Category: Art

I really like this painting Sean created in art class at school. All of the kids painted something, and then the school sent home an order form where you could order various things that had your child's painting on them - framed copies, stickers, tote bags, and the like. We ordered this frames time with his painting on it. It's like he painted it to match our living room on purpose - the colors he chose go perfectly with the color scheme we've got going on in there.

When Ryan was sleeping over, Lori got the kids all to sit down for some painting with watercolors. I love their watercolor paintings now - they actually look like something. When they were younger, they would just mix all of the colors together and make a big brown muddy mess on a paper, which I had to pretend was beautiful. :) Now, I can actually tell what they meant to paint, and I don't have to pretend anymore.

Sean loves drawing robots lately. Here's his most recent. One of these years we're going to have to make him some sort of a cool robot costume for Halloween.

Here are a few drawing Sean did recently at school. I love the fact that they've got titles, complete with crazy 6-year-old misspellings. From left to right, they are supposed to read: "This Cupcake Has Claws", "In the Spaceship", and "The Ewoks are in Danger".

Carter has been trying to draw Spongebob Squarepants lately on her doodleboard. I think it actually looks pretty good - she even got his long nose.

On the left is a drawing that Sean did recently. I've annotated it with indentifying tags for each element. He walked me through it, and told me what everything was. On the right is a drawing Carter did - both figures are supposed to be me. She drew the arms and legs all fuzzy because she said I have hairy arms and legs. Heh.

Another paper portrait - this one was a gift for my mom for her 50th birthday. It's from a photo of her, her brother, and her sister when they were all kids. Mom is the one on the right. This was by far the most complicated one I've done so far, and also the largest. It took a lot longer than the others, but it was a lot of fun to do.

Here are some more paper portraits that I did as Christmas presents. I was waiting until after the gifts had been opened before posting the pics, so as not to spoil any surprises. I also gave another pair to my sister, but I forgot to take a picture of them before I brought them to her place. As soon as I can get her to take a photo and send it to me, I'll post it.

While looking for old yearbooks and such in my Mom's attic, I found some more old drawings from high school. I still have no idea what happened to the bulk of that stuff, but I scanned what I found for you all to see. These days, what I mostly draw are Mario-related characters on Sean's wall. But someday I'd like to start drawing more seriously again.

I tried a new project over the long weekend - paper-cut portraits. It's basically just cut and layered paper. I had seen a tutorial on a great blog I read called DudeCraft. So I tried it with a couple of my favorite photos of the kids. I think they came out pretty good - I may try some more. I've been looking for a creative outlet that I can do at night on the weekends after Lori goes to bed. Something to get me away from the computer, but that doesn't make a lot of noise. I don't know how long this will stay interesting for me, but so far I find it very relaxing and enjoyable.