a little artwork

I had been blogging about J's artwork at another location, but have since decided that I'd rather just include it here. Of course, in the meantime, I 'lost' a lot of interesting art work while waiting to find time to post it. But in any case, now that I'm committed to putting it here instead, maybe I'll be better about getting it up! Need to be selective, though, the boy is always working on SOMETHING.

His long-standing favorite medium is his Magnadoodle -- I think he finds the writing implement comfortable to hold because it's chunky, and it doesn't require a lot of pressure to produce a nice, strong line. He also likes how rapidly he can create, erase, and create again with it (in fact, it's hard to get pictures of it sometimes, he erases things almost as soon as he draws them, and I've missed a lot of really cool stuff I'd love to have documented). He still uses it quite a bit, although he's starting to explore other forms of making art as well. But to start with, I'll post a few of his recent Magnadoodle creations. Here's a pig.

This is a wanted poster for a jewel theif. I like that he pointed out where the guy's head, chest, hand, and legs are, in case there was any trouble recognizing them. Oh, and the jewel too. That's a very important feature to look for when trying to catch a jewel theif.

This is a good example of J's use of multi-media to tell a story. He's pretty big into art productions (as opposed to art that just sits there). In this production, he tells a story about a guy (the white square, which is a folded piece of paper) who climbs up Jacob's Ladder (the Jacob's Ladder toy). The guy falls off a few times, but he finally gets to the place he's going to in the sky (delineated by the line on the magnadoodle). Very loosely based on the bible story, which was very loosely told to him by me when he was wondering why the toy was called "Jacob's Ladder". (Not being Christian myself, my take on the bible isn't always particularly accurate, I try to leave that sort of thing up to my Catholic Mom, but in a pinch I can usually pull out a shaky story or two, in this case with help from Wikipedia!)

As I mentioned above, J's begun experimenting with other art media as well. He's on a real paper-folding kick as of late, so we've had paper fans cooling us and paper airplanes cruising around. There's also been lots of cutting and taping lately, tho danged if I could find any of the creations to include in this collage. He's also been making "science charts" for recording observations and experiment outcomes -- I have NO IDEA where any of that is coming from, by the way, but it sure is interesting to watch. The other day he was experimenting with ramps and marbles, and came to find me triumphantly at one point claiming "I came up with a solution for my what-goes-up-must-come-down problem!" (Your guess is as good as mine on that....) He then showed me that a marble rolls DOWN a ramp, but not back UP again. Good discovery! Gravity is always fun to play with, even if he's never heard the word gravity. I didn't have my camera for the gravity experiments, but I did toss in this morning's chart in the above photo -- he was recording (by drawing a picture of it in one of the squares he drew on his grid) everything that he saw that jumps. He drew a picture of his cat (Linus, also in the photo because he's never far from J), his brother, himself, a few of his toys that he can "make" jump (including the Zoob Dude he built in this picture), and an eye and a heart. I ask him about those last two, trying to figure out for myself how they jump. He said that his eye lid goes up and down (opens and closes) just like jumping, and that his heart feels like it jumps in his chest. Ok then.

And one final shot from this morning -- my performing artist. I bought him a keyboard on sale this summer, and he's been learning to play it ever since. And play he does. He can already pick out dozens of songs on it, which doesn't really surprise me since he can do the same thing on his xylophone, his steel drum, and his ocarina. One note at a time, of course, I'm not laying claims to him as a musical prodigy of any sort! But he sure seems to have an affinity for music, so I want to provide him as much opportunity to explore as he needs.