Art!
[Update: Oops! Meant to post this to mirandatime, but since I posted it here, I'll leave it here.]
So I should have journaled about the painting on the day we posted this picture on mirandapod, http://www.cheziguana.com/gallery/v/miranda/miranda-pod/miranda-2006-11-01.jpg.html but I didn't. If you didn't read the caption carefully, yes, this is a ten-foot by five-foot canvas that Miranda painted! She did it with some careful set-up and guidance, of course, but yeah, years from now she can truly say she painted her first mural when she was two and a half.
Miranda digs art supplies. They're a controlled substance in our house; I don't let her take them out and use them at her discretion on the walls or anything like that, but with supervision, I give her art time just about every day. On nice days prepared with old clothes,shoes, and a plastic art apron that's about as big as she is, I have a proper easel for her in our front yard with a roll of newsprint, brushes, and tempera in no-spill lidded cups. Inside the house we've got crayons, paper, coloring books, colored pencils, sometimes pens, stamps and inkpads, play-doh... I even have soapy bath paints and tub crayons for her. Her work is intensely representational--to her.
In the bath today she scribbled a line on the side of the tub with her red crayon and said "this is the Mommy." Then a smaller line with the yellow crayon and said "this is the baby." Then she took a blue crayon out, drew some loops around them and said "Now they're in Mommy's car! And now they're going to go to brunch," and she took the blue crayon and drew a wavery line all around the inside of the tub for several circuits, narrating as she scooted around the tub "they're still driving... oh, here's some traffic... almost there... stop at the red light... Yay! Here's the restaurant!" A very literal piece of art, really.
And pretty much all of her illustrations will have the same level of detail if you ask her to explain, but for now they look mostly like scribbles on paper, and some pretty bold abstract brushwork at the easel. She's starting to get the idea that you can make something that resembles a real world thing, like if she draws a circular scribble, I can suggest adding eyes and a mouth, and with smaller scribbles, she can draw a respectable face, but she isn't doing that sort of thing by herself yet.
She IS very interested in the materials themselves though, especially paint. She's un-self-consciously working out all kinds of experiments in color, blending, layering, and brush strokes, stuff I had to go to college for. She'll spatter paint by shaking the brush, scratch lines into the surface of fresh paint using the pointed end of the brush handle, run tracks through the paint with a handy spoon, wipe a sponge across it to smear it, daub it in little puffs, swoop it in huge arcs... oh yeah, Miranda WORKS her paint.
My sister Robyne can pretty much remember to the moment when a rather stern and unimaginative teacher squelched her creativity by criticizing her for not coloring correctly inside the lines. It was a dreadful trauma in her formative years. She worries that someone will do that to Miranda, put boundaries on her that demotivate her. Robyne loves the freedom and boldness that Miranda puts into her painting, and is delighted that I facilitate that spirit. Robyne is the first family member to ask for some of Miranda's kiddie paintings, tempera on newsprint, to put in frames. She wanted them for a big, empty wall in her living room. Hey, with the promise of actual gallery space, I was all for it, and I brought her some of Miranda's recent and most rich paintings to date, lots of mixing and layering, lots of varied brushwork.
I told her that these paintings would probably be temporary. Tempera and newsprint are not particularly archival materials. Ambient light will fade and crackle the paint and the paper will yellow and crinkle. But Robyne was still interested in displaying them for as long as they'd hold up, and was thinking about what to do at the frame shop to make them last a bit longer. She was scrutinizing the paintings, smiling, thinking about how to frame them, what kind of grouping would be best, and said, "We've never had anything on this wall. It's just SO big, it's hard to figure out what one could hang here that wouldn't be overwhelmed by the space. These are so bold, I think they'll really hold their own, but I could see something even bigger. Pity a two year old can't paint a real mural."
"Why the hell not?" says I. "It's just a matter of giving her the materials. If you want a big painting, I can give her a canvas and real paint. She doesn't taste paint anymore like she did when she was one. I think if I stay away from heavy metal paints like cadmiums and cobalts and such, I can trust her with acrylics. If you really do want a mural, I can give her a giant, unstretched canvas, and we can hang it from a pole like a tapestry." I talked to Miranda and asked her if she'd like to paint a really BIG painting for Aunt Robyne's house. She gave an undaunted little "Mmm-hmm," and then asked if we could go home and start it. I told her we'd do it maybe tomorrow. She was okay with that.
And so it was that Miranda got her first commission. I took her to her music class, then to a park, ran her ragged, took her out for brunch, took her shopping, and bought school-grade acrylics, and a ten-foot by six-foot length of heavy, cotton duck canvas. When I got her home, she was absolutely exhausted, and I put her down for a nap. She napped three hours, as I figured she might with such a busy morning, and while she did, I ironed and stitched the edges on the short sides of the canvas. Then I sewed in an extra deep hem on one side so it could be hung on a tab-drape pole. Lastly I ironed the whole massive thing to get all the creases out, more carefully, I think, than I ironed my dress on the morning nj and I got married. I laid out a huge, blue, plastic tarp in the yard, laid the canvas over it, and quickfast painted a thin layer of yellow ochre all over it, to give her colors unity, and to match Robyne's space a bit better.
