{Art Together} Looking Closely

I was very excited when Amy announced a few weeks ago she was going to begin a new series, {Art Together}. 

Ree loves to craft, & draw, & color. Recently she's been asking me to draw with her. I kept saying no because "I don't know how to draw." As I got thinking about it, I probably shouldn't use that phrase with her. I don't want HER to think that she can't do it, or down the road if there is something that she wants to do but doesn't think she's "good enough" at that, she shouldn't do it.

And then Amy posted about her plans & it was like she was in my head telling me that even if I think I can't draw, I CAN still do "art". And what better way to teach Ree how to do it then by doing it with her. We are a week behind Amy's prompts.  

I’ve come to think that the true value in drawing isn’t the image itself, it’s that a drawing practice teaches you to really look at something....the sketch on the paper is only a small part of what you’re doing. The first part of drawing is looking—looking closely.

The above photo is from the Looking Closely prompt. The idea was to sit with a living thing & look at it & draw what you see. We began by talking about the color; what the flower was; Ree noticed that it was in a glass & that it wasn't open all the way yet. Then we got drawing.

Ree decided to draw it in pieces. She drew many petals (and some very good circles too!) Then she drew the stem. The lower picture is her take of the flower "put together". She wanted to put a little color on it but then decided she was done. I tried to draw what I saw. My favorite part was the coloring in! 

For right now we are doing our drawings on printer paper. I plan to put them all together in a binder. At the bottom of each paper I put the date we worked on them & what the prompt was.

I am looking forward to this spring, getting outside with a pencil, paper & a clipboard to sketch what we see. Not only will this help me draw with Ree, but I'm hoping it will help us both look closer at the world around us!

I'm really excited to get to the prompt from this past week, scribbling. Now THAT I'm not afraid to do!