Picture-Time is a tight psychotherapeutic vessel in that it is bound by a set of firmly held structural limitations within which is a wide open space for personal exploration and potential transformation . The structure or format is, quite simply, to provide the client with the same size sheet of paper at each session along with eight color crayons including the three primary colors (red, yellow and blue), the three secondary colors (orange, green and purple), brown and black. The sessions are held at the same prescribed time and place with the same therapist . Client and therapist meet in a room that is quiet, uncluttered and undisturbed by outside influences. The therapist comes equipped with the crayons, paper, a pen and a notebook . S/he records the day's date and the name of the client on the back of each picture . For each session, the therapist also places the date and client's name at the top of the page in the notebook . Under this heading s/he records a verbatim account of the client's story or comments about the picture . Some clients prefer to tell their story while they are drawing and others to tell it after the picture is complete . When the session is over, the therapist files the picture away in a folder and enters the corresponding story in a file, both of which remain with the therapist . This structure, which some may find to be too rigid, does in fact have a rationale . Crayons are colorful and are as highly expressive of the emotional realm as paints but they aren't as difficult to control and don't drip or smudge . They are almost as easy to control as pencils but don't encourage the production of heady, highly controlled or schematic images as pencil work can . The limit on the number and color of the crayons provides the client with the full range of color while at the same time removing the chaos and confusion associated with a big box of crayons . It also allows the therapist to more easily follow the color themes from session to session . Paper of the same kind and shape contributes to the stability of the therapeutic vessel and allows the therapist to follow themes of pictorial placement . The telling of stories provides the opportunity for the client to make verbal that which has already been expressed nonverbally . It is also the opportunity for the client-therapist relationship to enter the verbal realm . The therapist's maintaining possession of the creative material is a way of valuing and honoring it . It is also a resource to draw on in reviewing the clinical progress with the client (particularly at termination) and affords the therapist the opportunity to review the session for further clinical understanding or research purposes . The pictures and stories can, of course, also be given to the client at the time of termination, provided this is clinically appropriate . These parameters, then, comprise the basic structure or walls of the therapeutic vessel . It is within this vessel that the therapist invites the client to draw absolutely anything that s/he chooses and say whatever s/he wants to say about the picture . There are therefore no direc-