[Samurai Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Miss_Tia

Samarai...it all depends on why they are coloring wherever they are coloring. Outside of the lines can be independence showing, creativity, or stubbornness, rebelliousness, or even a neurological disorder. It could mean they are exploring feelings or having too many feelings stuffed.

What I looked for was color selection, pressure, thickness of lines, movement and images freely formed subconsciously.

I always asked them their interpretation first, before I would examine it closer. I can see red as a color of anger and to the child, it could be a memory of the red blanket he carried around as a child and lost...which is tied into the grief now over losing his mother to alcoholism..(true story).

And for the record, almost all anger has a sense of loss attached to it. So sometimes even if they dont see the anger it there and sometimes its all about the blankie...

I had a child who would only color with greens. I gave him a box of crayons with no greens it and told him to draw me a picture. if you could have seen the torment on his face and how hard he processed this for such a long time...he simply could not do it without green. OCD. So I got finger paints and we explored putting colors together and seeing them change colors. Then we got water and food coloring..and he watched blue and yellow turn to green. By the time we were done with my therapy with him, he was using a couple more colors. Not all of them but lil steps is good. And not everyone has to use all the colors. In one culture, (I dont remember where) they only see three colors. Period. Shades of them but no other colors. So perceptions play a big part of it. If he had been older we would have explored this too. But I only had a few week with him...

That's most fascinating and elucidating, thank you! It makes me want to learn more about this. I had no idea that the deceptively simple process of watching colours mixing could be so revealing and therapeutic.