Artistic Ability!!

Eden's Mayday Girl (original work)

I know that one of the passions I have is the encouragement of our children's abilities in any direction they feel the would like to explore.

I am fairly confident in helping them in most crafty things including woodworking, not because I am good at this but because I can usually work it out either by myself or through one of the neat books we have or even on line if all else fails.

Eden's paintings

However I have never been able to capture the skill level that our children have exhibited in art work at all.I am also amazed at the difference in style with the way they draw and paint. It is different to each other which goes to show that God does give differing gifts even within the same field.
They really do have their own unique style that they have developed over the years and some of the children spend lots of their free time illustrating and writing books.

Myffwyn's paintings

I actually do think this is from the way we have taught art appreciation and drawing techniques in our Home School.
We have only ever used the form I call 'copying' where the children will copy other great artists. Frankly I used this more with our older children as from Moran down have not done a lot of art yet, except as they paint and draw for themselves.

Moran's Paintings (on the side..oops)

When we have Art Lessons they children choose a favourite illustrator or artist and they copy and colour the painting or drawing. We actually have some great sketchers who are more attracted David Macaulay style of drawing than the colour pictures I prefer.
A lot of the illustrators the children have chosen in the past have been books we have on the shelf by favourite children's authors: Beatrix Potter, Elsa Beskow, Tasha Tudor, Cecily Mary Barker, Shirley Barber are the mainstays of this style of art work.

Rogan's fruit bowl from memory

I myself can not do any of this and I remember in school not being artistic in any way and not helped either. When we were first married I wanted to be able to do water colour, much like Eden does, but never had any success.
However I can see a style of drawing and painting that I really am going to focus on for myself (just to add to my ever ready list of things to do) and that is the Waldorf style of pictures. We actually have a little booklet on drawing this way that I have used with some of the older children who felt they also lacked talent in this area and remarkably were able to produce pictures they were pleased with.

I so enjoy seeing the children develop this gift and the results they produce. Another wonderful addition to our home and their  own creative abilities.

By the way the painting in this post were done yesterday morning by the children named just becasue they wanted to.

Blessings to you and your homes,