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.

Happy Father’s Day

Here’s a watercolor of D in the yard with the Bean on his shoulders. What an amazing dad.

Arty Creative Games for Kids Age 2 to 100

Here’s another arty creative game to try with kids or just to do yourself. This is in the same vein as my post on drawings from scribbles and hair.

I just came across this idea here (and in her blog she links to other really fun blogs of the same). Here’s what you do. Draw some random blob with watercolor. Let it dry. Take a pen and make it into something. Here’s what I came up with. And I’ll admit it took four pages for me to get a whole page of them I thought were okay enough to share here (I’ll spare you Elvis Donkey, Upside Down Backpack Man, Rat Dog and the other characters from first few pages 😉 ) Here’s the before and after. Hope they inspire you to a few moments of creativity! It’s pretty addictive.

 

Breastfeeding Animals: Roman Edition

Here’s another watercolor in my breastfeeding animals series. This time I took a little detour into Roman mythology for Romulus, Remus, and the wolf.

Breastfeeding Gorilla

Here’s another in my nursing animals series. There will probably be more. There’s something compelling, to me, about images of animals nursing. Something about the everydayness, the boringness but also the unknowable. I’m still spending a lot of time nursing twins, watching as they grow bigger and bigger.

Watercolor of the Babies’ First Christmas

It was very red.

Watercolor of a Happy Baby

I didn’t really capture her here. Happy, waving her arms around, kicking her legs. I will try again.

Nursing Brown Bear, Watercolor

I’ve been wanting to paint this picture of the nursing bear for a while and today finally did. I love its look, sitting there in the grass. Maybe I will paint a whole series of nursing animals. If only I could spend all day painting.

Winter Stoop Scene – Ellie and Mattie Quick Sketch

This is a sketch of the babies at the bottom of our stoop, waiting for me to put their car seats on the stroller.

Today we broke out the winter jackets for the first time. I was a bit dismayed to find that even though they are eighteen month size, they are a bit tight across the chest. The arms are extremely long, though. I wonder if that’s the way babies grow, becoming thinner and longer? We will see. I have such beautiful roly poly babies.

Moleskine Sketch, Stroller in the Park

Here’s all I could manage today. I did a sketch in my moleskine of the babies in the car seat stroller-mobile on our walk in Sunset Park. Actually it wasn’t much of a walk. I managed to get us out of the house, but then the babies fell asleep so I just parked the stroller and sat on a bench.

I’m feeling tired today. It was one of those days when I got back to the house and looked up at the front steps with dread, thinking of all the work of lugging the babies and equipment all back up to the top floor.

But it was a beautiful day outside. Fall. Fall is a melancholy time. Maybe that’s all it is, this feeling.