Painting Time With Tots

 This morning in an attempt to find time to paint I pulled out our kids easle from Ikea and got them going.  It is amazing to me to see the difference in their technique and dedication. My 4 yr old son ends up with grey blobs and gets so frustrated that he quickly gives up. My 2 yr old daughter ended up with over 6 ft of brightly decorated individual marks. She painted for hours and was so content.

It is frustrating for me as an artistic parent to know if or how I should help him when it comes to art. I think that his issues are mostly from perfectionism. If he cant do it just right he will not try.

My son asked me to work on my lily painting so I worked on finishing  these lilies that I began about a year ago.

 

I also pulled out my painting of Mary and suceeded in frustrating myself even further with the background. Finally I decided to model my painting in sketchup. I often used sketchup when working as an architect, so it was an easy way to figure out how my picture should look three dimensionally. It helps me see how large the child outside should look compared to Mary.

Trip to the Farm

A last minute decision sent the Kids and I off to the Farm for a week.
They had such a great time running with lots of space and enjoying the wonderful weather.

Everyday they helped grandpa with cores and I had many photo opportunities to catch a yearly update of Grandpa's Barn.

I also asked my grandmother and several of my parent's neighbors to pose for photos for future portraits. I am very excited to get prints and decide on poses to paint. I feel like I have been waiting for pictures to work on for some time. The only painting I have been doing is on a lily which I started about three weeks ago.

Hopefully some new paintings will be underway soon and I will have lots of photos to share.