art update

I feel like I've fallen behind a bit with posting J's artwork, with all the pretty autumn leaves and whatnot that I've been posting about lately. So here's a chance to make up for that.

Unfortunately, I can't remember what he said about some of these drawings when he did them, so I'll just let them speak for themselves. I believe this first one is a self-portrait of himself if he were an alligator.

I really wish I could remember what he said about this one. I know that the thing in the circle is a dog, and that all those lines mean something (things the dog liked to do? Or things the dog was going to be trained to do? something along those lines I believe). I totally have no clue about the triangle towers though. (This is why I really should blog his artwork in a more timely manner!!)

This one I remember! And I'll talk about it more in my next post on writing as well. This is the letter S, hidden in a picture of a snail. (Ok, so it's not all THAT hidden, but just wait for the writing post to see a letter that really IS hidden.) This is something he saw in passing in a book at the library (we didn't check the book out, by the way, he just browsed it during the few minutes we were there). But Mr. Photographic Memory remembered all the hidden letters and set forth to drawing the entire alphabet this way one morning.

A picture of a pig, and a depiction of the ancient Chinese character that means "pig". He learned the character from one of our Family Story Time books last week, In the Leaves by Huy Voun Lee. I find the format he used -- the drawing on one side and the symbol on the other, divided by a line -- interesting. Not sure where he got that idea (certainly not from that story book), but he used that same format when drawing other Chinese characters over the last two weeks as well.

I hate to leave Zoo Boy out of these posts, but as you can see by his form in this photo, his artistic skills (and interest) are still in the micro-developmental stages. This is something we're going to work on actively with him this coming winter (his fine-motor and pre-writing skills, as well as transfering J's artwork to more traditional media), and I'll blog about what we do as we do it. Right now it's still much too nice outdoors to spend any excess time indoors working on pencil grip and seated art activities, when we can be out enjoying the wonderful fall weather and working on the equally important gross-motor development!