A little paint

I haven't done painting with my daughter in what seems like a long while (maybe a few weeks) so I was very happy about starting that again. This is one of her recent paintings now hanging up in her playroom. I love how children's art is so expressive in their lines and full of energy. I also find it very fascinating watching her paint. Do you see the little dabs of black paint? She says those are footprints :)

A Droplet of Child's Play: Backyard Splatter Painting

After our little messy painting experiment with watered tempera paint indoors (see here), my husband had the brilliant idea of splatter painting in the backyard instead. It sure beats cleaning up all over the floor, walls, and toys. :)

This beautiful little masterpiece is now hanging up in our kitchen. 

Love it!

A Droplet of Child's Play: Pollocky Painting Experience II

I had to break up the previous post to enter this painting into the Simon Says Children's Summer Holidays Challenge. 

My daughter decided to pour the rest of the paint onto the canvas and away went the feet painting!

 I love it. Looks like a flower to me, but could be an ocean or a beautiful movement of colour. 

It's really left up to your imagination to enjoy. :)

A Droplet of Child's Play: A Pollocky Painting Experience

I planned on doing string painting art lesson for my future art class and I thought I'd try it out with my 2.5 year old toddler first. However, string painting turned into a splatter-body-painting extravaganza!

Instead of using the string as intended, my daughter put her hands in the diluted paint and started flinging it every which way. My initial thought was, "Oh no! What a mess!" but I realized it was too late anyway, so I let her fling away. After all, the magic of creativity can't happen without some messes. :)

What a cool splatter effect (even if it was all over the floor, radio, and some toys)!

I love the vibrant tempera paint we used. Previously, we've only used finger painting and acrylic (from this post). The tempera paint we bought was children's grade from an art store so it was non toxic and for the most part, washable. I'd like to enter her art into the Simon Says Children Summer Holidays Challenge. 

All in all, it was really fun watching my little girl paint and she reminded me that art is really all about the process.

Raine Moments: Paintlounge

I must really like Paintlounge because we went back for the third time yesterday. The first two times I've gone, I've painted this and this. Today my husband and I decided to take our little girl there for the first time. I've been telling her so much about the place and it's only fair to bring her there for the experience :). I was also very curious of what she'll end up painting.

Since there was a paint bar, we let our little girl choose what colours she would like on her palette. (While the paints are acrylic, we knew that our young daughter wouldn't put it in her mouth and we had really close supervision of her too.) Then we let her choose the tools to use. She began with the paintbrush as seen here.

Later, she moved on to use about 20 other tools (a variety of stamps, sponges, fly swatter, mats, ball) to make her mark making on the canvas. I would say her painting was an experimentation of tools rather than a representational painting of something in real life as my husband and I asked many times to tell use about her painting and she didn't say anything about it.

What I really enjoyed about the experience was seeing my daughter show her own creative expression. She chose her own colours, she kept going back for her own tools, and she told us when she was done painting. As much as my husband and I liked how the initial painting looked and wanted to take the painting before my daughter added more to it, we didn't, of course.

I believe that art is where one creatively express themselves and it doesn't matter what the product ends up looking. It's all about the process, the journey that makes me love art so much. I think this is why my art tends to stray far, far away from a reproduction or copy of anything...if I wanted to paint an exact copy of a picture, why wouldn't I just go get a photo printed from the nearest photo centre? :) Copying a picture is good practice for technique but does nothing for the creative soul. It's what's different from the original that makes something one of a kind and human.

Fun with mediums

I felt like making another card tonight. I played around with some of the things I got from my shopping spree fiasco at the art store the other day.

In this card, I played with acrylic inks for the background-I really like this medium and the effect it gives me. It's kinda like painting (which I love!) and I think it's kinda like the alcohol inks that card makers use too. I will have to make a future post about what my husband came up with from the acrylic inks (it's abstract awesomeness:) I also got a set of 24 Copic Markers to try out (soo pricey @__@) but it's an investment into my creative expression :)...I used it for the flowers on this card. I also revisited using perfect pearls to add a little extra touch to it which you can see better on the second picture (the pearls should be on both flowers though).

