Artist-in-Training

Blogroll Me!

Here, people, is the recreated post from yesterday afternoon, the one that vanished into the blogosphere, headed for parts unknown. Perhaps it is not as eloquent as the original was -- I warned in an earlier post that it was a cheap knockoff!

I have three lovely children, thank G-d, but I do not like to talk about them too much. No, it doesn't have to do with "ayin harah" but it has everything to do with not liking to brag...about anything! Once in a while, I offer up some story of an antic or some witticism spoken by one of the three -- people, as evidenced, always appreciate a good story about a child -- but generally I don't. Yes, I'll praise them to their faces, or even to their teachers and grandparents, but I'm not interested to sit and compare notes with friends/strangers/sisters-in-law about the trio's accomplishments.

But I will dedicate this post to my seven-year-old daughter. For the most part she is a lovely child, a delicate and fine child. But sometimes we've considered changing her name to REVA because of her desire to be argumentative and feisty. I didn't know that PMS can kick in at his young age! Poopoopoo, she is a pretty little girl with crystalline-blue eyes that draw people in (when she was an infant and just a few weeks old, a male friend warned us to sign her up for a life in a convent: that's how attractive her eyes are), and with her smattering of faint freckles across the bridge of her nose, there's a wholesome, natural look to her. Perhaps there's a Ralph Lauren print ad in her future...? Any agents out there?

This child has more fine art talent in her little finger than I have in my whole hand. What a pleasure it's been to watch her artistic renderings develop over time. I used to watch her progress in kindergarten from the beginning of one week until the end of the week. At the week's onset, she'd be drawing stick figures. By week's end, those stick figures were lucky to have detailed additions to their "wardrobes" and "facial features"!


It's the details that are astounding...and upon first examining her "portfolio"--read: countless of scrap papers lying all over the house -- one does not see the details. But look a little longer, and you're amazed at what's she's depicted.

A couple of examples:

Two weeks ago, she was at the kitchen table drawing a ballerina, and I was at the sink washing dishes. She began to talk to me about ballet slippers and I listened with half an ear as she continued to talk and draw. The next morning, when I looked down at the picture that had been abandoned on the table, I indeed could see a beautiful ballerina there, and my daughter had also drawn ballet slippers...but not just any kind of plain, flat ballet slippers. She drew Giselle-like ballet slippers with ribbons running up and around the legs.

A few weeks before that, I told her to make a picture for someone at work, a designer from the art department. All I told her was that he has two teenage daughters. She chose to do a pen-and-ink "tchikchuk" (Hebrew for "extremely quickly"), and I thanked her for it and told her I'd give it to the designer the next day. I had it on the seat next to me in the car and when I finally parked and moved to get out of the car, I looked closely at the drawing. She'd drawn a baseball cap on the designer, a bikini on his wife, one-piece bathing suits on his daughters and in between each of them was a surfboard, stuck in sand, with the ocean waves behind them. All this in pen-and-ink.

Granted, her drawing and love for drawing works for and against her. While she should be doing homework, she's doing portraits of the family and displays them in her gallery: on the refrigerator door. When I tell her to stop drawing and start doing schoolwork, she pacifies me, "Mummy, it's a picture of you!"

And when she hands me these pictures, I'm most flattered. I've got on very funky clothing (I don't even own any funky clothes). I have great hairstyles, and pouty lips, which are always smiling. I have long and beautiful Maybelline-like eyelashes. But best of all, I'm skinny!!!

I do hope that this daughter of mine will continue to grow in and develop her artistic abilities for many years to come. After all, I could stand to have countless more of those "I'm skinny" portraits hanging in my gallery!