art

Molly’s Charms and More

| patmcg

Molly has been spending a lot of her down time lately making bracelets. Starting with basic yarn bracelets, she then moved into plastics. Sometimes we even melt plastic beads in the oven to flatten them for just the right shape.

Molly has gotten so good at making her own bracelets that she decided to open her own Etsy shop: Mollys Charms And More. 🤩

After the initial store setup, Molly has been adding her own pictures, updating listings, rallying friends to support her store, and checking her stats.

She’s all over this. 🤓. Way to go, Molly!

Bringin’ in the Easel

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We cleaned up the back yard today, and in the process discovered the old art easel that had been forgotten out on the back patio for a while.  It was covered in dust and pollen.  The girls took it upon themselves to bring it inside and refurbish it.  They tackled this job with enthusiasm.  I did nothing but give them some rags and cleaner.  Molly and Claire got the easel in perfect shape, carefully wiping it down, removing every bit of dust and pollen and arranging the easel in its old spot.

Once the easel was in place, they put it to work.  Claire started drawing on the whiteboard side, and Molly took over the opposite blackboard side.  Claire draw a bunch of random cute things and titled it “Random Art”, and Molly drew a house.  It is amazing how far Molly’s art skill has progressed.  It really looks like a house!  And it even has some writing on it.  Here is the fruit of their labors.

 

 

Art Blast

| patmcg

At the end of second grade, Claire brought home piles and piles of her art and other work from the year.  It had been sitting around our house for weeks.  Kit took some of her last week off to scan some of it.  So here it is, a review of Claire’s second grade art.

Claire Art #3

| patmcg

For a while, I’ve been posting the girls’ art to the portfolio section of this blog.  But the portfolio is tedious and cumbersome to manage, so I’m going back now to doing the art as a regular blog.  While Kit and I were in London, Joyce scanned our big backlog of the girls’ art.  Here is a bunch of Claire’s art and other creations from the last several months…

Claymation!

Video | | patmcg

Claire just finished up a brief 4-week claymation class at the Art School at Laguna Gloria.  All of her classmates’ animations are posted together as a single montage online.  Claire’s creations are in there, but I’m not even sure which ones are hers exactly, except for the one spelling “Claire” in the names section near the end.  Anyways, the class put together some really creative ideas, the kind of stuff only kids can dream up.

Art champion!

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First place picture

Claire entered her school’s optional art contest a few weeks ago.  The assignment for the art contest was to create a picture of the Austin skyline or a local landmark.  The contest started the week before Spring Break and was due the Thursday after Spring Break.  For her subject, Claire picked the University of Texas tower.  Claire kept wavering on actually doing the project.  She always had something else to do, and it was in danger of becoming another homework-type struggle if we pushed it too hard.  So we just gently reminded her about the contest every couple of days, even going so far as to say she could just skip it since it’s just for fun.  Over Spring Break, we sent Claire off to Corpus Christi with a photo of the UT tower and the official contest paper.  Claire came home with nothing.

Then, two nights before her art submission was due, Claire decided to focus on it.  She got far on her initial ideas but ran out of time the first night.  On the second — and last — night, Claire got into a really good groove after dinner.  She asked, “Does it have to look exactly like the tower?” to which we said no, you just have to be able to tell it is the tower.  Claire got excited and started adding bright new colors to the tower itself and imagined details around the base of the tower.  She worked hard on it up to and past bed time, giving up her nightly story time to finish the picture.  She got to bed 30 minutes late but with an awesome picture to take in the next day.

We found out today that her picture won first place for first grade!  Claire was so proud and excited.  As a prize from the school, she received a compact art kit, containing paint, colored pencils, oil pastels, and more.

Way to go, Claire!