Challenge:

Lily Pad-Virginia's View Challenge (flower photo inspiration)
Paper Players #93 (Anything goes-Tic Tac Toe)

Raine Moments: Painting

Taking care of my toddler can be tough sometimes. Everything from potty training to transitions to a maintaining a proper sleeping schedule can get a little bit frustrating. At the end of each day though, there are always beautiful moments to remember. I've always meant to blog each night about my day with my little girl but of course, that never happens.

One of the golden moments today was when my toddler was pretending to be Rapunzel from Tangled (I absolutely love that movie) and wanted to paint on the wall. What do I do? Tape some paper on the wall and let her paint away while I put on some of my favourite music.

She seemed like a true artist as she held her palette of paint and painted a bit, took a couple steps back before adding more paint strokes. She even attempted painting her name (which are lines for each letter of her name). Watching a toddler draw or paint is one of the most amazing things because looking at the finished art may look like abstract art. However,  as my toddler draws/paints, she tells me exactly what she is drawing and the strokes make total sense to me. eg. horizontal line for a bed, spiky lines for her daddy's hair, circles for glasses. She was also imitating the paintlounge I've gone to (from my last entry) by saying how she's going to have drinks and also paint lol.

  What she came up with the other night...the lights from Tangled and the long hair from Rapunzel.

What she painted tonight

I'm very lucky that I get to stay at home with my daughter most of the time and see her grow up in these precious early years. I felt really warm inside when this happened sometime last week:


I picked my daughter up from my aunt's house after work and we just came in the door. My daughter went face forward against the wall and with her arms open wide. I asked her, "What are you doing?" She replied, "I love my home."

Painting session

Today I went back to Paintlounge with a couple of friends and celebrated our birthdays together (yes, our birthdays are all around the same time). This is the painting I came up with.

Just like last time, this painting is for my daughter. It has a little Arrietty, a little of my daughter, and a little of a photo inspiration all put into it. The quote is another Dr. Suess one, "A person's a person, no matter how small."

revisiting my arting passion

A few days ago, I found out about a place called, Paintlounge.



After seeing their website, I was too attracted to justify not going (after all, there is barely enough time for a shower as a mom, let alone paint). It's social painting with a little cafe on the side (a similar idea my husband and I talked about years ago). I'm so glad I went because I realized how much I missed painting and making art in general. I also came up with a little painting to give to my daughter. So long to those university days of depressing, social issue paintings and art. Hello to my new mommy series of happy, cutesy paintings. I'm hoping to eventually set up my own home art studio...we'll see.

Sorry for the poor picture. The quote says "Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope." by Dr. Suess. I showed this to my daughter and I told her it's about imagination. Imagination is when you pretend to be different things like a princess, a tiger, and more. Also, you can see wonderful things when you use it. After, she pointed to the Toopy and Binoo Imagination song from the broadway CD and said "same same." She wanted me to play the song and hold her as we danced and while I explained the painting to her. Yesterday, whenever I mentioned imagination,  she wanted me to play the song and we used our imagination with fabrics...pretending it's snowpants, water for swimming, wings of a bird, a scarf, clothes to hang up to dry. It's amazing how much an almost 2 yr knows and does. :)


Speaking of arting and kids, I came upon a neat installation with the "I wish I came up with it" feeling.

A blank room.
Thousands of stickers.
Kids.
Two weeks.
Voila!

The Obliteration Room by Yayoi Kusama. You can read about it here.

Maybe I should use that idea for my little girl :D

children's illustrations

I went to the library today and picked up a couple of interesting children's books with fabulous illustrations. One that really stood out to me was Wave by Suzy Lee.

The story is told through the pictures which are well worth more than a thousand words. I love the paint and drawing technique and the story of a little girl at the beach which reminds me of my little one during last summer's beach days. I hope to incorporate some of this inspiration into my future paintings.

Another two books worth noting:

                                                     Box of Tricks by Katie Cleminson

                                                           Art by Patrick McDonnell