I can Draw Animals

I have always been amazed at my grandmothers ability to paint.  It is something I never took an interest in when I was young and I wish I had.  During her last visit I asked her if she would spend some time with Jax teaching him some basic techniques using the book I can Draw Animals.  Jaxon has always had an interest in art.  Having the opportunity to observe them working together make me wish I could freeze this moment in time.  It's a moment we take for granted when we are young and as adults we all wish we could have captured more of these moments.

Jaxs chose to draw a lizard which he felt represented his relationship with his great grandmother.  During our visits to her house she has gecko's living wild in her house.  Jaxon has always loved watching them climb the walls.  

We spread out the lesson over a duration of three days.  On the second day she taught him what a background was and they painted their backgrounds.  

The last day they painted their geckos.   

While painting their Gecko's Jaxon completely fell apart crying that his painting was not how he expected it to look and it was not good enough.  Now came a greater lesson to be learned,  art is personal.  It is only what you see through our own eyes that matters. "To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong."  (Joseph Chilton Pearce)  One of the hardest lessons in life is to be happiest with ourselves and to let go of others judgements upon us as individuals.

Who is Monet?

When we discovered Monet's early years was going to be on exhibit at the Legion of honor, we decided to take full advantage of the learning experience.  We discovered, discussed, and expressed our understanding of Impressionism and Claude Monet.  Below I listed a couple of the books that helped us through this process.

 Getting to know the World's greatest Artists: Claude Monet

Linnea in Monet's Garden

After reading our books and discussing we began exploring the technique of impressionism.  Jaxon and his good friend Roro (AKA Rose) my fellow helper in educational fun and all things artsy, sat down and painted their own individual representations of a impressionist style paintings.

We arrived at the Legion of Honor with excitement, this would be Jaxon's first audio tour of any type.

After we finished Monet the early years we set out to find Monet's water lilies located in the main exhibit hall.

The next day we headed to Young Art Lessons at our local mall.  Young Art offers drop off lessons for children on any subject or just art in general.  They were able to teach him how to paint with the techniques of Claude Monet's Impressionism.

Jax's enjoyed the entire lesson and I was quite impressed with the painting that he created during his one hour lesson.