Messy Monday--an artsy kinda day

On Sunday, Logan "asked" if he could paint.  "Paint" by the way is one of his new words that he can say.  We hadn't painted in a couple of weeks, and I was surprised (sort of) that he wanted to paint.  Recently, he has been known to be able to sit and color with his new crayons.  This is something that impressed me because up until about a week and a half ago, Logan would only throw the crayons, thus breaking them and leaving them to become tasty treats for Chico.  (Go ahead...ask me how I know Chico likes to eat the crayons.  I dare you.)

Anyway,  here is the painting Logan did on Sunday.

Finger Paints #4, Logan Barnett, 6/26/2011, crayola gel paint, 8.5"X11"

Today, Logan was bored and again "asked" me to paint.  He loves to wear his red apron.  He goes over to where it is hung and points to it.  It is rather cute, if I do say so myself.  He insisted that we paint to day, so I went to the closet and got out the paint for him.  I put down some new paper, but he instead decided he wanted to "re-purpose" one of his previous crayon masterpieces.  Hey--I'm an artist, I'm not going to stop him from re-purposing his work and re-using.

He started to finger paint as usual, but I could see he was getting frustrated that he just couldn't put down enough paint using his tiny, but cute and tasty, little Logan fingers.  So, I asked if he wanted to use a brush (one came free with the gel paints).  He looked at me and smiled and said "brush?"  I gave him the brush and showed him how to dip it in the paint.  He loved it.  He was able to put more paint on the paper and was able to move it around better.

After a while, he started to "clean" the brush with the wipes I had for his fingers.  He also then tried another method of painting--the wet wipe method.  The "wet wipe method" is where you smoosh the wipe into the paint, then press the wipe to the paper.  How clever my little boy is.

It was all very exciting--for both of us.  I just love to see his artistic side grow--I'm a little biased that way being an artist/art teacher.

This is my paintbrush.

Here I am adding some more blue.

Holding my breath makes me more artistic.

Notice the way the budding artist carefully holds his brush.

This brush is muddy--it needs to be cleaned.

Not clean yet.  More wiping will do the trick.

My masterpiece is crying out for some purple now.

Let me just clean it once more.

Step one of the "wet wipe method"--smoosh wipe in paint.

Logan's patented "wet wipe method".

 Here is the masterpiece Logan created today.

Flying Bird, Logan Barnett, 6/27/2011, crayola gel paint, crayon, 8.5"X11"