Sunday Sketch: Twins in the Mirror

Last week I took M and E to the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. Most of the museum is for kids a bit older, but we went to the nursery area, which was fabulous and more than enough. When I got them out of the stroller they screeched with delight, immediately pulling up on a wood barrier and smiling at all the babies toddling around, the colors, the toys.

Their favorite thing was a very low wooden platform with a bunch of blocks on it. Attached to the wall next to the platform were two metal bins. M spent about a half an hour carefully taking all of the blocks out of the bins. E enjoyed crawling around on the low platform, practicing going from level to level and scooting off onto the carpet while holding a block in each hand.

Since it is Sketch Sunday, I thought I’d commemorate the outing with a watercolor. This is them at the museum, checking out a mirror. This is also part of my new “Explore Pittsburgh with Twin Babies” initiative. Stay tuned for the next edition.

Advertisement

First Art Collaboration: Baby and Me

 

It was rainy today, again. I decided to sketch the babies. Of course they were having none of it. M kept trying to grab the book and pencils and put her drooly rubber frog on my drawing. E was less interested, but she was moving around so much I could barely get an outline with the two-seconds between her moving and M grabbing the paper. I couldn’t produce anything worth sharing.

On a whim I decided to trace M’s hand, which she kept putting on the page anyway. Of course as soon as I seemed interested in her keeping her hand there she grabbed it away. She acted pretty much how she does when I try to clean her hands after eating–extremely resistant, to put it lightly.

So I tried the hand-tracing with E instead. I got some colored pencils and put the sketchbook on the ground. Each time she put her hand on the page I did my best to trace its outline. A few times I got the whole hand, most times just a finger or a line before she grabbed it away. But she kept coming back. And the paper kept getting more and more colorful. I added a couple outlines of my hand in there, too, and afterward I filled it in with some solid color.

So it was our first art collaboration. Hopefully there will be more in the future.  I was reminded of this artist I saw online awhile ago, who created pretty amazing paintings with her four-year-old daughter. You should definitely check those out, here, for something inspiring. But I’m happy with our first collaboration.

First Baby Steps

M is taking little steps. Not by herself, but now when you hold her up by both hands and coax her she takes jerky little steps forward. She is working on walking. Above is a sketch of her and D.

New Horse Friend

Here’s a drawing of our new little rocking/ride-on horse. I got it off the neighborhood list serv for $5. After disassembling it and washing it I’ve finally put it back together and am excited to see how the babies will like it. I hope they do. I’m feeling quite fond of it myself. What a friendly little horse.

Extremely Easy, Arty Creative Games for Kids (or Adults)

Here are two extremely easy, fun creative games that take no supplies at all. When I was younger I used to do these both with my middle sister. Hours of entertainment, I’m telling you.

The first may be a bit easier to take. All you need is two people, a piece of paper and a pen. Here’s how it works. The first person makes some random scribble on the page not resembling anything. The second person then has to make that scribble into a picture of something. That’s it. And actually, you don’t even need two people, you can do it by yourself: I did this evening and quite enjoyed myself actually. Here are my results:

Before

After

Before

After

The second is, wait for it…drawings made of human hair! On the shower wall! What, you’re not convinced? Well I’m telling you when my sister and I were little, we used to be quite impressed by each others’ hair drawings. Though I will admit it led to a lifelong bad habit of sticking shed hair to the wall during showers. At least that keeps it out of the drain. But anyway, I digress. It works similarly to the scribbles. The random hair stuck on the wall suggests the shape of something. Behold a hare of hair:

Hard to take good photos in the shower.

Here’s a little perspective.

And a slimy frog:

Ribbit

Hope you enjoyed. You probably won’t believe me, but the first idea for a blog I ever had was to do a hair picture every day and post it. Probably for the best I didn’t follow through on that one. With twins, I don’t have time for standing around that long in the shower, anyway. Looking forward to when mine are old enough for drawing.

Baby Sketchbook

I spent a bit of time in the play pen today sketching the babies. They move around a lot, so not easy, but still fun. Bean kept crawling over and trying to grab my sketchbook, then crying because I wasn’t paying enough attention to her. Actually I was paying a lot of attention to her, but not the type of attention she was looking for.

M decided she would ignore what I was doing and sit with her back to me on the other side of the super yard, but eventually she looked over at me, with Bean lying in my lap, and started crying. I called her and patted my lap but she didn’t want to come, so I just took her up and gave her a hug and a zerbert and that seemed to fix things.

Munchkin Studies

Cheeks. Two views.

Trying Out the Baby Swing

This is a sketch of M at the playground. A couple weeks ago I took the babies to the park to try out the baby swings. This was before the temperature dropped permanently below freezing. Anyway it was a lot of fun. There was only one swing free, so they had to take turns. M really seemed to enjoy it, swinging her legs and grinning away. Bean wasn’t so sure about the whole thing. I think she was tired. Looking forward to trying it again when the weather warms. Is it spring yet?

Watercolor of the Babies’ First Christmas

It was very red.

Baby M Turns to Me In the Exersaucer – Quick Sketch

Here is a quick sketch of M in the exersaucer. She kept swiveling all around to suck on the sun rattle, press the animal-noise buttons, move the breads on their track. Then she’d turn back to find me still there watching her, and smile her gorgeous, face-lighting smile.