Art and puppy-kids

Here's how to have a lovely day.

First, have a fabulous Modern Art Museum in your hometown.

Second, get them to have some kid-friendly and future-vet-friendly animal-lover art.

Third, have a kid who wears cat ears (or lion or cheetah or leopard or puppy ears) everywhere.

Fourth, have a section at the gallery for kids to make their own art!

Fifth, combine and enjoy!

Doings - August and September!

Not as many doings as we are normally, well, doing, due to being at home a LOT with Snail.  But we get out when we can.

To the wonderful Bush Kindy, organised by a dear and wonderful friend.

Treasure hunt collage!

Sunny days doing a bird ID walk at bush kindy.

The very start of Spring, already roasting here in Brisvegas!

I LOVE that the kids were to "tick" the birds as they spotted the cards, and Lolly drew an actual tick (as in, the little bug).  She'd just had a tick on her neck that week, so it was clearly topical.  ;)

Ticks :D

 To Sushi train, where kitty gets salmon.

More sushi train, in which Lolly is so grown up.

Sisters watching Bananas on the iPad.

All of the drawing.  

"Mummy and Lolly in a house with a sun and birds."

Making the most of an occasional cold August night at our fire pit.

Why yes, Lolly did toast a carrot over the fire as we had no marshmallows!  She ate two!

Sad neglected children get toasted carrot.

Snail is doing really well.  She had to have one of the hip pins out as it had come through her skin (!!) but recovered quickly and we are well into rehab. She is (as of a couple of weeks ago) back in her normal wheelchair, so it's goodbye to the reclining thing we spent 9 weeks in!  She's doing great at physio, and standing transfers are close in our future, which will make all our lives a lot easier, especially hers!  It's been a hard time, but the light is at the end of the tunnel. 

At one of our post-surgical appointments, around 8 weeks after surgery, at the hospital cafe, traveling in style!

Finally, girls with "pricklefoot" have to use their sister's reclining wheelchairs to recover. 

Lolly the Artist - age 4 and nearly half

Lolly is 4 and a half (nearly) and loves art.  A day doesn't go by that she isn't drawing, painting, or doing some kind of gluing masterpiece.  And I'm here to make sure the internet viewing public sees them all!!

Here are some of her latest work, I've been so interested to see how much detail she does in her drawing lately!  Eyes will have circles and pupils, even little holes in the ears, fingers and toes, and hair, of course. 

Crab!

Snails having a race!

Here, she's done her current fave - people with puppies.  You can see where she's written her name up the top.  Love the backwards "L" and will be sad to see it go.

Eyes with pupils!  Ears with little holes "to hear out of"!

All her pictures have elaborate and awesome stories attached to them.  Like this one, which is "a turtle in a tank with some feeder fish, some bubbles, and bees and a caterpillar for company."

Turtle in a tank :D

I am a total slacker and mostly make her do watercolours for painting, which is an inside job on a plastic table cloth.  I liked this one, which is water over a texter drawing of a dinosaur.

But lately she's been very into going outside with "proper" paints, which necessitates several baths a day.

Easel of mess :D

Products of easel of mess.

She also loves gluing and construction of all kinds.  Here is a puppy she made with a wooden peg and some fancy yarn my sister sent her for her birthday in March.

Finally, after an epic post of kid art (Yay, you all say, if you got this far!) - we have playdough ponds with creatures in them, her playdough fave thing to make lately.

Fish pond with eels, a horse and some lavender "trees"

We art, we craft

Lolly has been going to Gymboree lately, to get us out of the house, basically.  She isn't doing kindy this year, and I wanted some input other than mine.  Oh and doing that much art might break me!

She LOVES it.  She's like an art and craft machine.  As I type this she is using glitter glue to glue googly eyes and sparkles on cards for her cousin's birthdays.  She does endless series of glitter gluing of eyes and pom poms that DinnerDad reckons looks like fairy/alien road accidents.

Serious face, at art class.

"I am so totally artistic!"

Fairy/alien road carnage.  Or party bags.

Focus face.  Making fairy/alien road carnage requires FOCUS!

I love it, she loves it.  It's a cool stage.  When we finish the art room upstairs, you know I'll be bragging about it here!  Until then, craft on!

Lolly the Artist

Lolly is loving the artwork at the moment, she loves to draw and paint, and do collage, and stick all manner of things on to all manner of other things. 

DinnerDad was particularly proud of this drawing of Snail's new wheelchair Lolly did while we were at the hospital for a Snail appointment last month.  It has perspective!

Snail's wheelchair (with dinosaurs)

 I was even motivated to take her to art class at Gymboree!  She LOVED it.

At art class!

 We have clearly nurtured an artistic genius ;)

Footprints in a puddle, by Lolly

She has been doing collage all morning, and told me just now "Mummy, when I grow up, I want to be an artist!"

Artiste!

Lolly loves to paint, and we recently moved the easel back to just outside our front door.  She's using it again and loving it.

Her very first canvas, in watercolours.  I asked her to tell me the story of the painting, and she said it was "a girl with a beautiful rainbow!"  Love it.  She loved painting on the canvas, too, and has instructed me to "buy some more at the shop tomorrow and I will paint them?"  Indeed we will.

Surrealism some more

Part of the kid's exhibit is scupture making from everyday objects.  DinnerDad and Lolly did this masterpiece...

Okay, it was mostly DinnerDad, they are clearly undiscovered artistic geniuses!

Do your kid art days look like this?

We're having a lovely time away with family, but I haven't hooked up my camera yet, so here's a couple of photos from late last week to tide us all over.  And I do wonder, is this what everyone's kid's art sessions look like?  Do they?

Because it's kinda messy.

And apparently we have to bathe in the kitchen sink afterwards.  She was playing in here for, I kid you not, 50 minutes Thursday.  And over an hour Friday.

Interpretive sink dance.

All of which means I'm some kind of super-Mum, right?  Right?

Painting and other fun stuff

[Lolly is much better now, thanks for all the well wishes!  She's back to her normal exuberant self.  Thank goodness!]

Confessions of a regular mother: I'm kinda slack.  I don't love spending hours painting, making playdough, crafting and so on with my small ones.  I get bored.  I don't like mess.  I suspect many of us are the same, if we're honest.

We had some friends around for an art day recently.  I wish I had pictures, but my camera is still out of action (damn floods!!).  I snapped these with my phone during her second painting session the day after.   I was interested to see she now does arms and legs in the "correct" spot on a figure.  I drew the two circles for head and body, she did the rest.  The big swirly lines are (sorry Nanna!) snakes, apparently.

Lolly's person (I did the two basic circles for head and body).

You can see what I mean by the mess, right!?

Lolly is very proud of her best canvas: herself!

She LOVES painting.  LOVES it.  I've been fielding requests for painting several times a day since then.  Damn it.  :D