One Dad's Life

Influenced by Her Big Sister

My oldest daughter, Rebecca, is a talented artist (click here for a published example) and is always drawing.  She throws away drawings that I think should be framed!

Well naturally, Rachel, the 2nd grader has followed suite and now ALSO draws all the time.  We go through a ton of drawing paper pads, colored pencils, and all other art supplies.  It's funny, I used to think that I drew a lot, but I still have some of my original packs of pencils and pads!  Clearly, my daughters are working on a whole different level.

Last night, my wife brought me the following drawing which when quizzed, Rebecca told us RACHEL had done all by herself.  There is obvious portions of Rebecca's style in the drawing, but not too bad for someone entering 2nd grade!  I can't wait to see what kind of style Rachel develops as she continues to draw.

Art Showcase - Pop Art

My daughter, Rebecca, is a talented artist.  She developed her own drawing style between first and second grade and has stuck with that style (with refinements) for many years, now. 

Every now and then, she experiments with a totally different style.  This week, for art class, they had to do a type of "pop art."   Rebecca made a self-portrait of herself which was really cool.  I'd like to scan and post it when she gets it back from school.

Yesterday, she took a photo portrait she had made of her and a friend, and turned IT into pop-art...for fun!

Making Glitter

So, I happened upon my second-born, Rachel (currently 7).  She was totally absorbed in something, hunched over an array of small containers, with a good-sized stack of what I'd call metallic gold pipe-cleaners on the floor next to her. I think there is a new artsy-fartsy term for pipe-cleaners as pipes are largely a thing of the past, but let's just stick with that term for our purposes.

The kid is ALWAYS making crafts of her own design.  For an example, see the flag made out of notebook paper and used straws (on the left). She can "see" a finished product out of the most obscure things. (click the link for more, plus you can click on the flag picture for a better view!)

I watched her for a while, but she never came up for air.  She was very focused on her task! It seemed like she was cutting something.  She's good with scissors, I think, for her age.  Finally, still unable to see what she was making this time around, I asked:

Gregg: (curiously) Rachel?

Rachel: yeah?

Gregg: What are you making?

Rachel: (matter-of-factly) Glitter.

She looked up at me, briefly.  Long enough that I could see on the floor in front of her a small container with a small but significant pile of gold glitter in the bottom of it...and a pile of pipe-cleaners completely stripped bare of the colorful portion.  She looked back down and hunched over her work, again.

Gregg: Rachel?

Rachel: yeah?

Gregg: You know that you can buy glitter already made, right?

Rachel: Uh huh.

Gregg: Then why are you going through all this work to make glitter?

Rachel: Because I like to make glitter, that's why. Besides, Mom said I could!

She's been working on the little container full of "home-made" glitter for a couple of days now.  I'm sure that someday soon, we'll see some incredible new craft from her and it will all make more sense to us.  

Rachel: Look! There must be hundreds of pieces of glitter in here!

Dianne (the wife/mom): Thousands, I think.

Rachel: Yeah!

Amazed at her own success in creating thousands of pieces of glitter, she returned to work - her larger goal still a secret from us.  I'm looking forward to seeing what she will make.  She can see things that we can't!

Rebecca's Big News - "Sarah's Garden"

Hold on to something because I'm about to brag a little. If you don't like it, tough luck, mister!

From time to time, this website has featured artwork from my oldest daughter, Rebecca.  Usually, it was in the context of an "I'm worried about the Kids" post, and many people commented, or emailed that I shouldn't be worried about her artwork.  I assured most that I certainly was NOT worried about her artwork, and in fact there was something cooking in relation to this.

Well, now I am proud, VERY proud to be able to tell you that the first published book featuring illustrations by my daughter has now been released.

The pictures below show the cover (left), and also author Deb Wolf (of "Counting My Blessings" fame) with my daughter Rebecca holding one of the first books printed.

Deb is the wife of one of Pastors, and we have known her since Rebecca was an infant. In fact, she used to hold the infant Rebecca in church if my parents weren't at our service while my wife and I played the music for our contemporary service.  When Rebecca suddenly developed the ability to draw, she drew COUNTLESS pictures for Deb...and thus the relationship was born!

This book, and story, has been a dream of Deb's for some time and my wife and I are very happy that Rebecca has been able to help her realize a portion of this dream.  Plus, we are overflowing with pride! Have I mentioned that, yet?

Here are a couple of the pen and pencil illustrations that were made for this book.

 

 

 

To order your very own copy of the book, you have a couple of options:

1) Click the Amazon link on the right side of this page!

2) Contact the author directly at "Counting My Blessings" thus saving her the Amazon commission...plus you can get an autographed copy!

To learn more about the book, click here.

Congratulations Deb and Rebecca!  I'm very proud of you!

Future Artist

As different as our daughters are, there are a few traits that they share and a big one is a love for the arts...any kind of art.

