It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.
— Pablo Picasso
I’m pretty sure I heard that on Jeopardy recently, and I can’t believe I hadn’t heard it before. Or maybe I had, but it hadn’t resonated with me the way it did last week, because as I have been painting with my nephew Lyle lately (who turns 4 this week), I’ve been learning how to think less and just follow an idea. There is much to be learned by watching a kid just fire stuff off.
Last week when I was visiting, I brought another set of watercolors. We have a routine now where we work on a piece together. (He insists upon it.) We knocked out a bunch of butterflies and moths like this one:
Water was spilled. We had a giant wet piece of newspaper we were working on, then Lyle got inspired to run his wet hand across the watercolor set and went berserk making this piece while I watched in horror (for the watercolor set), then fascination.
I had to restrain myself from just immediately trying to reign him in, but I did try to explain that the watercolors would probably all be tinted with black from now on. However, I ran a quick mono print on the set to reclaim it a little. Then we did seven more of these.
