Isabelle Art

On the left we have Isabelle's most recent Totoro drawing. On the right we have the one she made back in June. The earlier one actually looks a little more like Totoro, with the little eyes and the big belly and whiskers. But the previous toothy mouth was just a jagged line, and the new one is a full mouth with teeth. I like the energy of the new one, too, it seems it could just jump off the page.

Isabelle hasn't watched Totoro in a while, which may explain why her newest one less resembles the movie character, but I thought the comparisom nice to display the evoluntion of her style. In both pictures you see the Totoro has filled the paper, a good skill for a preschooler Isabelle came to naturally. The new one shows her "head with arms and legs" rendering, which in the case of Totoro, might be more accurately termed "body with a little face" (as in the older one).

In her new Totoro, Isabelle has used circles not only for the obvious: head, eyes, nostrils, and hands, but also for feet, toes, and fingers. These could represent totoro's claws, but I think rather this is a large portrait, and the circles are to show that fingers have dimension mere lines don't suggest. I think they are just "ends of the fingers" and toes.