It was the perfect time to be at home with Greysen especially for his learning, although I wouldn't have known it being "in it" at the time. The days are long, but the years are short - they say.
So I continued to paint with him with the finger paint, but then one day he wanted to paint with me on an easel. I had already laid the background on the canvas, but he added the detail. It was fun to see him add the pieces that he did to the painting. I explained to him about how we have to learn when to stop. This is something that I still struggle with as an adult artist. I wanted to explain when to stop specifically to avoid pictures turning out like mud :-)
I love this painting. It looks like something a famous artist would have created to me. But the drippings are from too much paint on the brush and then this speckles are from us flicking the paint. (If you haven't used this technique before, you should try - it is great for snow.) We now have this painting hanging on the wall outside of Greysen's room.
After this painting, a few days later, I set him up on his own easel. I remember giving him only one color at a time to start - whichever he requested. Even though he even 2 years old yet, I made sure to explain to him things like color theory early on because it is an important part of painting.
My mom, mother in law and I love these two initial paintings that Greysen did on his own on canvas. Although I guided him, I would do that nowadays with an adult if they needed, too! It was so magical being able to sit with him and see his enjoyment. My mother in law had the great idea of taking one of these paintings and adding it to a water bottle that she sent to us. Greysen recognized his artwork on the water bottle right away. It literally gives me chills thinking about the excitement he had in that moment.
Right after this time, we then made our move to Bozeman, Montana. I was working now and Greysen was then put into daycare. He was fortunate to have a daycare facility that did let them do artwork. He would come home and we would still put many of his pieces on the fridge. The cover photo of this article is from his daycare and they would use stamps to paint. I still have this piece as it turned out pretty neat!
He was in daycare from the time he was 2, until he turned 4. As I was working, I did not have as much one on one time with him. I would still do projects with him at home though regularly. I would find art kits and let him go for it.
Some of the paintings he has completed are in his current bathroom. All of the different figurines that he has painted are in a basket in his room. He loves them and will play with them still to this day.
We bought him an easel/whiteboard/chalkboard combo for Christmas when he was 2 and he would also paint on there as well. This gave him ample opportunity to practice on his own, without me worrying about a mess since we put it in our garage and made a make shift art room.
I also had my easels in the garage with the plastic on and he would paint on the plastic covering like he was painting on the easel. I did not realize how important it was for him to paint on easels until more recently. He sees painting on canvas as "real painting" in his words versus painting on paper. So although he is painting all the time now, we do use paper and all the paint left over from the kits for practice artwork and then on special occasions (once a month or so) he is allowed to use my acrylic paint and canvas. We also recycle paintings that we aren't in love with.
The next painting is one of his more recent paintings. It is fun because there are stories behind each of these paintings now that he will tell me. This one features a red sky and two suns. The yellow is the beach since we now live at the beach.
Greysen also will draw for hours now. We are fortune to have a room that we call the art room now and one Friday afternoon about a month ago, he spent over two hours with markers just going at a bug map. He would look at a photo of a bug and then run in the art room to add it to his map. The map is for us to find the bugs. He loves bugs and they show up in a lot of his artwork these days.
It is such a beautiful thing that Greysen and I share now. Now, he is often getting me to paint because he asks to and we will try new techniques or projects. And often, we will just paint together in the same room, but independently.
I believe that if you do something you love with your child early on, they will learn to love it, too. I have never shied away from showing him the real "adult" things and these tend to be the things he loves. He doesn't play with toys much and just wants to be with me doing what I do. I am not sure if he will like painting when he is older, but I know that these will always be special memories to me and I believe to him as well.