Making Art with My Niece and Nephews

I also go to see my niece and nephews.  They are 10, 7, and 6 respectively, and they are all tremendous budding artists.  I really enjoyed drawing with them–a less structured experience than the average comic book workshop, but still an opportunity to explore creativity, to make art and see what happens.

Art and Play: Fun with Colored Pencils!

I brought along two boxes of colored pencils–one large box, and one smaller box with “erasable” colored pencils.  At first I was skeptical that these would “erase” as well as regular pencils, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they erased quite nicely.  I’ve become enamored of colored pencils as an artistic medium in general–a kind of mid-point between painting and drawing, similar to whiteboard art but with the added value of a sense of permanence, along with some of the chalky, tactile feel you get from pencil or crayon.  I did a rough sketch of the view from the balcony of our vacation house, using heavier lines for the outlines of the trees and mountains–hopefully this becomes preparation for a bigger, more finished colored pencil drawing in the future.

But what the kids and I worked on the most weren’t landscape drawings, but ideas from their imagination!  When staying with my parents earlier in the year, the kids made “signs” with paper, designating areas of my parents’ house that they transformed into areas for play and exploration (“Skateboard Alley,” and “Doodle Island”).  At the vacation house, this became places like “somersault alley” (where my 10 year-old niece would travel almost exclusively by somersault, on her way to play ping pong in the basement).  

We also drew pictures of our own superhero characters.  My niece did an amazing drawing of “Earth Girl,” who she called Clover and who had powers relating to nature.  My nephew (who broke his dominant arm a few days before the trip to Colorado, but still made some really amazing drawings with his left hand) was “Time Traveller,” and wanted to go back to 1989, when Taylor Swift was born.  Even my younger brother got involved, making a character called “Mr. Universe” who could call planetary objects, but who was afraid of, and allergic to, dolphins (his own sly reference to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”).  My own superhero character was called “Shortfuse,” a little guy made of dynamite with a burning fuse on his head, who had as his superpower “the ability to tolerate these shenanigans for short periods of time.”  My youngest nephew never finished his character, but was instead content to scribble colors and patterns on the paper we gave him.  He decided that his character would be Darth Vader from Star Wars (his new favorite movie, with which he is obsessed)

The Power of Play

The child psychologist Jean Piaget has talked about “preoperative play,” as a way for children to assimilate the things and behaviors they see in the world into their own understanding.  Anyone who spends any time with kids can see this in action.  My youngest nephew, seeing my girlfriend on the phone, soon began holding his compass toy up to his ear, making long phone calls to “John Dory” or other characters from the new Trolls movie–synthesizing the behavior around him, and the art he’d seen, into a world of his own creation.

Art easily becomes a part of this play, and forms a powerful component of it.  The drawings my niece and nephews made allowed them to assign imaginary characteristics to the world around them (the signs they made) and allowed them to assign imaginary characteristics to themselves (the superhero drawings).  Art for them, as art has done throughout human history, also allows them to open their imaginary worlds to people around them, whether grown-ups or other kids.

Play Unveils the Wonder of Reality

The effect on grown-ups is profound.  My younger brother (a writer, but who has never shown too much interest in drawing) made a delightful drawing of himself standing on a meteor as Mr. Universe.  Even my dad, who hasn’t made art that I can recall since we colored Easter eggs together when I was young, said that he would be my youngest nephew’s Sith chauffeur.  Even if we as adults leave Piaget’s “preoperational” stage behind us, we never really surrender our desire to play, to use language and art to alter the world around us, to unveil the possibilities that the humdrum world often conceals.  

To play, to make art at any age, is to realize just how flimsy the veil between the “humdrum” and the “imaginary” can really be.  After all, every building you see around you, every car, every park or piece of clothing, was once an idea in the imagination of someone, brought to life through diligence, structured play, and cooperation.  The “rules” that adults bring to these activities can seem limiting, but they also allow the ideas in our heads to come to life, as fully operation vehicles or functional houses.  

Finding a balance between structure and play is something we do all our lives.  For many of us, it is beneficial to let a little more play into our daily routine.  Getting out of your normal routine, to a place like the Rocky Mountains, can remind us that the extraordinary is all around us–whether in grand works of nature, or the bottomless energy of a child’s imagination.  I invite you all to add a little play, a little imagination into your lives.  You never know what superhero is waiting inside you!