{a day to check in with a 9 yr old’s doings}
One might want to discount art from a 9-yr old as ‘child art’ or even just important to the parent’s but I think it is fascinating to see development in work that is learning without teaching. Not to say that learning some skills would not enhance or emphasize certain elements, but not everyone is interested in that kind of skill-building (it is not imperative, just another option), nor do I think children should be rushed into skill-building over developing imagination.
That said, this kid has a very intriguing (to me) perspective. She is starting to have a visual vocabulary of her own, her style developing to suit her needs. Her characters right now have a very specific look to them that is consistent – her facial structure (the nose plane, the eyes, the lips manage a consistency even in profile) – and mostly right now she has people and cat people. Other characters sometimes appear, and still some abstract or nature elements but mostly people and cat people (there are 2 comic book volumes of The Adventures Squigtor the Courageous and his cat princess Freya). I remember not so long ago none of her dogs had ears because she couldn’t figure out how to not cover their eyes with their ears, so she just left them off. She does a lot of profile portraits right now, too. I make no excuses for her narratives – the ‘hold up’ scenes are obviously something she needed to situate, but in all of these images are specific decisions (like the fact that our cat has really subtle stripes, nearly unnoticeable but here they are, and I swear I thought Josh drew the hedgehog but no, the first portrait is her uncle, the second is the Mona Lisa, the superheroes are us with our super symbols – maybe, the last guy is a fly in a green sweater).
Her making is not relegated to just paper/pencil/paint though – she sews cat clothes (by hand and machine), soft jewelry, makes wire/bead jewelry and crowns, and as I’ve mentioned is a cardboard genius (last week she made a chariot with working wheels and a driver to attach to a model horse, and reindeer antlers for the dog, and many tiny strange inventions made of random screws, string, cardboard, etc – boobytraps, I’m guessing).
Super charming (if you ask me).
Rock Bottom Homestead 