Painting on a Sunday Morning

I sometimes feel like I am drained of art ideas between full time work, hobbies and kids but the thing is: When kids get older, the results of the same techniques vary. So on a relaxing Sunday morning we started do some simple stuff again that we haven’t done for such a loooong time, and we had so much fun that we forgot to have breakfast!

My daughter used a butterfly shaped cutter to make the shapes, then we used the rests of the madras from the baby box (yes, the gift of government has been of great support to our crafts sessions) to tap the colour through. She used acrylic paints and thin brushes to finalise her spring picture.

My son woke up and wanted to use finger paints. It’s been a long time since we last used them, so initially just to explore mixing colours and making green or purple was fun for him. It turned out to be so much fun  that my daughter wanted to use the finger paints as well.

But then my boy started to create stories. My son has never shown a lot of initiative to create art on his (like his sister) but he has been happy to do art together, and one of the most fun ways to draw/paint for him has been to tell together a story while painting it. This time I just listened: first he drew a monster car, it was dad driving it. Then there came a storm and it was so heavy one couldn’t see the car any more (the brown stuff on the car). After the storm the sun always comes out, and the flowers grew in the sunshine.

Recently I got perplexed because my son stopped bringing any art work home from daycare. I get that he doesn’t always want to but not at all…? After I a few times asked him about it, he finally told me how a couple of the “big boys” (= 5 yo) had said his drawing was ugly, so consequently he didn’t want to do it any more.

Those two boys say a lot and not in a very nice manner but don’t mean any harm (you know those who say “hi dickhead” when they are happy to see each other? They both have older brothers too.). So we talked, among others about how we can just ignore stupid comments, how, if there is something we enjoy doing, we should just do it and not listen to others, and how I wish I’s had more of his art to put on the wall.

The next day my boy came home with a painting. Apparently the boys had again commented on something but he had told the boys that he wouldn’t listen to any stupid comments from them, and that it is not about what it looks like but about doing what you like.

How great that at this age what Mum says actually matters!! Even better that he liked himself the outcome and was proud to put it on the wall.

But how sad that already at this age the comments of the peers matter so much! Those thoughtless words got him to stop doing something because he thought it wasn’t good enough. How I wish that I’ll be able to support my kids to a healthy self esteem that will help them ignore all the thoughtless people they will meet during their lives…

Anyway, we got going with doing more art at home again too, and this Sunday my beloved brave boy wanted to continue by trying to tap colour through stencils too like his sister did with the butterflies. He didn’t want to cut any so lucky I had old stencils that we could reuse:

An art session really is quite a fun way to start a Sunday on!

More ideas on painting and/ or printing if you scroll down on the page for crafts

Tags: acrylic paints, exploring colours, finger paints, painting, painting stories, painting together with children, self esteem and painting, stencils and painting