Drawing

I don't think I have mentioned this before and considering what a huge activity this is in our house, I'm frankly shocked and appalled at myself for not bringing it up earlier. ;)

Natty and Francie love to draw.

Francie's drawing of people in a circus act:

I can't remember a time when our dining room table or our counters have not been covered with paper of various sizes, markers, crayons, colored pencils, etc.

I spend precious time cleaning everything up but the moment Natty and/or Francie return and sit at the counter, or the table, everything is back out again.

Our counter (Francie's spot):

Francie is the worst- she cannot sit down for eight seconds without picking up a pen or crayon and then she'll grab any available scrap of paper that she can find and start drawing.

At night, I will read to her and tuck her into bed. An hour later I'll walk by her door and there she sits, drawing. I don't really know how long she stays up. She'll eventually turn off her light and go to bed by herself, though. That's just how she rolls.

Francie's desk:

In the morning, her desk will be littered with all sorts of different drawings- mostly people in various states of emotion and/or engaging in a plethora of different activities. Her imagination is endless, her stories elaborate, her characters are amusing and expressive.

"A little girl collecting lightening bugs to make a light for her room."

Because of this, one of the best parts about Francie drawing is listening to her talk while she draws. Her people are usually deeply involved in conversations with each other or with themselves in her stories and her ability to get their facial expressions exactly the way she is speaking completely amazes and amuses me.

"He is so very angry because he is so hot."

Last night I wanted to clean up the counter before heading to bed. As usual, papers were scattered everywhere, along with colored pencils and broken crayons. That's when the brilliant idea of blogging about their drawings hit me. So, I grabbed the camera and snapped some pictures.

All of Francie's drawings on this post are just from this past weekend (and I didn't even put them all on here!!)

Francie's rendition of a little girl getting "nitpicked" for lice:

This is Daddy- the first one is Daddy when he was "young and hip" and the latter is "Daddy now, old, wearing old suits":

And here I am, "young and hip":

And here I am, all old and crusty wearing eye shadow (ha!):

"A happy girl at a wedding."

"She has a loose tooth and she is happy."

"Fairy godmothers. (One was born that way, she can't help the way she looks.")

"Karate girl...and she likes her big green eyes."

"He is sad because he lost his tooth and there are teardrops on the letters."

In the style of Todd Parr:

A couple of Natty's below are from this weekend but others are from various other times when he sits to draw. He doesn't sit to draw as often as Francie, so his collection day-to-day isn't as vast. He also prefers to copy pictures (he's a copy artist like his great-grandpa!), so a lot of his drawings are replicas of others.

Here's Natty trying out Todd Parr's style:

"Ed's Gym"

"The city"

People with light sabers are one of Natty's favorite themes...

as well as drawing various weapons:

This one he did after watching a video someone did for Weird Al's song, Albuquerque (but he did it from memory, not an exact copy.)

A random person:

This one started out as Daddy sweating to death while hiking up a huge hill, then turned into Daddy in a big monster's mouth...

I am glad they like to draw. I enjoy all of their pictures and stories. I enjoy watching them create, finding things to draw that I would not ever think of (my drawings consist of a house and a sidewalk and some flowers and a bear pretty much every time. And the bear just smiles) and watching their imagination explode through their work. I enjoy that they enjoy drawing together and that they can sit for hours side by side, watching each other work, talking about their drawings and enjoying their time together. It makes us all happy. :)