Art Update

Pippi spends about three hours a day at her desk, drawing and writing. And as you can imagine, we are drowning in papers. I try to tidy her space every now and then, but she thrives when she can see everything, spread out all around her. So pull everything back out, she does. And I have been forbidden to walk away from her desk with a stack of papers because she knows, knows in her bones, that I'm cleaning.

So in an effort to stop the avalanche, I've finally convinced her to let me scan her art, all of her art, onto a flash drive, so that we can throw many of the physical copies away. Not all. I do keep a sampling of her work in a folder. But now one can breath near her desk without sending a stream of papers to the floor.

And as part of our new paper purge plan, about every six months, I will feature here at Books For Breakfast, the best of the best. Until she's old enough to have her own blog, like in a year or so. Then she can scan and post to her little heart's content.

I'll be her first follower.

Most of Pippi's art features people. But every once in a while, she experiments with drawing objects and will amass a stack twenty pages high of chairs. Or tables. Or cooking pots. Or bicycles.

More of her experiments with objects. This time, obviously her fascination was with musical instruments. I sure do like that green banjo.

My husband also likes to draw and his work is of the cartoonish sort, having been an avid comic book reader in his youth. And Pippi loves to draw with her daddy. Much of her style comes from watching him.

This she did one day while I was painting a set of "fish" stones for a fishing game for the kids.

This is my favorite from the stack. I love the precision of the girl's feet and the beginning of Pippi's concept of perspective.

I love the chef's hat and the cooking ladle and the dark hair hanging down her back.

I guess you can tell by looking at this picture that we read a lot of vintage books. I don't think a goose would be smoking a pipe in a modern picture book.

Inspired by a month's worth of reading Jabberwocky every single morning during the breakfast meal. I think that poem will be forever linked in my memory to apple spice oatmeal.

This she drew shortly after we brought our kitty home from the animal clinic. Pippi loved visiting the kennel. And the animal in the top left hand corner? Why, Curious George of course.

Pippi and Tommy - the book characters, not my kids - painting the walls.

Robin Hood and Little John (Disney). I love Little John's bush tail and that quiver full of arrows. Pippi spends a lot of time drawing people as they would look viewed from behind.

Did I already say I had a favorite? Ok, so this my second favorite. My kids are mad about Scooby Doo, and Pippi's drawings inspired by that crime fighting cheesball team fills a folder of its own. This one makes me smile. That hamburger cracks me up.