16 years later it finally makes sense!

Mr. Price was my Freshman Art teacher at Seton High School for maybe a week in the Fall of 1992. Well, probably not even a full week. I think class started on Wednesday and I was trying to get out of his Art class by that Friday.

I have NEVER been good at art, although it is definitely a talent I wish I had. So, way back in 1992 entering my Freshman year of high school, I decided that I would take Art instead of Chorus. Everyone knew that Chorus was the easy "A," but I thought that if I signed up for Art, I might actually learn how to be an artist.

I remember the first assignment that Mr. Price gave us. It was a black and white picture of an old woman in a rocking chair and we were supposed to turn it upside down and draw it. Huh. Now how was I supposed to do that? I had no real talent in drawing and I didn't even have a clue how to do it. I kept trying to look at the picture and draw the lines exactly how I saw them. It was awful! I couldn't get anything that I drew to go in the right direction or even be of similar size to the lady in the drawing!

Mr. Price was so encouraging though. He kept telling me to visulize the picture as a whole and break the picture down into shapes that I knew how to draw. At the time I didn't have the faintest idea what he was talking about. So, three classes later I found myself in the school office investigating a schedule change to Chorus. As I was speaking to the secretary about switching from Art to Chorus, he came up from behind me and asked why I was switching. I was mortified. I didn't have the heart to tell him first, so I had just gone to the school office without even speaking with him about it. He was still so sweet and encouraging, but I told him that I was just too frustrated and I didn't see that changing any time soon. (And I proved myself right. After I saw some of the things that these girls drew, painted, sculpted, ect....I knew that I was better off in Chorus. Of course, I couldn't sing either, but at least I could be muffled by the other great singers in the Chorus and that wouldn't be too embarassing.)

Fast forward to now, May 2008. Isa loves Art, and even more specifically, drawing. A little fact that most do not know about Bill is that he is actually a really good artist, but he doesn't have as much free time as we'd like these days, so often I'm sitting with Isa trying to teach her how to draw! I've read some very simple books on drawing to be able to teach her some elementary concepts and she seems to enjoy both the time with me and the fun that she has drawing.

Yesterday we had checked out this book on CD from the library called Joseph had an Overcoat. We've listened to it on CD several times and today was our day to do something crafty with the book. The moral of the story is that you can always create something out of nothing. At the beginning of the story Joseph starts out with an overcoat, but it gets old and worn, so he makes a jacket out of it. Then that gets old and worn, so he makes a vest out of it. Then he makes a scarf, and so on. The items keep getting smaller until he makes a button in which he eventually loses (so at this point "he has nothing" so to say), so Joseph then writes a story about it (hence the theme "making something out of nothing.") Very cute story, and even better that someone else can read it to her on CD!

So today our activity was to start writing and illustrating our own book about Joseph. The picture above shows Joseph in his overcoat. The picture to the right shows "our" best attempt at matching the illustator's version of Joseph. Now I know that my attempt at drawing the overocat isn't the best, but 16 years ago, I could NOT have done this period. It would have been lopsided, one coat arm shorter than another, and I definitely would not have been able to even attempt his collar. But, in the midst of teaching my daughter how to draw, I am also learning. I'm finally beginning to see those smaller shapes in the larger picture in which Mr. Price had told me to visualize 16 years ago. Isa did our Jospeh's face and I think that she did a remarkable job. When it came time to do his hat she said "Mommy, I don't know how to draw the hat." So I told her "Look at the bottom part of Joseph's hat. What shape is that? " To which she answered "a rectangle." So I had her draw that first. Then I said "Now what shape is the top part of his hat?" and she said "an oval." So I had her draw that. Then we discussed what color Joseph's hat was and she chose brown. As we colored Joseph's hat in, the lines that made up those shapes began to disappear and suddenly Joseph's hat started looking more like a hat instead of an oval sitting atop a rectangle. Ah ha! That's how these artist's do it! (Again, I know that our drawing is close to what a 4 year old can do, but that's a lot for me! It took me 16 years to be able to figure some of this out!)

When I went to draw the boots, she told me that I needed to draw a rectangle for the heel and an oval for the boot part! She paid really close attention to the colors that Joseph wore in the illustration and tried to match it in our picture.

We worked really hard on this project. I'm really proud of her. Us. Proud of us. Sadly, I'm quite sure that my picture of the old lady sitting in the rocking chair when I was 14 years old wasn't even close to as good as the one that I drew with my daughter at the age of 30!