Spaghetti pictures!

I read somewhere on the internet (and I am embarrassed to say I can't for the life of me remember where I read it) about a craft exercise to do with small children and spaghetti It sounded fun so I decided to give it a try.

Very simply all the exercise involves is boiling up some spaghetti and when it is soft give it to your children to make pictures out of. You can then add paint to your creations.

I made my own spaghetti picture while the kids were making theirs. I really loved working with a different material, it led me to creating a picture in a new kind of style.

When the pictures dried the paper went all crinkly so I don't think these types of pictures would really work as illustrations in a book. However, the pictures that result from the exercise could be taken and used as inspiration for illustrations in a storybook.

The first picture you see here,of a cat, is mine. The second is by my 4 year old daughter and is a spider and different letters of the alphabet. The third picture is an artwork done by my 2 year old son who became very inspired by the whole process.

'Doodle' illustration exercise

Today I thought I'd share with you a 'doodle' illustration exercise.

I have been having a 1:1 Create A Book For A Child class in my home. Today we played around with different creative exercises. The purpose of doing these exercises is to get the creative juices flowing and let go of needing to be right.

Here is a simple but effective doodle illustration exercise.

Step 1:
Take a piece of plain paper and put a couple of haphazard lines on it.


Step 2:
Create a picture out of the lines.

Below you can see photos of my student's (Hanna) and my doodle exercises.










This exercise is really fun and only takes a few minutes. Why not try it out yourself?

Warmly,
Nina
www.createabookforachild.com

Why not doodle your illustrations?

Have you ever thought about doodling your illustrations into being?

If you are not sure what I am talking about check out these inspired videos below. I found them on a wonderful website called Milliande Creativity Club.