Splash

A splash of colour to wake up your Monday morning.  :)

This is another postcard I sent off in the postcard swap. Even though the watercolour paper was already 140 lbs, it still got really warped. I guess I just love splashing on that water. Maybe next time I'll try taping the paper down to help minimize the warping.

Happy Monday Everyone!

Breathe

No matter how busy you are, don't forget to breathe. 

Happy World Yoga Day!

I sent this postcard earlier this month as part of a postcard swap (I really hope it doesn't get lost in the mail and reaches the recipient!) The postcard swap really gave me a chance to finally break into the watercolour set my husband got me for my Christmas present.

My blog posts seem to be more sparse again as things have been busy on my end. Last weekend, my daughter just turned 3. We had a nice little celebration with a big family dinner as well as a family outing to the ROM on Family Day. I was also called in to supply teach a couple times in the last 2 weeks so my regular routine seemed out of the swing of things. Recently, I started up on yoga again but practicing at home this time around. I've been trying to practice everyday and I found it's a great way to wake up in the morning. I think that's what inspired this postcard painting of mine. Anyway, I hope I'll have more time to blog and craft soon!

Happy December

Hiya Folks, I'm finally back. The last few weeks have been busy especially with a food poisoning incident :S

I thought I'd wish everyone a Happy December.

I love taping things all every over my daughter's playroom wall (it's a wallpaper of artistic chaos). I decided to make a tree with my daughter at the beginning of this month. That way, I can incorporate some calendar and number learning throughout the month ;) We used flyers as that's the most economical and environmentally friendly option of paper for the size I needed. Everyday, we added an ornament with the date number and then counted.

Hope that sparks some ideas for home preschooling parents. :)

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!

Raine Moments: Drawing with Music

This month's new theme at my daughter's Kindermusik class is "Splash." Her teacher had switched to the ABC Music & Me program where there is a new theme every month. Although I liked the old program that had 16 weeks for a bigger theme and a slower pace, I'm starting to like the new theme change every month.

There are songs about bathtime, bubbles, underwater, fishes, and more. I really like this month's theme. I especially like the slow, peaceful song where we pretended to be bubbles floating around...it is so graceful-like a ballet dance. Another song called, "What's Above the Sea" talks about a little fish asking his/her father what's above the sea. Each time they go above to see something different and return back underwater. When I played this song for my daughter a few days ago, I had her drawing along with the narrative song. This is what she came up with (I drew the clouds and one of the whales).

It was so fun watching my daughter create a picture about a song she learned just a week ago. Later, she was able to retell the picture to her dad which is a great for language development. Whenever I make art, I always like to put on music in the background-it just adds to the whole relaxing feeling of art making. When I did my practice teaching a few years ago, my host teacher showed me a "hand over hand" method of having a student put his/her hand over another student's hand while he/she drew with the music and then they switched. It was really an amazing sight. It was about being there at the moment and enjoying the lines created on the page...art making is really about the process-something I've got to keep in mind when I create.

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."

My art lesson today...

Today I woke up feeling that I actually don't want to work. at all.
I'm so glad I did though. My English class was a nightmare...too many chatterboxes (even during a test day -_-) so let's skip that part.

My art classes were fabulous. The excitement in the kids voices as they realized they were going to be drawing Angry Birds based on the Pop Art style was priceless. There were chatty moments when kids connected to each other as they told each other about their favourite game and then there were the quiet moments of pouring their creative minds onto paper.

I was also quite happy to give the kids endless possibilities with suggestions that the Angry Birds meet other favourite characters; Mario, Pac Man, Pokemon, being in Toronto, shopping, The Lorax (that brought up quite a few smiles too). It's definitely interesting to juxtapose popular icons.

Also, one boy asked, "Can I colour the angry bird purple?"
I said, "Of course. You're the artist."
The boy said, "Yayy!"

I was quite happy to let the kids realize that art is about being creative. You don't have to draw anything like the handout. It's just a stepping stone for your creativity to soar.

I hope I can continue to do this for their future lessons but this school seems to put much more emphasis on technique which can dwindle some of the kid's interests. However, technique is still important as children around the age of 12 wants to create realistic drawings. If they can't achieve that, then they lose interest in art due to frustration. You can read about the drawing development here. I found it quite fascinating as it relates to my young daughter too. Will blog about it in a later post. Also, hoping to blog some of my art lesson ideas to share in the future.

Catherine Rayner

I need to blog even if it's a random post about my week (although the reason I started this blog was to keep it more streamlined)...

Some more children's books I came across this week where the drawings are so interesting...

 Sylvia and Bird by Catherine Rayner

I love the layering of colours painted on the dragon creating an interesting texture and is coupled by the simplicity of the backgrounds. The story is also a sweet story with a theme about friends.

 

  Images are from Catherine Rayner's website.

Another book with her illustrations is Posy. I very much enjoyed the illustrations but I do like the story of Sylvia and Bird better.

I'll post more about the other two books I found later on :)

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