Two Knights Practicing

A won a blue ribbon at the fair for his painting.

He seemed surprised.  

Post 2011 Birthday Report

We made a giant Seal of the President of the United States so we could play Pin the Eagle on the Seal.

The guests colored their own eagles. There were lots of variations; the most memorable eagle was bright green and the most memorable shield had a pirate skull and crossbones on it.


We made a poster of Mount Rushmore. Originally, it was going to be mounted onto a cardboard box so kids could stick their heads through and have photo opportunities. It sort of didn't happen that way.

 President Lincoln didn't come out well, and we were at the eleventh hour on this project.

And then there was the cake.  The 2007 cake was a train.  The 2008 cake was a pirate ship.  The 2009 cake was chocolate cupcakes and a chocolate anvil cake as the Sword in the Stone.  Last year's Monopoly Extravaganza featured a catered ice-cream cake.


 

J had told A that he would make a White House cake.  This required carefully measuring out the ratios in the actual building and taking a tape measure to the store to get the right marshmallows.  And trimming out round parts with saucepans. 


 

The pillars were marshmallows on toothpicks. The collumns were the most coveted part of the cake during the party.... because... well, J got a little carried away with late-night baking and there was probably a timer-set problem and not all of the cake went in at the same time and... so... some of the cake was a little over-done.


The pound cake held together fairly well.   Thank goodness for toothpicks.

And then there was the icing.  It was an orange sugar-icing.  It should have been a butter icing.  It made the cake resemble the Casa Rosada more than the White House.   No pictures to protect the guilty.


Grandpa was a Very Good Sport, rented a costume, and came as George Washington.

Grandma came as herself.

J dressed as a Secret Service Man and "scanned" the guests as they arrived with his camera.

The guests came as presidents, with two pirate exceptions.





M shaved his moustache, kept his beard, and was the best dressed Abraham Lincoln there (and there was some pretty fierce competition).

In addition to pin the Eagle on the Seal, we played Pirates and Presidents (a variation of Cranes and Crows), and Elections (they had to pop balloons for the electoral votes inside).  The games went fast, so we added on a few rounds of Dragon's Tail (form a conga line, the front has to grab a hanky out of the tail's back pocket).




"Uh, what did that recipe say again?"

Field Day at School

Guess who was waiting at school after today's field day?

Stamp of Approval ?

We're back and we've unpacked and now it's time to write Thank You Notes.

Given that A has some pretty creative ideas about letter placement, J thought it would easier to make Thank You Notes if we used a stamp pad. So, after gluing some letters to a block, we now have a our very own stamp which reads "hank you," only as a mirror image.

Today's attempt at creating actual Thank You Letterhead featured some water color paints. J had a vague notion that A could use globs of colored paint to make individualized stamped Thank Yous. But. A) the paint was too globby and got all over the stamp, B) we didn't have an inking brayer, and C) A thought it would be best to paint the home-made stamp with hues of red and blue.

On to take two....

Birthday Workshop

After many nights' toil, filled with stenciling, cutting, painting, magic-markering, and coloring, we finally managed to finish off one aspect of the upcoming Monopoly Birthday Extravaganza.

















There's still the table and tarp, rulers and T-squares to be put away.







M gave all the properties a final spray of fixative. J wants everyone to know that he was having some interesting dreams and would wake up to the scent of magic marker while M, who had arisen Very Early, was putting finishing touches on things.







M laid out the finished squares and A dressed up (again!) as Mr. Moneybags so we could get an idea about how large this whole thing would be. Then we sent it off via the Postal Service to Grandma M's for birthday fun later.






A helped out.

















So far I haven't seen anyone's costume suggestions, but there's some rumors going around about "Community Chest."

Subversive Art

Scene: The Library Children's Catalog Terminal

A: (clicking on Yet Another Arthur the Aardvark DVD) "I want to get this one."

J: "Hey, bud; I just spoke with the librarians, (A navigates to another DVD in his search results) and they told me that there's a limit to the number of holds (A clicks on the "PLACE HOLD" button again) you can place. It's thirty. And you're about to hit it."

