The artiste at work
pamelamyers | May 1, 2016
Sam was begging me to go to Busy Bees and we had nothing to do except watch the never-ending rain, so I thought, why not? I did tell her that we were not bringing home one more piece of pottery though. She had to pick something else. When we got there, I offered to let her do canvas painting or mosaics. She surprised me and picked canvas painting. I mean, I know she loves to paint, but I thought the mosaics would catch her eye. We decided it would be best if she not go the free form route yet and rather pick one of the paintings in the book to copy. If you choose that, you can pick the painting, the most basic outline is lightly penciled onto the canvas by the staff, and you are given step by step instructions on how to paint (as in, use this color and paint this section first). Sam chose a horse. A good choice, I think. The book gives you an estimate of how long the painting takes to do so I stuck with the one hour choices.
Sam worked really hard to follow the directions. I had to read them to her, of course, but she concentrated and did just what she was supposed to do.
The only time she asked for my help was with the lines – that is, cutting in the edges, so that her paints didn’t all smudge together. By the time we got the basic color of the horse done, we sort of veered off the instructions for the lines on the mane and tail, the flowers that were decorating the mane and tail, etc. I figured, Sam should be original here. She is pretty creative.
I think she did a great job. I can tell she was very proud of herself. And not a drop of paint on her clothes! Mommy was most certainly impressed. Sam and I can’t wait to hang up her art. I think we’ll be going back to do more art sometime soon! Now I want to try!
