Art to Art

I haven't been talking about Family Project Weekend for a long time now simply because my boys have not moved on since being introduced to Papier Mache.  Papier Mache, by far, is the longest-running hobby hit in the household!  That and tinkering with the mac.  My boys are umbilically-connected to technology being self-professed mini-art directors.

This post features those 2 loves.

One rainy weekend, Kenji was surprisingly hell-bent on making papier maches of Maggie Octopus (from the Simpson's Halloween Movie) and Dr. Octagonapus (of YouTube's fame).  I thought those were pretty random choices until he shot a picture of the 2 facing each other and quickly uploaded it to the mac.  He then went to work on the Powerpoint Program and transformed the simple shot into a screen capture of his self-made, work-in-progress video game:  OCTOWARS!

And then there's Miro who slaved for days sculpting, coating, and painting several penguin breeds he learned from the school library.  When done, he propped them on a white sheet, took dozens of photos, and uploaded them to the mac.  I saw him surfing for different scenic backgrounds, too.  A little computerized snip, paste, and clean up later --and he's got the first few pages of his new book:  THE TRAVELING PENGUIN.

My boys are multimedia (er, dualmedia) artists!  Who would've guessed! 

I'm proud of my boys for welding the 2 art forms together to create cohesive, imaginative wholes.  Their fondness for old art and new art finally met.  Of course, they haven't finished their big projects and are now bullying me to help them out --but it's a cool start.

With that, I call upon parents all over to expose your kids to every art form they can get their hands on.  Kids are pretty poly-inventive.  Chances are, they'll astound you.