Kelly's Art

I came home from work yesterday evening, and got a treat. It seems Kelly was on a creation binge. Being a computer family, we don't lack for scratch paper, so there is always a stack available for Kelly to draw on. Jean told me that Kelly was downstairs with all her pens and crayons, working on her drawing style.

A little background. In years past, when Jean and I were still in Ohio, Michigan and parts beyond, we used to go on expeditions to used bookstores, back when momandpop stores were still numerous. Sometimes they'd have really nice blank books. That is, books filled with bright white pages, and a nice hardcover with some abstract but pleasing pattern.

I'd often buy one (even poor, we could usually afford these, since they never seemed to cost that much then), and present it to Jean. Jean would fill these books with line art. She has a really unique style, though she hasn't done much drawing in the last few years. Each drawing is a picture made without lifting the pen from the paper.

So Kelly would come running up with a picture to show her mom, then get Jean to draw one on the same page. This apparently went on for several iterations. When I got home there was an entire gallery of pictures to look at.

[Later today, when everybody is awake, I'll scan some of them in and post them...]

Kelly's pictures were pretty easy to distinguish from Jean's, but Kelly was frequently laying claim to pictures that her mom had clearly done. I didn't contradict her, just made some smartass comments about the level of detail. Later that night Jean made things clear. It seems that Kelly was so enchanted by her mom's style that she was trying to imitate it in her own 5-year old way, so she naturally thought the other pictures by her mom were her more successful efforts.

In any case, however primitive her drawings, she is showing a marked change in sophistication of her compositions and subjects. I'll keep posting instances of this in the future...