Over the next four days, Miranda painted. At first I let her take paint cups in her hands and just walk across the painting wherever she wanted, making little flowery shoeprints as well as paintstrokes as she went, but the laws of gravity and friction were against us. Paint is slippery, and the surface of the patio under the tarp is hard brick. A couple of big bottom booms, and we decided against painting COMPLETELY freely. So I sat her down next to whatever area she wanted to paint. When she felt finished, I picked her up and moved her over. After falling with her bottom smack in the paint a couple of times, we decided that she'd just have a bath at the end, and that on a big painting, trying to keep one's self neat isn't important. She did find THAT pretty liberating, and made quite a painting on her own legs as well as the canvas.
I confess, my own tastes governed the painting quite a bit. I drew a big circle in the upper right corner, and she did paint within and around it's confines to make an admirable sun. If she was stuck, painting just one color, or using too many and getting muddy, I'd offer her different colors, or suggest we move on. "That looks great bunny! What about this part over here? Don't you think it needs more paint too?" It was also my idea to have her paint in greens, blues, and yellows across the whole bottom, so it would have a landscape quality to it. She did have some strong opinions though about what was right and what was not. She felt it needed a lot of red. She demanded that pink be included, and she only wanted "the pretty blue." No stupid, dull cerulean, for Miranda, only bright turquoise will do.
I didn't take photos of her in process. Staying right with her and making sure it remained a safe process seemed pretty important. She doesn't eat paint these days, but she was enjoying the fact that I was letting her paint on her own shoes and legs. I'd hate to have turned my back for a minute to check my ISO and have that be the moment she picked to revert completely. I was also worried about all that wet paint, the unpredictable hands of a two year old, and the safety of the camera itself, but I do have a few shots of it when it was about half finished, laying on the blue tarp: http://www.cheziguana.com/gallery/v/miranda/miranda-painting/
If you ask Miranda to tell you about the painting, she'll tell you that it's a car, and that there's pants, a shirt, and a dress too. Oh, and a mommy, and a baby. (But then, in Mirandaland, there's ALWAYS a mommy and a baby.) To me, the finished product is a pretty swell expressionist painting of a sunset over a grassy field. Watch out De Kooning. Miranda is coming.
So I should have journaled about the painting on the day we posted this picture on mirandapod, http://www.cheziguana.com/gallery/v/miranda/miranda-pod/miranda-2006-11-01.jpg.html but I didn't. If you didn't read the caption carefully, yes, this is a ten-foot by five-foot canvas that Miranda painted! She did it with some careful set-up and guidance, of course, but yeah, years from now she can truly say she painted her first mural when she was two and a half.
Miranda digs art supplies. They're a controlled substance in our house; I don't let her take them out and use them at her discretion on the walls or anything like that, but with supervision, I give her art time just about every day. On nice days prepared with old clothes,shoes, and a plastic art apron that's about as big as she is, I have a proper easel for her in our front yard with a roll of newsprint, brushes, and tempera in no-spill lidded cups. Inside the house we've got crayons, paper, coloring books, colored pencils, sometimes pens, stamps and inkpads, play-doh... I even have soapy bath paints and tub crayons for her. Her work is intensely representational--to her.
In the bath today she scribbled a line on the side of the tub with her red crayon and said "this is the Mommy." Then a smaller line with the yellow crayon and said "this is the baby." Then she took a blue crayon out, drew some loops around them and said "Now they're in Mommy's car! And now they're going to go to brunch," and she took the blue crayon and drew a wavery line all around the inside of the tub for several circuits, narrating as she scooted around the tub "they're still driving... oh, here's some traffic... almost there... stop at the red light... Yay! Here's the restaurant!" A very literal piece of art, really.
And pretty much all of her illustrations will have the same level of detail if you ask her to explain, but for now they look mostly like scribbles on paper, and some pretty bold abstract brushwork at the easel. She's starting to get the idea that you can make something that resembles a real world thing, like if she draws a circular scribble, I can suggest adding eyes and a mouth, and with smaller scribbles, she can draw a respectable face, but she isn't doing that sort of thing by herself yet.
She IS very interested in the materials themselves though, especially paint. She's un-self-consciously working out all kinds of experiments in color, blending, layering, and brush strokes, stuff I had to go to college for. She'll spatter paint by shaking the brush, scratch lines into the surface of fresh paint using the pointed end of the brush handle, run tracks through the paint with a handy spoon, wipe a sponge across it to smear it, daub it in little puffs, swoop it in huge arcs... oh yeah, Miranda WORKS her paint.