One of my seven year old's gifts is the ability to look at a pile of miscellaneous anything and get an idea of something to do with it...all without input from us.  For example, she once took a pile of red straws and created an American flag with them.  She's clever, this one is.  She is always wanting to "save" packaging, wrappers, trash...anything, because she is positive she will be able to "do" something with it.  Perhaps she is right!

One of her latest creations was this piece of art, created with and inspired by a McDonald's fry box.  The back of the big girl is labeled "Teenager Rebecca."  Rebecca is her older sister's name.  In the stroller is "Baby Rachel."  Interesting.  Notice "Teenager Rebecca" has braces.

The next piece was some artwork she put together from stuff she found around the house.  It may not be too easy to see in the small picture, but her primary method of putting this "witch riding a broom" together was staples.  You just don't see enough staples in modern art!  I love the detail on this one, including the buckle on the hat.

 

Several weeks ago, my wife and I went out for our anniversary and Rachel was going to spend the night at my parent's house....along with my parents of course! Rachel loves to make gifts for people and so she began to work on an elaborate drawing to give to my parents.  She sketched it out and started working on it a day or so before spending the night.  She even brought it to one of our music rehearsals and had a friend help her color things in.  She is very particular about her suns, so she drew a big circle around it so her friend would not work anywhere near the sun! She didn't quite get the picture done the night before going to my parents, and was very upset when I told her she still had to get in bed as the next day was a school day.  Well, she was determined, and the next morning she got herself up an HOUR early, and finished the drawing...all without any intervention from us.

She was very proud of it, just because of its size, if nothing else.  She proudly told me that it was "the biggest drawing she had ever done!"  As this was a gift, she also ended up wrapping the picture in paper from our rapidly diminishing stash of wrapping paper in the attic.

Here is the proud artist with her work:

This past summer, she took an art class where each week they worked with a different medium and type of project. One of the projects was a watercolor project, and I was really impressed with this one.

 

It makes you want to head to the beach!  I'm very proud of my young artist and her ability to creatively use her imagination.

The Art of Rebecca - part 1 (just a hunch)

If you have been reading this blog for long, you know that my family tends towards the artistic side of life...you know, if you have to pick "sides" in life, of course.

We are involved in music ranging from classical, to show-tunes, to rock.  For example: my wife and both of our girls are into acting, singing and dancing, we can all draw well in our own styles, and we all like photography. (We just got a shiny new Nikon D60 dSLR, too!  It is awesome!)  We also plant our gardens in such a way that from a plane, they appear to be large copies of Renaissance masterpieces, but that another story.

In yesterday's post, I showed our 6-year face painting, and doing a good job of it.  Today, I will showcase some work of my older daughter.  Rebecca has developed her own style of characters and artwork that I suppose is a form of cartooning.  She developed her style very early in life, during first grade, and has basically been tweaking it ever since.  She is an excellent illustrator and illustrated her first two books at ages 8 and 9.  Someday, I will showcase them here, but right now I'm too concerned with protecting copyrights and avoiding Internet thieves.  These books should seriously be published, and someday we'll get our act together and pursue this.

Rebecca is also working on illustrations for a local author's book.  She's twelve and amazingly talented at this work. She throws pictures away that "were just not right" that I have dug back out of the trash! The photo at left is of her doing a "for fun" drawing the way all the best artists do it - direct with ball-point pen while laying on the floor!  No guide pencil drawing or anything!  Now here is one of those parenting dilemmas:  Do we push her to work on her art, perhaps using it as a source of income for her (what a summer job!), a way to pay for school, or other "practical use?"  Do we just let her draw for fun and not push her at all?  Do we risk the possibility that she gets tired of it and never fully develops her talent? How do you handle a young talent like this?  She could easily make a career of illustrating - not saying any artistic career is easy, I am just indicating that she has the ability to make a career of illustrating.  It's a tough call.

Yesterday,  I found a stack of homework papers she had brought home from school.  One of the items caught my eye.  She had to create a product and advertising and labels for this product.  Her idea was somewhat humorous but also showed some potential for a career I hadn't thought of - advertising.

Check this out:

Although the poor little mango shouting out "Eat Me!" is a bit on the morbid side (and almost caused me to write another "I'm Worried about the Kids" post), the whole concept of "If one doesn't quench your thirst, buy 2" is completely brilliant!  I may be speaking from a slightly biased position as her father, but in my opinion, a more brilliant sales/marketing slogan has not appeared on this earth since Johnson & Johnson developed the whole idea of "rinse and repeat." 

Think about it, if a shampoo company can convince you to use twice as much shampoo without making you think that if you have to repeat, is this product actually any good? - then a campaign that basically tells you to drink twice as much of the Maxed Out Mangoes than you need is genius!  Buy two!