Photo Gallery of a Child's Colorful Art: Of Animals, Nature and other Subjects

Introduction

The first 3 pieces presented in this gallery were created by my daughter and I together while we attended a series of parent-child art classes. The rest are hers alone. All of them were chosen for their intrinsic delightfulness of subject and composition. They are a pleasure to meditate upon, and an inspiration to viewers of all ages.

"Swirling Sea"

This piece is textured, and looks like it could be a window into an undersea world. The texture was created by the motion of swirling and smearing the paint onto the paper, mother and toddler daughter working in harmony with each other to produce the finished piece. The result was a peaceful world of fishes and other bubbly creatures rising to the surface of their own world to look at what lives in the world above them.

"A Rainbow of Lines"

Working with many colors to produce lines of varying degrees of straightness/waviness was a delightful project for us to work on. The different poses we struck as we worked around each other were fun to notice. Often, we froze and enjoyed where we were before moving on to the next color(s). There seems to be both motion and a floating stillness present in the finished painting.

"Purple Pirate Princess Pennant"

One day while attending our art class, we both went wild with the color purple, like two pirate princess artists at sail over the rolling sea. We needed a pennant to represent our ship's colors, and voila! Here it is!

Purple is a royal color. It is also a color that represents thoughtfulness and peace. We want our ship to be known for that, for our motley crew is a band of peaceful pirates.

"Finger Paint Study of Autumn Colors"

This painting is a masterpiece of my daughter alone, completed while attending Preschool. Purely an exploration of how different colors of the spectrum blend together, it has a continuity and depth to it that inspires one to look through that little triangle "window" in the middle and imagine what type of world(s) one might see on the other side. Its essence is that of a portal to worlds full of adventure - warm, welcoming, and full of liveliness.

"Autumn Leaf Collage"

Autumn is one of our favorite seasons, for my daughter and I love to collect fistfuls of fallen leaves and jump up into the air, releasing them to fall in cascades around us. Many usually land in our hair and on our clothes, so that we look like a couple of "leaf people" or "scarecrows" as we walk around town afterward. We often do this several times in succession. It is often one of the rewards we give ourselves after completing a necessary errand.

After one fun afternoon of such delightful frolicking, my daughter and I sipped warm apple cider sprinkled with cinnamon, and each of us created a collage on paper we had painted with water colors by gluing onto that paper pressed leaves that we had collected. The arrangement of leaves that she created is reminiscent of leaves falling from the air just after we have released them from our grip. It also reminds us of how we imagine a fairy house might be decorated.

"Wild"

My daughter loves anything with an animal print on it: paper, bags, buttons, stamps, stickers, etc. She also loves to use an assortment of things to create a three-dimensional world on paper. This piece is one that she completed during one of our mother-daughter art sessions, when we created our own separate collages. We often inspire one another, and this time she was my muse, for she placed a menagerie of shapes and textures onto the paper with glue, and plenty of pure reckless abandon. She was listening closely to her own muse, and the right side of her brain determined the pattern of the items chosen for this multimedia masterpiece. The result is beautifully cohesive a festive visual treat.

"Leaf Bear" and "Leaf Lion"

These pieces were made by my daughter after reading an issue of Your Big Backyard (Ranger Rick) magazine. The project was suggested at the end of the magazine, and readers were encouraged to send in their leaf art to the editor. Before sending in these two, I made sure to scan them so that we have a copy of what she created. We own a copy of Look What I Did With a Leaf, listed in the Amazon capsule below, and have been inspired many times by the suggestions offered on all of the book's pages.

One of our favorite things to do together is making art. We make masks, books, and collages together, as well as watercolor and acrylic paintings. Sometimes we work together on the same piece, and sometimes we work side-by-side on our own pieces, but it's always so fun to share art time together. Often, we sip a favorite drink and listen to a favorite collection of music while we work to create from the materials at hand our vision of what we dream of existing. Go ahead and try it...it's a wonderful habit to develop and will generate lots of lovely memories!