Samantha's first blog

Posted By pamelamyers on October 1, 2012

Sam has been SO into drawing recently.  It is a never ending thing in our house, and also at my mom’s.  We blow through paper like crazy now.  She can easily use 30 pieces of paper in about 15 minutes.  I find it interesting that she prefers plain, blank paper to coloring books.  I think she likes the freedom of the blank page, which I can appreciate.  It is always interesting to watch her draw especially how her drawing has changed.  It used to be that she would scrawl line after line on the page seemingly just fascinated by her ability to make color.  When she first started using crayons, it took time for her to learn that she had to press on the page to make a mark.  Now she has progressed to what I would call actually drawing.  Whether it is on paper or on the driveway with her sidewalk chalk (which Sam also loves) she has an intent in mind as to what she is drawing. She always tells you what she is making and she is very specific about the color she wants to use.

She asks us quite frequently to draw as well.  It started out that I think she just liked our pictures, but now, most of the time, when she asks me to draw a playground or a cat or whatever, she usually winds up helping me finish the picture in her own way.  I think she wants us to draw because she is trying to figure out how to draw these things on her own.  We started asking her to make circles and she is getting rather good.  I don’t know if she should be able to draw shapes or not at her age, but I am proud of what she can do.  Her circles are pretty well circular and they are definitely connected. If we draw three sides of a square, she draws the fourth line and really connects the box, and stops her line in the appropriate places.  She is learning.

This weekend, she was drawing at the table and kept asking me to rip the paper off the book when she was done.  Each time I did so, I would ask her what she drew.  I was very shocked to see what she did and her explanation of what things were.  Not everything is clear, by any means, but you can really see, in some pictures, what she was trying to do.  Here are some of her creations.

This one is a thunderstorm.  All of the color in the main portion of the page is the storm.  The orange blob in the lower right corner is the rain coming in the house (this was part of a Peppa Pig episode called “Thunderstorm”).  I asked her what all the little orange squiggles were along the right margin and the top and she said, “the flamingos!” (This was NOT part of the Peppa episode…)  I found that not only funny, because, flamingos?  but also because when I first looked I thought they looked a little like crudely drawn approximations of birds.

This next one is supposed to be a farm.  I dunno.  Just what she said.  I didn’t ask her to elaborate.

This one I love.  The first figure from the top is an airplane (not bad, huh?), below it to the right is a car (again, not bad!) and the last shape near the bottom right, sort of roundish, is a truck.  I asked her what all the vertical squiggles were under the truck and the car and she looked at me like I was crazy and said, “the road!” The very bottom horizontal line is the road that the truck is fixing.

This one is Doc McStuffins, Stuffy, Hallie, and Chilly (who is jumping on the bubble wrap — part of an episode she likes).  Not a great likeness of the characters, true, but I love how definite she is that her drawing is those specific things.

This last one is one of her favorite things — a rainbow.

She is getting better and better all the time, and so imaginative. I am so proud of her and am really trying to nurture her artistic side.  I would love for her to have an artistic talent, whether it is art, or music, or dance.  She is a rather sensitive little soul, so who knows?  Maybe that will be her path.  Whatever she chooses though, I just want her to be happy (and to make a living, let’s not kid ourselves here!)  In all seriousness, though, I would like to think that I will be supportive of her choices, no matter what they turn out to be, in what she wants to do with her life. I can only hope that Mark and I do a good job in steering her toward a path that will be fulfilling for her and give her the life she wants.  It sounds a bit cliche, but truly, I think all you ever really want is for your kids to be happy, and that is certainly true for our Sam.

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