My sister Robyne can pretty much remember to the moment when a rather stern and unimaginative teacher squelched her creativity by criticizing her for not coloring correctly inside the lines. It was a dreadful trauma in her formative years. She worries that someone will do that to Miranda, put boundaries on her that demotivate her. Robyne loves the freedom and boldness that Miranda puts into her painting, and is delighted that I facilitate that spirit. Robyne is the first family member to ask for some of Miranda's kiddie paintings, tempera on newsprint, to put in frames. She wanted them for a big, empty wall in her living room. Hey, with the promise of actual gallery space, I was all for it, and I brought her some of Miranda's recent and most rich paintings to date, lots of mixing and layering, lots of varied brushwork.
I told her that these paintings would probably be temporary. Tempera and newsprint are not particularly archival materials. Ambient light will fade and crackle the paint and the paper will yellow and crinkle. But Robyne was still interested in displaying them for as long as they'd hold up, and was thinking about what to do at the frame shop to make them last a bit longer. She was scrutinizing the paintings, smiling, thinking about how to frame them, what kind of grouping would be best, and said, "We've never had anything on this wall. It's just SO big, it's hard to figure out what one could hang here that wouldn't be overwhelmed by the space. These are so bold, I think they'll really hold their own, but I could see something even bigger. Pity a two year old can't paint a real mural."
"Why the hell not?" says I. "It's just a matter of giving her the materials. If you want a big painting, I can give her a canvas and real paint. She doesn't taste paint anymore like she did when she was one. I think if I stay away from heavy metal paints like cadmiums and cobalts and such, I can trust her with acrylics. If you really do want a mural, I can give her a giant, unstretched canvas, and we can hang it from a pole like a tapestry." I talked to Miranda and asked her if she'd like to paint a really BIG painting for Aunt Robyne's house. She gave an undaunted little "Mmm-hmm," and then asked if we could go home and start it. I told her we'd do it maybe tomorrow. She was okay with that.
And so it was that Miranda got her first commission. I took her to her music class, then to a park, ran her ragged, took her out for brunch, took her shopping, and bought school-grade acrylics, and a ten-foot by six-foot length of heavy, cotton duck canvas. When I got her home, she was absolutely exhausted, and I put her down for a nap. She napped three hours, as I figured she might with such a busy morning, and while she did, I ironed and stitched the edges on the short sides of the canvas. Then I sewed in an extra deep hem on one side so it could be hung on a tab-drape pole. Lastly I ironed the whole massive thing to get all the creases out, more carefully, I think, than I ironed my dress on the morning nj and I got married. I laid out a huge, blue, plastic tarp in the yard, laid the canvas over it, and quickfast painted a thin layer of yellow ochre all over it, to give her colors unity, and to match Robyne's space a bit better.
Over the next four days, Miranda painted. At first I let her take paint cups in her hands and just walk across the painting wherever she wanted, making little flowery shoeprints as well as paintstrokes as she went, but the laws of gravity and friction were against us. Paint is slippery, and the surface of the patio under the tarp is hard brick. A couple of big bottom booms, and we decided against painting COMPLETELY freely. So I sat her down next to whatever area she wanted to paint. When she felt finished, I picked her up and moved her over. After falling with her bottom smack in the paint a couple of times, we decided that she'd just have a bath at the end, and that on a big painting, trying to keep one's self neat isn't important. She did find THAT pretty liberating, and made quite a painting on her own legs as well as the canvas.
I confess, my own tastes governed the painting quite a bit. I drew a big circle in the upper right corner, and she did paint within and around it's confines to make an admirable sun. If she was stuck, painting just one color, or using too many and getting muddy, I'd offer her different colors, or suggest we move on. "That looks great bunny! What about this part over here? Don't you think it needs more paint too?" It was also my idea to have her paint in greens, blues, and yellows across the whole bottom, so it would have a landscape quality to it. She did have some strong opinions though about what was right and what was not. She felt it needed a lot of red. She demanded that pink be included, and she only wanted "the pretty blue." No stupid, dull cerulean, for Miranda, only bright turquoise will do.
I didn't take photos of her in process. Staying right with her and making sure it remained a safe process seemed pretty important. She doesn't eat paint these days, but she was enjoying the fact that I was letting her paint on her own shoes and legs. I'd hate to have turned my back for a minute to check my ISO and have that be the moment she picked to revert completely. I was also worried about all that wet paint, the unpredictable hands of a two year old, and the safety of the camera itself, but I do have a few shots of it when it was about half finished, laying on the blue tarp: http://www.cheziguana.com/gallery/v/miranda/miranda-painting/
If you ask Miranda to tell you about the painting, she'll tell you that it's a car, and that there's pants, a shirt, and a dress too. Oh, and a mommy, and a baby. (But then, in Mirandaland, there's ALWAYS a mommy and a baby.) To me, the finished product is a pretty swell expressionist painting of a sunset over a grassy field. Watch out De Kooning. Miranda is coming.