Today, after spending 4 days of being in NY with my family, it was time to come home. I had to come up with something creative to do while in the car for three hours. Nothing was coming to me. Then I had a fun idea! I asked my son, niece and daughter to paint me some abstract paintings before we headed out and I would accept the challenge of finding something fun to draw within each of their paintings.
THE DANCERS
First up was my son. Owen likes to create bold bands of color generally freestanding and not mixed. He took my toothbrush out of my paintbrush supplies and applied “BLOOD” red paint spatter to the center. That’s my boy:)
Later on, I flipped his painting in every direction. I wasn’t getting any creative impulses. When it was vertical I sort of saw a man’s face but I didn’t really love it. I put his painting down for a while, moved on to the others, then came back. Finally, In the top right I saw two splotches that reminded me of ballerina dresses. Ah, now that could be fun. Then, to the right of that, I saw two very long men in waist coats. To the left I saw a large orange woman wearing a veil dancing with her arms extended and inside her I saw a man bowing. Now it was getting good. Further to the left, I envisioned a sort of can-can dancer, a woman in a fur coat and a man in a bowler and strange tuxedo. They all seemed to come together under the theme of dance. Hence the title – THE DANCERS. I used the rest of my sons bands of color to create musical bars. They float in and out of the dancers.
THE CORAL REEF
Next up was my niece Caleigh. She takes her art very seriously. For hers, I taught her how to wet the paper and then add paint strokes to watch the watercolors bleed. The paints began to get a little over mixed and the painting was overwhelmingly brown. I grabbed a bowl of kosher salt and we taught her how to add the salt to create speckled shapes where the water and paint get absorbed. Caleigh thought that was cool. She added dabs of red, yellow and blue paint around her painting and then she was done. We put it aside to dry. When I got in the car to drive home, I knew exactly what this one looked like to me. The randomness of the red strokes reminded me of a school of fish. Plus the brownish salt splotches instantly made me think of coral. It’s great when you automatically see something in the picture. It’s a sigh of relief!
THE ANIMAL TREE
The final painter was my oldest child Olivia. She is stubborn, knows everything and will not take any advice or lessons from her mom. This is AN ABSOLUTE! But secretly I know she’s always watching and taking in everything I do, so I let her “know it all”. Liv can be a bit literal too. The assignment was to doodle with paint, not creating a subject matter and keeping it abstract. She came to the table, wet the paper, created a star out of 5 stripes, painted the two corners, flicked some green with the toothbrush and was gone in about 3 minutes. I’m telling you. KNOW IT ALL. It was like “Take that mom!”
Of course the first thing I saw was a flower. No way. I couldn’t do it. That would be way too cliche. I kept spinning and spinning the paper. I’d look at Owen’s, then look at Olivia’s. Back and forth and then I saw it. The crocodile. The jaggedness of the yellow paint made me think of teeth. I started there and then all sorts of animals started to appear out of the paint blotches. But what to do with this star/wheel my daughter created? I thought of the forest, the wilderness, the jungle and began to add foliage and trees. This painting was tough. Quite the challenge to come up with a subject.
So there you go. I doodled all the way home. I satisfied my creative challenge for the day. Got the kids involved and found something to do in the car as to not go bonkers with boredom! I have to say, with all this travel and business, I am looking forward to a quite day tomorrow where I can get a little more serious about art. I missed it this week!
Be Creative Mary 
Wow…you are so talented!! My kids and I are in awe….
Those are amazing :)