Ivy has loved to draw from a really young age. 

It’s one of the things I am proud to say I’ve  handed down to my kids.

My girls, anyway.

Noah hasn’t shown alot of interest in free hand.

He’s more…abstract.

This year, it has been amazing to watch Ivy’s artistic skill develop.

At the beginning of the year we were seeing alot of this kind of drawing.

A head and the curly hair (it’s always been there) and the beginnings of hands with fingers sprouting from the curls.

Note the eyelashes.

Cute.

For a while we were getting lots of spiders.

You all remember the spider, right?

Actually that spider has tears

and a rash

but I only found that out months later, when I asked her about the dots around the eyes.

I often saw them when Ivy was acutely unwell in the hospital, or just starting to get better, so one day I asked her what they were.

The value of art therapy is great.

She still draws tears (although they are evolving too)

but by the end of her hospital stays, the subjects are always smiling.

Around the middle of the year the heads started to look more like bodies and we started seeing arms, with hands and fingers…many fingers (nobody said artists were good with numbers),

little legs

and smiles, with teeth!

She was particularly switched on the day she drew the blue man

because that same day she drew this:

 When she showed me, I was blown away.

This is one of my favourite Ivy pictures.

Noah

with spikey hair

kicking a ball.

Often the drawings were accompanied with a story.

This one is of Ollie the cat.

Titled “sad Ollie”

She drew it when our cat had an abscess and was not very well.

I love it.

Ollie has ears (it was the first time she drew them)

and five legs (she’ll tell you they are four legs and a tail).

At the time, Ollie was a bit miffed with the world and was laying around alot.

She totally captured that and the bitty fur (the long stripes) and the bandaid covering the wound.

 This one was created just after an episode of Play School.

Anyone who has ever seen the Humpty Dumpty in Play School can see the likeness, right?

She’d been drawing like that for a few months

until last week, in the hospital,

when she drew this:

 Friends, we have a body!

Her talent knows no limits!