Still life with child

A small boy in this house is very excited about having his artwork featured on Mummy's blog. He is learning about Picasso and Cezanne at school. I'm impressed!

His project homework for this half term is to create and paint a still life. I pulled up some pics on google to show him some examples of their work and he was all ... “yeah Mummy, I know all these paintings, I’ve seen them at school” – how very cultured he is!!

Last half term we had to make a pair of shoes for a fairytale character… they don’t make it easy these teachers do they? But at least it’s fun, and one thing we are not short of in this house is art supplies!

I, naturally, had great fun becoming 'art teacher' this week. First we selected some items for our assemblage. Our googling had revealed that artists in the 'olden days' liked a lot of fruit, flowers and wine... Clearly they enjoyed painting while under the influence!

My Mother's Day daffodils fitted the bill perfectly, so they went in. Next I attempted a little lesson in proportion which he sucked up. I taught him to look at the size of items in relation to both each other and the picture as a whole. We had a practice sketch... then another...

There's always a fine line to draw (excuse the pun) with correcting mistakes and encouraging a bit of free creativity. I resisted the urge to grab the pencil but I did convince him to rub out an overly small orange and to give his bananas a bit of bend so they looked less like sausages. When it comes down to it though, this is his art and I want him to be as creative as he likes.

What's interesting though is trying to teach them to really look. Notice how all of his items sit independently on the page - though in reality they all overlapped each other. The young brain is seeing them all individually rather than one composition. We do a lot of painting but normally he colours in a picture or paints without instruction. This was a fun exercise for us both.

Panic this morning when we arrived at school only to discover that it was mufti day for Sport Relief. Was mine the only child wearing his school uniform? Eek, a quick dash home and collection of Scooby-Doo trousers and Ben 10 T-shirt and all was saved.

Acrylics on watercolour paper (he got to use Mummy's posh stuff as it was a special project!).