More painting with Lyle

by | Sep 23, 2015 | Kid art, Watercolor

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:

lyle-moth-wc

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.

handprint

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.

watercolor mono print

Collaboration with Lyle

by | Aug 28, 2015 | Collaborative Art Project, Kid art

Les & Lyle

It’s been a collaborative summer all in all, and this little piece is a result of watercoloring with my almost 4-year old nephew Lyle. While on vacation in Maine, Lyle and I did a lot of watercoloring together, and what can I say, I just particularly like this piece.

Lyle’s contribution is the blue – he primarily works in blue – which I think is the most exciting part of the composition.

The biggest challenge was trying to drill home the idea that you want to wash your brush before switching to another color, unless you want mud. “I like mud!” he would defiantly proclaim. But I got him to come around after a while. The kid shows promise.