A silently makes another hold request.

Terminal: "Unable to process your hold request: You have reached the limit of items you can have on hold."

J: "See, A; it says you can't make any more holds."

A: "I want all the library shelves to be EMPTY! Mwha-ha-ha-ha HA!"




Scene: The Library in the 700-stacks.

J: "Hey, A; here's a Really Big Book on Michelangelo. Wanna get it?"

A: "Sure. Hey, look! How come there's pictures of people's penises?!"

J: "Back then there wasn't such a big taboo on penises." (starts the Long Walk toward the circulation desk.)

A: "And butts!"

J: "Yeah, well -" (glancing around at other patrons in the stacks)

A: "Penises and butts!"

J: "Um, A..." (trying not to laugh too much)

A: Penises! And Butts!"

J: "A, you can't shout taboo words in the Library."

Spring Industry

A wanted me to cut him a nib in his feather from Washington so he could write with it. The red stuff on his face is paint, and he is not writing something down with blood from facial wounds.







M couldn't believe that I actually got A a real child's hand saw. But A really wanted it. We had a discussion about what would happen if A used the saw as a sword, or sliced a beloved tree, or...

Art and Space

Well... the fallout from Space Chimps is still falling. A seems a little anxious about NASA probes, since a space probe with multiple arms played a major roll in the freeze-dipping sequences. I've tried showing him a picture of Sojourner on Mars; it doesn't have little claws, so that helps.

In the art department, A has wanted to paint (it might have something to do with our painting the house...)

This painting was done a the other day. I managed to get the painting process on video (posting soon). A was singing as he was painting, and between A changing some of the words and me being a little focused on videography, I didn't quite realize until the third chorus that he was singing "Joy to the World."

Then I looked at his picture. It's a representation of the "Joy to the World" sequence from Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas, which A watches on a semi-regular basis.

I don't know what put him in the Christmas spirit.

This one was done today. I'll see if I can get A to say anything about it.

M saw the video of the "Joy to the World" painting and says I sound like either Judy Garland with Liza Minnelli or Ethel Merman as Momma Rose.

I was extolling the child to paint on the paper and not on his hand. Sheesh.

This one reminds me of a preying mantis. By this time, A was in a silly mood, telling me to clean up the paints, and then insisting that he wanted to paint some more. I was a little cross with him, as he had started painting on his art smock (one of my old T-shirts) which I had told him not to do.

At least that exchange wasn't on video.

Art and Mediums

A wanted to print this out, but I convinced him to put it on the blog instead.

In non-art news, A and I were eating the other day, and I admonished him to finish his food.  "That's Pinky's," he said.

"Who's Pinky?" I asked.  

"Pinky Gilbertson," said A.  

"Oh," I said, wondering if this was the first appearance of an imaginary playmate, and if Pinky Gilbertson would be blamed for a variety of misdemeanors.  "And who is Pinky Gilbertson?"

"Pinky Gilbertson lives over there," said A, pointing to the southeast end of the block.  "He's an old guy in his house for the longest time.   And then I died."

The meal was taking a Nostradamusian turn, and like parents everywhere who are suddenly taken to the Twilight Zone by their children, I simply nodded and said, "Oh."  

Yes; I Googled "Pinky Gilbertson."  No; I didn't find any such person listed -- or "Pinkie Gilbertson" for that matter.  I think that pinky might come from discussions about the anatomy of Dr. Seuss  characters' hands.  I'm guessing that "Gilbertson" might be a garbling of "Gilbert and Sullivan."   And A is figuring out what being dead means -- the other day he told my dad that he was going to die so he could bring Sierra (the no longer living family German shepherd) back.  I swear someday that kid is going to make my dad break down in tears.

By this time M had joined us, and A announced that he was going to get a big jack hammer so he could dig a really deep hole and then he was going to get into the hole and die.  When M explained to him that dead people don't get chocolate or to watch cartoons,  A changed his plans;  once the meal was over, we walked to the store for milk, bananas and chocolate.

