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!
Take her to Office Depot/Max/whatever and get her a couple of boxes of Flairs. drawing with ball points is cruel and unusual punishment.
and I think advertising might be her line ....
Posted by: LisaS | May 29, 2008 at 07:39 AM
She has TONS of colored pencils, flairs, paint, etc, etc, etc.
She just draws with whatever is around...ON whatever is around. The ballpoint thing probably started with her drawing in church. She doesn't sketch things out, just starts drawing...often in unexpected places on the figure. She just has the whole thing in her head, I guess, and doesn't need to sketch.
Posted by: Gregg | May 29, 2008 at 07:59 AM
I've always wished I could draw....I never could and I still can't. It also appears that my children have my curse. I'm just praying that they or at least one of them can sing like I used to be able to before I got my nodules, if they get their father's voice I'll have to cry.......
Posted by: abunslife | May 29, 2008 at 08:04 AM
BTW, her drawing is amazing. :)
Posted by: abunslife | May 29, 2008 at 08:05 AM
Wow, she's pretty good! Nice ad line (for the mangoes) too:)
Posted by: Dina | May 29, 2008 at 10:09 AM
Give that precious artist a hug from me. She blesses me!
Posted by: Deb | May 29, 2008 at 10:49 AM