Colouring

Juliette has been obsessed with colouring since the middle of July. At the beginning of this obsession, she was colouring upwards of 12 pages per day – mostly pictures downloaded from the internet and printed out.

She started out doing what looked like random scribbles across the page, using her whole arm to do the motions. Then suddenly one day started using very fine strokes to keep the majority of the colour inside the lines of the drawing.

She likes to crumble the finished drawings into wads and then hand them to us as “cadeaux” – presents. In the beginning I was pleased to find at least one present a day carefully placed under my pillow which I’d discover at night when I was going to bed.

She started out having her Purple Period – everything was coloured in purple for at least a week. Then she switched to orange, blue, and then black.

A couple of days ago she’s now switched to using at least 2 different colours per picture. And today, much to my surprise, she did a picture with 5 different colours – a chicken sitting on a nest with chicks that was coloured green, yellow, brown, blue and black. And the colouring is kept for the most part within the lines and the colour coverage has become darker and more uniform.

At the same time she’s now drawing free-hand pictures – it first started out as scribbles, then pretty well-formed circles. Then it progressed into multiple circles which she said were either Elly or Pato (from the Pocoyo animated series that she loves). And lately, she’s actually drawing faces with eyes, nose and mouth in the correct areas. On the beach last weekend she used a stone to create a face that looked so good I’d have sworn Becoming-A-Mom had done it, if I hadn’t watched Juliette draw it herself.

It’s been fun watching her change and become more sophisticated with her art over the past few weeks. Step aside Van Gogh, you’ve got some competition!