Inkblot: Drip, Splat, and Squish Your Way to Creativity (review)

“No particular artistic skill is required to make a beautiful inkblot.” With this comforting and encouraging observation, kids of all levels of artistic ability and interest are invited to join the fun of creating a controlled mess and turning it into a project of surprising loveliness or bizarre imagination. Peot adroitly switches hats between art educator and muse, alternating technical lessons on producing various types of inkblots with tips on discerning patterns and images in what at first glance appears to be little more than shadowy chaos. Rather than organizing projects in order of difficulty, Peot suggests how to delineate “hidden” pictures with fine-tipped pens or opaque colors, how to keep an inkblot journal, even how to enhance inkblot pictures through poetry. Browsers will be delighted with Peot’s diagrams and finished pieces, and practitioners can expect to find as much guidance in her examples as in her text. Sidebars provide mini lessons on noted artists and illustrators who use the inkblot medium and, of course, comments on Hermann Rorschach and his eponymous test. A gallery of kid-produced work is appended, along with a bibliography and index.