Now there's a prescription for you.

Pirate Art Happening.

A was painting outside. He likes the spray bottles filled with red and blue paint (I suspect for the spraying activity more than for the application of paint). He had painted two canvasses and was ready to start on a third. By this time he had several paint brushes and the spray bottles. It was a red day, mostly because A likes red (with a little bit of yellow thrown in).

He used a small brush and drew an orange-red triangluar shape with a few other triangular shapes on top. "I made a pirate boat," he said.

"Oh, yeah," I said. "I can see the sails, and I think I see a bit where the boat is reflecting in the water."

A drew a line along the top in red. "This is the mast," he said. Then he grabbed a larger brush and began to paint in a very thick line. "I'm making the mast," he said, adding more and more paint to make a very thick, red line. "Why did their mast break?" he asked (a reference to "How I Became a Pirate" -- a story where a modern boy joins some 1800s pirates and a lightning struck mast causes them to return to the boy's house).

"Did you want to use the spray bottles?" I asked, thinking that if he used the blue bottle he could have an ocean. Instead he grabbed the red. "I'm erasing the mast," he said, spraying a wash of red paint over the entire canvass (a referece to using a MacPaint spray can to paint over shapes with their filled-in color). "Why did they have to turn back?" I tried to hand him a blue spray bottle, and followed M's advice that I just step back and let A do what he wanted.

A finished painting. I turned on the garden hose and announced that it was time to spray off all the paint (especially the red paint caked onto A's armpit -- probably where he stuffed the paint brush under his arm). There was about ten minutes of spray play.

And then A got a hold of the garden hose.

He advanced on the canvas, where the thick masted pirate ship was drying. "Why did the lightning make the mast crack?" he asked, and then started to spray the painting.

"A-- oh, never mind." I retreated to the kitchen for some chocolate. There were some more comments about storms as the water washed away the red wash previously sprayed on. The water blasted away layer after layer of paint, revealing the thick mast, then the mast itself dissolved. "Why did the mast break?"

By this time I was inside watching through the windows as chocolate and mint helped assage my artistic sensiblities. "Hey honey," I said to M, "Our son is busily channeling his inner ocean storm and washing off the painting of the pirate ship."

"Those conceptual artists," he said.

I looked out of the window again. "Now he's tearing up the canvass and. . . he's burying it." A by this time had a shovel in his hands.

"It's an art happening. It's not about the end product, it's all about the process. Are you videoing this?"

"Mmmm. No." I said and went outside to photograph the buring processes (and clean up bits of mushy paper clinging to the to the fence).

---

"But I don't like to take a bath," A said.

"Oohh," I said one of those inscrutible father smiles. "Well, when you chose to paint yourself, you also chose for me to give you a bath to take off the paint."

Birds

One of the computer games in our house is to fill up a page with outlines of circles, squares and other polygons so A can use the paint bucket tool to fill them with different colors.   As you can see, the paint tool changed a few times.

A wanted to print this out, but I convinced him that posting it to the blog was just as good (with the bonus that Grandparents would be able to see it).

"I think it's a picture of birds," says A.  

"What kind of birds?" I ask.

"A 'Hadicock'."

Negative Space

M likes the use of negative space in this, and thinks it looks like a logo of some sort.  I was surprised when A said he was done.  But he was sure.  

This painting was an experiment in using paint rules -- I told A he could use a smaller brush, but the rule was that it could only paint blue.  He could use the larger brush in any way he wanted.  

A forgot about the rules pretty quickly, and I didn't press it.  

Pirate Bird

A says this painting is a bird, "Cock-a-doodle-doo!"  He also says "it looks like a pirate to me... he has a board and he's doing this [makes a face and says "Aarrrgh!"]

I *think* the board A is talking about is the picture itself.  

Further attempts to elicit a response by asking, "What would you like Grandma M to know about this painting?" garnered the reply, "I'd like her to tape it up to her refrigerator like a poster...  I'm going to roll it up and put a rubber-band on it so the picture can be nice and fresh."

