Seeds

My daughter is becoming quite the artist. I can’t take much credit for that. I’ve never been good at art. I’ve never been motivated to be good at art. She, on the other hand, is motivated. While she enjoyed her initial art class in middle school, she already knew much of what they had to offer because she’d been practicing and learning on her own. She’ll check out books on art from the library and get ideas to try out until she can figure the techniques out. She’ll be taking more advanced art classes when she gets to high school next year, and I hope they don’t slow her down.

But her mother and I can perhaps take a little credit for a few things. Her mother did practice drawing at least some in younger days and regularly produces stylized drawings for cards, invitations, etc. And I was willing to give it a try when my kids started asking me to draw pictures for them. Drawing on my limited technique I did my best, and though I could never get things to come out right, they were recognizable at least.

Between those two things I think some seeds were planted in our kids. Nothing major, just “art is possible,” and “you don’t know if you don’t try.” Emma was fertile soil, it seems. At some point I was asked to give her an art lesson. I taught her everything I knew about two-point perspective. It wasn’t much, but she got excited about it. We saw this and paid for some art lessons for her–which proved to be little more than the teacher sitting in the room next to her as she did her own drawings with hardly any actual guidance or training from the teacher.

Undaunted, though, Emma took it from there. We’ve encouraged her with feedback and supplies, but she’s done nearly all of it herself. She’s even been motivated enough to spend some of her own savings to get drawing software and a pen tablet. For some time now she’s been flirting with the idea of creating a webcomic and has begun a few short-lived efforts in the past. Now with summer vacation coming up she’s gearing up (some pun intended) to give it another go, this time on a website that hosts webcomics and also gives her some control over the design of her own pages (she’s also into web design and has already surpassed what I used to be able to do before WordPress came along).

Anyway, for a sneak peek at what she’s been up to, check out Geared Up, under her pen-name (pencil-name?), Cara Knight.

I wish I could say she’s a chip off the old block, but I’ll settle for being a launchpad. Not just for her, but all my kids. They’re each scary-smart in their own way, and one of the greatest pleasures in my life is helping them explore and unlock their potential. And if one (or all) of them strikes it mega-rich and want to buy their parents a nice house on enough land to set up an animal sanctuary I won’t say no.