Painting #1

This first picture has a house, a man (who looks like a red letter H), a bucket full of red lava, with green clouds in the sky.

'Car'

This is actually Sasha’s wiping cloth. Before we threw it out, we noticed that it looked like a car, so he wanted to save it.

'Body parts'

Sasha claims this painting is of bones and muscles and other human body parts.

A man and his sword

This painting is of a man (the green blob) trying to pick up his sword (the silver blob) by the handle.

Prehistoric landscape

In this ‘painting’ (actually another of Sasha’s wiping cloths), the imaginative viewer can see a green dinosaur near the bottom, and a volcano erupting red lava.

Cyclops version of a play-dough African mask

Sasha’s latest play-dough creation features a swirling colored vortex for an eye hole, multicolored edge decorations, and, of course, a pedestal base to keep it all upright.

Media: play-dough (5 colors)

Sasha and I are starting a new art project. I’m going to teach him the basics of the Adobe Illustrator drawing program to draw every letter of the alphabet. I think the educational benefits will be numerous:

• he’ll get to practice some elementary computers skills, such as opening applications, saving documents, etc.
• he’ll practice using the mouse to grasp objects, resize windows, and select from pull-down menus
• he’ll learn about typography and fonts (every day we’ll use a different font)
• he’ll be introduced to some more advanced drawing techniques (e.g. shading, shadowing, extruding/beveling, applying filters… the list goes on)
• he’ll get to practice his alphabet in a fun and interactive way while learning some 21st-century art techniques

When we’re done we’ll be able to combine the whole lot into a nice picture suitable for display on our refrigerator!

The letter A

Sasha wanted to start with, appropriately, the letter A. This A is colored orange, is extruded/beveled to give it a 3D appearance, and has a drop shadow that implies overhead lighting. Sasha picked the Comic Sans MS font for his first alphabet creation.

Media: Apple iMac, Adobe Illustrator drawing software

Bird's nest in a bird's nest

The other day, on one of our regular mushroom hunts, Sasha and I found numerous bird’s nest fungi (Latin name: Cyathus striatus) growing on woodchips.  We took some home and ‘hatched’ the idea to create some art using a bird’s nest he had found at his grandparent’s house. The resulting piece is an interesting juxtaposition of elements from nature.

In the close-up below you can clearly see the ‘eggs’, which are actually spore cases called peridioles. When rain hits the cups in the right way, the spores fly out from the force of the impact, and the life cycle of Cyathus striatus is continued.

Close-up of peridioles

We would like to thank the anonymous bird that made this art possible.

Media: bird’s nest, Cyathus striatus

Happy face

Here is Sasha’s latest play-dough creation, which he has titled “Happy face”. He says that it’s his face, and he is happy

Media: play-dough

Crab in Water

Here’s a picture Sasha drew about a month ago, which he titled “Crab in Water”. Mr. Crab lives alone in a big blue sea… upon reflection, Sasha realized that he might be lonely, so he promises to later redraw the picture and include a friend to play with.

Media: paper, markers

The fearsome Aztec double headed serpent, rendered in play-dough

Yesterday for our art project we made playdough double-headed serpents, using the picture below as a model. Apparently, this symbol was used as a ceremonial chest ornament that may have been worn by priests (perhaps while they performed ritual human sacrifice… who knows). Sasha added water to make the serpent more comfortable. It was a good opportunity to introduce Sasha to Aztec culture and art. We plan to make more art inspired by ancient civilizations.

Double headed Aztec serpent

The princess, the dragon, and the castle

This is Sasha’s first blog entry featuring play-dough art. Probably inspired by the Shrek movies, he decided to create a castle (yellow), a blue dragon (fire breathing, of course), and a princess (blue hair, orange body). The orange circles are a walkway around the castle. Each of the orange ‘paving stones’ have been inscribed with the letters X or A, or combinations thereof that resemble runes (an ancient Germanic alphabet, used for writing, divination and magic). 

Media: play-dough

Sasha and some of his family members

This is a picture of some of Sasha’s family. Pictured in the larger house are his daddy, mommy, and little sister. His youngest sister hasn’t been born yet. In the smaller house are his aunt and uncle - he explains that in this picture, his cousins haven’t yet been born (paradox-his cousins are older than him). The houses are situated on a triangular hill with plenty of green grass and plants. On the left side of the hill, the observer will see two trees, one coniferous, the other deciduous. Between the trees are two brown hourglasses - recently, he’s been practicing the hourglass shape frequently. The blue patches above represent the sky, while the patch at the bottom left is water, for Grandpa to go fishing. Sasha also hastens to mention that our house has a chimney, “so Santa can get in”. 

Note that all the humans depicted have Sasha’s characteristic bellybutton dot - I find it interesting that he never forgets to put in this detail while leaving out a number or more rather obvious ones (like arms, hair, noses, feet, etc.).

Media: markers, paper

A picture of a colored rectangle, and some x's and a cube in green.

This picture by Sasha has many shapes and colors. He says that the colorful shape looks partly like a triangle, but also like a rectangle, or even a square. These are some of his favorite shapes.

Media: paper, markers