might give her larger pieces of fabrics and fabric scissors (gasp).

She really enjoyed this project and asked to do this again yesterday. I thought I could keep Moonshine distracted with crayons in her highchair but she really wanted to do what her sister was doing. She really enjoyed this textural collage.

Hand prints We also made a picture like the one below for each of the Grandmas. Once again it wasn't easy tracing around little Moonshine's hand. Rainbows has a drawing on Grandma in it and also finger bones drawn in. Then it's painted with watercolours.

I have removed this and will add it again later as it has the girl's names on it.

There is something about body outlines that never fails to surprise and delight little ones.