Samantha, the artist

You know how children love to waste paper create things? What do you actually do with the scribbles adorable drawings? Well mostly throw them away put them in a nice scrapbook, of course, or on a blog for all to admire.

Coloring: Samantha has greatly improved in her coloring. She now attempts to color specific parts of the picture different colors (instead of coloring the entire page with a single crayon with no regard to what is actually ON the page)

Here’s Dora. Dora’s hair and eyes are brown, face is black, clothes are purple and Boots and the basket are pink.

I often have to find coloring pages online for her to color. She tells me very specifically which character she’d like to color. I now have a file on the computer to save such pictures so I don’t always have to go looking.

Drawing: She now tells you what she has drawn. She drew this picture while Grandma Smith was watching her when Clara was born.

She hasn’t told me who these people are, but she’s drawing people more frequently now. She drew this on Wednesday before her nap. I love the legs coming out of the head stage of art.

Painting: Unbeknownst to me, Grandma Smith introduced Samantha to painting at her house. And whenever we’d go over Samantha would say she wanted to paint and point to where the paints were (even if they had been moved, she remembered where they had been moved to the previous visit). While we were working on the drainage system, Samantha went over to Grandma Smith’s one day so she wouldn’t be in the way be so helpful. My mom went over to pick her up a few hours later and the only way to get her out of the house was to promise they’d buy paint on the way home. Lovely.

Samantha is actually the perfect child to have paints in the house though. She hates “making messes”, having her “hands dirty”, is generally very neat and tidy and I’ve never had to tell her that you color/paint only on paper, perhaps it’s one of her OCD traits (like buckles be clicked and doors being shut… and beds being made)

Her painting has transformed in the past few months too. She started with the typical mass of colors… colors on top of colors… and drenching through water color paper. Now she does specific lines, and even paints people (usually she calls it “Dora”)

Samantha’s “Rainbow”… pretty dreary rainbow

One of her first faces named, “Dora”

One of her people she painted yesterday.
complete with body legs.

Oh, and for whatever reason. After drawing/coloring/painting, Samantha feels the need to ROLL UP her drawing, and then fold it. I don’t get it.