The Artist

For the last sixth months or so Reese has been intently practicing his drawing skills. For awhile he called himself an "art worker." For some reason I felt the need to correct him, so now he calls him self an artist. He seems so much more grown than when he said art worker. :(

He has been using his Klutz Marvel and Star Wars books with tracing paper practicing his complex tracing skills. He does a fantastic job, but has still been hesitant to free hand draw. Lately there's been lots of desire coupled with lots of "I can't do it." FINALLY he's making the attempt without my prompting. We actually had some spring like weather and went out to play. Before I knew what was happening I saw this:

"self portrait"

"dog"

"cat"
All these drawings were done completely by Reese with sidewalk chalk. I didn't even have to encourage him to try it himself before asking for help. He just took the initiative himself and was very proud of results. I am SOOOOO proud he is moving past that "I can't" stage and giving this a try. I am totally impressed with his drawing skills. This time last year I was looking at his preschool classmates drawings and beginning to worry Reese would never catch up developmentally. He wasn't even attempting stick figures a year ago.

When we went inside he drew these astronauts. The black area is the helmet. The outline around the stick figure body is the space suit. Now that he's perfected the stick figure he's started drawing actual bodies. They resemble a 4 point starfish a little, but he's trying so I'm happy.

Gus is mostly just scribbling at this point. He flatly refuses to pose or even smile nicely for pictures. I always get this squished face!