Can a toddler have her own artistic style?

Hannah loves to paint.  The other day, when she was supposed to be napping, she noticed where I’d stashed her Dora pencil pouch containing her precious finger paints.  I have to hide it or she wants to paint all day every day, and would unzip that hot pink Dora case, flip open the paint caps herself, and paint anything and everything in her path.  Sigh. We hadn’t actually done any painting in a very long time.  I couldn’t even remember where I’d put the paints.

I could hear her through the baby monitor “Hannah want THAT!  Hannah want THAT!”  I thought she’d just thrown one of her toys outside of her cot and couldn’t reach it.

When I went to get her up, she immediately pointed her chubby little baby (fine, toddler, she’s growing up so fast!) finger towards the top of the closet , shouting “HANNAH WANT THAT!” with way too much glee/excitement.

I got it down as she ran off to her toy bin, scooping up her art smock that she has only worn about one time in her entire life.  “Hannah need this too.”  She told me.  How did she know that??  Seriously, it’s been months since we’ve done any painting, and we don’t draw or colour with the art smock on.  Ever.

I got her colouring book out and pulled out a page with a girl on it.  She told me she wanted to paint a girl.

“Which colour do you want?” I asked her.

“Blue.”

“Where do you want it?”  As if I was going to let a 22 month old squeeze her own paint out of the bottle.  I’m pretty sure the entire bottle would have ended up on the page.

“There.”  She said, pointing to the girls face.

She coloured it in with a combination of her left index finger and her paintbrush.  And then she was done with that one.  She wanted a different one.

We repeated the entire exercise.  Over and over again.  She always wanted blue, and she only wanted to paint people’s faces.  Then she was done.  Once she painted a girls hands blue too, but only once.

So I’m wondering, can an under two-year-old toddler have her own artistic style already?  I guess I’ll have to just draw a whole bunch of faces for her to paint.  Otherwise, we’ll be going through way too many colouring books….

Bears face had to be blue (what’s up with this image? Seriously, nightmares anyone?)

Man’s face had to be blue

Trolls or gnomes, whatever they are, faces are blue too

This one got blue hands too. She is clearly special.

Yeah, paint all over her face

Girl had to have a blue face too

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