We go through phases of intense creative production and phases in which nobody is really all that interested in drawing or painting or other forms of creative expression. At home, sometimes reorganizing things - moving supplies around, changing the furniture placement in the studio - jumpstarts everybody's desire to create. Sometimes having novel materials is the key. Other times, the answer is location, location, location. Last week, setting up a rock painting studio on the back porch did the trick. This week, being away from our regular *stuff* at home, being surrounded by new experiences, and shaking up our schedule is leading to different kinds of expression than I've seen before. Fortunately, I had brought along a stack of plain white paper and some fine-point sharpie markers and colored pencils.
The lamp above is a drawing by Griff, who usually does not draw from a model and also usually does not focus in his work on the small details in objects. His attention was captured by a bedside lamp in our hotel room. In the absence of other distractions, he focused on the lamp and created this image (the hot pink dots are bleed-through from a scribble on the other side of the page).
Xander was also inspired to draw by our trip. He selected a turquoise blue sharpie and went to work on two pieces. Both started with broad, spiraling strokes, which were followed by smaller, short scribbles and lots of dots.
When I prompted, "what can you tell me about your drawing?" He told me that the first (on the left, click to enlarge) showed "sharks and fish in the ocean and in the James River." Last week we saw minnows in the James, and this week the boys are interested in bigger sea creatures (we have not, however, seen any sharks). I wonder if this art helps him to bridge the distance between home and here, and to provide a sense of continuity between the two. He also told me that "they're thirsty." Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink, right? Of the drawing on the right, he said it depicts "a man and a fish." Earlier that day we had seen a man catching and releasing a fish in the surf near our hotel. I enjoyed the deliberateness with which he drew the spiral in this picture. I don't know how deliberate his work is, or whether or not the smaller scribbles are carefully placed, but I can see the water, the man, the fish, and the sharks.
Post-vacation he describes them as "one two three ducks" (left) and "a ball with a string" (right), which tells me that he is not yet purposefully drawing representational works, or at least not the way an older child or adult would. I just heard a report, however, that he recently drew a careful representation of Griffin while studying his brother's face...but then scribbled all over it. Alas! So much for ars longa, vita brevis.
