Misunderstood Art

this is a picture of rough draft page from a children's book i started in the fall. I am going to write and Illustrate a Picture book on God being the Father of Creativity... and how he has called us each in our own Creative ways to worship him with it. The Middle of the Color Circle is White where God is most Pue and radiates color outta of blackness..(Nothingness) by the way the real pages will all be a black background for emphesis on the power of Creative color. adams eye as you see represents man in general but in the eye itself you see the "face of God" as well as in the reflection on the water... wait for upcoming Book pages....


So I am teaching Art to Heather as part of her Schooling.. she gets a grade for it and i get to spend time molding her artful mind... 5 lessons later we have gleefully picked our expensive watercolor pencils, art paper, graph paper, gum erasures, rulers, you know Art stuff... well the last couple of Art Projects have been miserable not due to my teaching so much but my lack of ability to teach Heather in a way that she feels like she can learn and win.... she is an A type personalilty and needs controll,, she needs to look at a project and judge weather it is fitting for her in 3 catagories... 1. is it fun??? 2.Can i make it look just like the example??? and 3. will she herself be satisfied with it?

whew.. where is the joy in the journey? where is the freestyle and flow? so today i say to myself... hey lets go down to forrest Creek and sit and draw over a nice cup of warm soup.. c'mon how many of you are just thinking to yourselves,,, can i go too??? well not so for my creative genius... toooooo outta the box for her... no boundries.. too many areas to " screw up" too much distraction.. cold, hunger, glare of sun, and finally what if she fails and doesnt sketch a stream just the "right way"... Good God i really felt like i was making her do somthing she hated.. and all of a sudden i stood up and said this is not fun is it? her eyes got big and said NO!!!! ( obviously she thought i medicated myself) so i said lets get in the car and try this again tommorro. now she feels like she failed me... and what i had to explain to her that it was I who missed the mark.. i failed to listen to her learning needs and was bent on teaching her my way. no wonder she is a frustrated artist.

On the way home i said o.k. tell me how you would love to be taught... and she became a bit upbeat... which is nice for the black cloud as of late... and she told me she can't just sit in front of something and pound a sketch out. she needs steps and little ones. she wants comfort and encouragment... she needs enough room to explore and not fail. she wants to go to the tulip feilds as a feild trip but not paint while we are there... ( great now what am i gonna do?) she wants to take it all in, come home and express herself on paper AFTER wards..... What a concept....
so anyway funny how she could tell me after the frustrating fact. but i had to be willing to learn her style so that she could bloom in her creative heart... thank you God fow teaching us both.... Grace.