I was swamped last month with projects and didn't have time to post anything. I am excited to say that I have completed two oil paintings since the last time I posted. Oil painting is a new thing for me, so I am proud of myself for being so ambitious.
One of the paintings was for a project at school and the other is for my church, however, when I started painting it today, I didn't know what it was for. I am happy to say that I received an A on the one at school and am hoping that church will accept my piece for display. We are having a series called "God Is __________" and each week we will fill in the blank. The painting I did was for the week "God Is Creator."
This is how it all started: I was babysitting this morning and needless to say, the little man was not having any of my ideas of "fun." I decided that in order for the little munchkin to calm down and stop bouncing off the walls - going outside would be a good idea. For there are no walls outside for children to bounce off of. So, a walk around the neighborhood it was. After a half hour of walking, he started asking me about a giant rubber ball that is in the garage along with my brother's motorcycle and an assortment of other manly interests. It was time to go back home. When we returned, he saw the box of crayons I had set out an hour earlier in attempts to distract him for the infamous outlet that he thinks is cute to try and tamper with. I asked him if he wanted to color and he grinned and screamed (literally) "YES!" I had made a commitment to myself to create a painting every 1-2 weeks over the summer. Painting inside with a two year old is not advised, so I opted for the outdoors again. In the late morning chilliness, I started to carry arm loads of painting supplies outside along with a folding chair and a table. Little Jackson traipsed after me carrying handfuls of crayons and boxes of pencils...saying "Jackson gonna kuh-wer wif Wibby." I brought some rubber balls for him to play with and sadly, those were vehemently rejected. Between 8:00 and 10:00, he had already been in time-out 5 times. His enthusiastic rejection (accompanied by a couple mischievous infractions of rules about climbing on grown-up bikes) ended with his bottom on the seat of a lawn chair and his head hung. He needed his space.
I started painting over an acrylic painting that I had attempted to create for a friend over the last month. I hated every stroke of that painting and I wanted to do something useful with the canvas. I didn't have a plan when I started swiping a brown color that I mixed in my palette. I just painted. I was frustrated about 10 minutes in because I still had no idea what I was painting. Over the next two hours, everything started coming together and I realized that this was something that I could submit to church. It's funny how creativity works. You can't plan it. It just happens.
I decided that I needed to let the oil dry a little before splattering white paint for stars over it, so I brought Jack in for lunch. He was in rare form today and was unusually frustrated with my rules. He had visited "the chair" 3 times since being outside and had even placed himself there once on his own after I called to him to stop trying to climb on the bikes for the 106th time.
Lunch for Jack was an egg, two pieces of cinnamon toast, a piece of banana bread, a cup of juice, and most of a cup of milk. That boy can pack it in. I was tidying up the kitchen when I looked over at him and his head was swaying and his eyes drooping with exhaustion. His nap came quickly after that and he (literally) went down without a peep. He really is a good boy.
Here are the pictures of the two oil paintings. :)
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