A started out painting the lower portion of the painting with the arcs (which look like yellow bird feet to me) with the announcement that he was painting a pirate boat, and a request for me to make a pirate boat for him.    This was followed by the [fairly typical question] "How do the guys in Bahia (A's name for a short from the Disney collection "Saludos Amigos") go like this?" followed by aggressive applications of paint (probably in the hope that his paint and brush will be like the magic paintbrush in the cartoon which creates tropical flora and fauna with a few flicks).  

Number Four

M likes this one of the paintings the best of all.

I like how the bottom part looks like a mountain.  

A said that he was drawing a circle when he made the reddish triangular bits.  

Flower Head

This is the third in a series.  

The "percussion method" of painting prevailed here.  I really wondered if A still wanted to paint, as he kept getting distracted by a neon-orange traffic cone next to his easel.  

When I asked him about this picture, A said it was about the letter "H" (or maybe "h").  

Originally, I thought the painting was about a flower, but now that I look at it, I'm seeing a three-quarters turned head with a wide-opened mouth (the bowl of the "h") -- and it looks like there are fireworks going on inside the head.  

Considering all the pirate flags A's been seeing around lately, I'm not too surprised that he'd draw a colorful skull shape.

Pirate Boat Mouth

This is the second in this week's series.  

A first painted the red shape near the bottom.  When I asked him to tell me about it, he said that it was a pirate's boat.  He then added a vertical stroke and said it was the mast.   Then things kind of got out of hand as he started -- as far as I could tell -- to pretend that he was a drummer with a drum and drumstick instead of a canvass and paintbrush.  Luckily, most of the paint landed on the canvas.  

Once the "painting" had finished, I asked him to tell me about the painting some more.  He said that it was a face.  

Blue Supper

A painted this last Monday.  

I think it looks like a Last Supper reflected in a pond.  Although, it also looks like a preying mantis or possibly a dragon.   M thought the painting was "new-fangled nonsense; but then it grew on me.  I think I felt the power of the Last Supper rise up through the painting."

A says this painting is "red and blue... I squished it on.  It felt good to squish it."

  

A tried to use water to "erase" the paint -- or at least he said that he wanted to try... but once the painting process started, he forgot and dipped the paintbrush into all three of the paint pots.  It probably didn't help that I'd reconstituted the previously used paints with slightly too much water.  

Gods and Monsters

A painted this the other week.  It's been hanging in the kitchen.

M and I agree that it has a "Night on Bald Mountain" feel to it.  A hasn't seen that particular Disney cartoon (yet).   I wish I knew what was going on in hi

s head when he paints -- when I ask him to tell me about the painting I get 35-month-year-old answers that are difficult for me to parse (along the lines of '...it's a kind of flower that you stick in the ground,' -- his 

favorite answer lately).

I let him use three colors right away.  His response was to dip the paintbrush into all three cups and then apply them to the paper.   He painted the circles first (I think), then the straight lines along the right-hand side of the paper.  The last part were the "dots" along the bottom.  Then he looked at me and said, "Can I have another piece of paper."  

The next piece wasn't quite so dense.  M looked at it once it was up and said that it looked like some kind of "eye of the Earth-mother snake goddess."  It reminds me of a psychological test where you have to look at an ambiguous figure and decide if it is a rabbit or a duck.  But I can see the eye.  M said that there was a womb in this one, too.  I see a quail as well.  

After two paintings, A said he was done -- so we put away the art supplies.  He's been wanting to do more painting, but always just before dinner or bed-time; but M says that they'll try some more art over the weekend.  

Nautical Art

A says this painting is very good.  It reminds him of the Pirates of Penzance (mostly because it he wants it to be a picture of a pirate).   

A adds that the picture might be "The Vikings of Penzance."  

I think it looks a little like a fish.  But maybe it's a shark feeding frenzy. 

Painting

A's been in an art class.  So far painting has been the most enthusiastic project -- at least he learned that red and blue make purple.  I think this is my favorite picture he's painted.