First Masterpiece

Last week I sat down my Silas and his developing little mind to paint for the first time. Outside. Because he also tends to be developing a mess at any given moment. I put an old T-shirt over his clothes because “they” never really mean it when they say “washable” paint.

He got right to work; I put some dots of paint on his paper and some he smeared with his finger, and some he actually brushed with the paint brush.

Of course he got paint on himself, which is half the fun…

… but I didn’t quite expect the paint to turn out looking like this:

Hmm.

Anyway, I was so hoping that Silas would just love painting and be super interested in it, but about half way through, love of machinery trumped the creative process.

This man came to mow the lawn, and that was much more interesting than paint dots and smudges. I got him to “finish” painting (whatever that means; mostly I guess it means he smudged all the paint dots I gave him) but really, he wanted to be watching that mower.

Here is our finished product:

After we finished, I took Silas out of the seat and left him outside while I went back and forth putting the supplies and pictures in the house. I came back out, and there he was, hands in his little pockets, just staring after the lawn mower. How cute is it that he stuffed his hands in his pockets?!

We had a great time painting though, and he didn’t make nearly as much mess as I originally thought, so I may let him paint indoors next time. We turned the picture into a birthday card for Grandpa Keith, and he loved it, and now it is on their refridgerator!