Flopsy and Old Mrs. Rabbit

I took the children on a small excursion to a grassy area today, with watercolors in tow. We spread our quilt on top of dozens of gold and crimson fallen leaves and began our paintings. I brought along Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit, for artistic inspiration.  The children started in painting and drawing with markers.  

I thought I would try a rough sketch before I painted.  I tried a new technique using short, quick strokes to rough out the subjects, after first drawing a few large ovals to save places for them.  I started adding in a few details just to get a feel for it, but had to pack up just then to get home and cook dinner.  I studied my drawing for a moment before I put it in the stroller, and I felt very happy and optimistic, feeling that I'd stumbled upon a method that will really work for me. I have always formerly attempted drawing by simply putting pencil to paper and moving in long, dark strokes, and feeling that I could never graduate past elementary level doodles of which you might discover in a child's notebook. I had thought I just wasn't any good at drawing; a disappointing discovery of my childhood, since I had always felt very artistic and drawn to artsy activities.  I guess I was just doing it wrong all these years.  Maybe a person has to live to almost 28 to realize some of these things.  I know it isn't the stuff of art galleries or anything, but I am pleased that it at least resembles the illustration in the book.  Anyway, I feel very hopeful, and can't wait to work on this piece some more. 

The first photograph is of the children's artwork. Aiden painted the bird, Declan painted the red man and also drew the red squiggles which I quite like, Evelyn drew with markers and then painted over that with water, and Caitlin drew the person with the blue sky above.

The second photograph is of my drawing next to Ms. Potter's book.

(I am trying to refamiliarize myself with Blogger, so I don't know how to fix this yet, but my uploaded photos are cropped in my recent posts. If you click on them, a full size version will open up, however.  So odd.  My apologies.)