The Budding Artist

Is this what Picasso’s parents had to put up with? Did Van Gogh’s father groan every time little Vinnie wanted to drag out the paints and inadvertently redecorate the room with mistaken splashes of paint, little drips and splattering oops?

For Easter, Matthew got a set of these fancy markers that only mark on a certain kind of paper and nothing else, which is good because it is a rare moment when the two—the paper and the pens—ever actually meet. However, he has come up with his share of masters from a blue scribble entitled “Ball” and, my favorite, a green scribble entitled, “Ball.”

Natalie likes to take it up a notch, break out the big girl paints and let the creativity fly. It usually means that everything from the elbow down will be a mix of colors by the time she is through and that I’ll have to break out the industrial cleaner on the kitchen table, but what she comes up with is really great art. I'm just happy that I remembered to put her in a smock.

Today, she was all about rainbows, and little Matthew wasn’t completely content with just using his markers on the floor. Since he’s part monkey, climbing up on one of the chairs has the extra incentive today because there’s a host of messy paints there to smear around. And Natalie was all too obliging by handing him a paint brush to use, paint-dipped bristles first, which Matthew immediately smeared all over his new Elmo shirt I put him in.

No harm done; they’re water colors, but still.

When Natalie finished her series of rainbows today, we sat for a while and admired it, and that is one thing I have always been impressed with Natalie: She knows her colors, and not only that, but she knows the proper order they go in to make a rainbow.

Here’s a little clip of Natalie showing off her art work.