Today was a rainy day. A lazy rainy day. The height of our adventure was making it out of the house with my friend and my toddler to go to the National Gallery of Ireland workshop as a way of passing the time.
This makes today’s post as best time as any to introduce Hawkeye’s Portfolio. The link is up at the top of the blog. It’s where I plan to start collecting my kid’s artwork. Probably not every single piece of doodling that he ever does, but the bigger pieces. It was an idea that came to me out of the blue and I am curious to assemble it in one place to see how his attempts at creativity and art slowly evolve. At the moment it’s a lot of assisted work or just giant amount of doodling and stickers. Pieces done in creche (or in workshops like this) have a lot of guidance. Today’s workshop was actually a bit too advanced for a two and a half year old. The workshop was based on the artwork The Gleaners by Jules Breton and the older kids were constructing dioramas using the painting as inspiration for the setting.
I decided to not even bother. It was getting close to nap time and Hawkeye wasn’t showing a lot of signs that he was willing to cooperate with a highly complex project. Instead I grabbed some construction paper and other materials, shredded a bunch of crepe and tissue paper, yarn, etc. Stuck glue and double sided tape all over a piece of paper and then encouraged him to start sticking pieces of whatever came to hand in various places around the centrepiece.
To be perfectly honest, Hawkeye was a lot more intent on making a big mess everywhere, but the important thing is that he was enjoying himself while making the mess. In fact, we had trouble convincing him it was time to go home. However, we did get a credible piece of art out of it that even fit perfectly with the theme of the workshop, if not in the same manner as intended. Definitely time well spent. My thanks to the museum staff for their bemused tolerance at the mess we left behind, though I suspect they’re well used to it at this stage.
(Featured photo courtesy of my visiting friend)
The Feathered Rose 