And now, I shall paint.

I wish I could paint. I envy people who can take a blank canvas and turn it into a masterpiece with just a brush and a pallet of paint. Amazing. I have tried it before. I always have this beautiful image in my head of what my painting will look like. Unfortunately, my visions never turn out to be reality. Instead of my envisioned masterpiece, I end up with what I like to call a "mess-terpiece." It's fun though. Hmmm. Perhaps I should take an art class. I'll go ahead and add that to my "when I get some free time to-do list."

Jacob has been painting (and drawing) quite a bit lately. He has learned about a different artist every week for the past six weeks: Rembrandt, Linnaeus, Gainsborough, Degas, Monet and Morisot.

The first week, he drew a self-portrait, since Rembrandt famously painted several portraits of himself. Hold on to your seats. This is incredible. :)

The second week, I think Jacob drew a picture of a plant, or some type of flower. I had nursery duty that week and I'm not exactly sure what happened to his drawing. Oops. Carl Linnaeus was a botanist who made a tremendous impact on botanical illustrations.

Week three, he painted a landscape just like Thomas Gainsborough would have done. Gainsborough made his living painting portraits, but his first love was painting landscapes; hence, many of his portraits were surrouned by beautiful landscapes. Jacob painted the landscape, then drew pictures of people, cut them out and glued them on the paper.

Edgar Degas....well, Jacob was sick that week. We talked about Degas and his paintings at home, but didn't actually paint anything.

When the kids learned about Claude Monet, they discovered a few different ways to work with watercolor paint -- short brushtrokes, long brushstrokes, painting with water first, then adding paint, and vice versa. Jacob recreated a famous Monet painting. Looking at the two paintings next to each other, I can't even tell them apart. Can you? :)

This week, we've been learning about Berthe Morisot, who used different textures in her painting. The paints Jacob used for his masterpiece were mixed with glitter, eggshells, sand and raw sugar. When he began painting, I don't think Jacob had any specific vision in mind. He just thought it was interesting to see how the different textured paints slid across the paper from his paintbrush.

He's had a lot of fun learning about these artists and experimenting with paint the past six weeks. I've enjoyed it just as much. In fact, I'm thinking of asking Jacob to give me a few art lessons. I wonder how much he charges.