Drawing with Carmela
24 Jul 2008 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneWe went to Moomin World yesterday. Not realising the drive was only about 15 minutes, I packed a zipper pouch of spare coloured pencils - Derwent watercolours because anything other than Prismacolor is a spare - and a little bright fuschia blank composition book (which is to say with lined graph paper but I didn't have any mini sketchbooks lying around), to entertain Carmela if necessary in the car.
Carmela is four, and her drawings are still toddler-level with a circle representing the person containing eye and nose circles, mouth lines, and long lines for the limbs attached directly to the main circle. But this doesn't stop her from being really interested in my drawings (more accurately, doodles or sketches - she's not very patient...) and I've recently hit a GOLD MINE in Carmela-entertainment by offering to "draw together", which means she holds a coloured pencil and adds scribbles as necessary while asking questions about the details of whatever I'm drawing. She sometimes asks me to choose the subjects myself but is interested in little beyond princesses. (YESTERDAY, walking out of Moomin World: SMILING MW EMPLOYEE: Would you like a free colouring book page? WAX'S MOM: Carmela, want a little magazine sheet, see, it has a colouring page? CARMELA: NO I DON'T WANT IT! WAX'S MOM: Well, that's okay, Grandma will just take it then - CARMELA, bursting into tears: NOOOOOOOO! I DON'T WANT MOOMIN MAGAZINES I ONLY WANT PRINCESS MAGAZINES! I DON'T WAAAAAAAAANT IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!)
So there was no recourse to drawing in the car, but after about an hour when we were standing in line for french fries, because she didn't want to walk out of sight of Grandma to do anything with me, she was whiny and tired and I had to cajole her into sitting down on the deck of the french fry hut while we waited, and happily pulled out the book and coloured pencils... and she instantly was not just calm, but cheerfully engaged. Meanwhile I drew an audience of several mothers and little girls as well as two tiny boys (TINY BOY to his sister: That was really cool!) from the french fry line as I drew the butterfly-theme bedroom from the Moomin House, the canopied princess bed, and a Princess Carmela in a blue floral dress to inhabit the room. (Her butterflies were named Flower and Flutterby.) Well, uh, GOOD THING I BROUGHT THAT THEN. It's like a magic wand. The four-year-old version of a pacifier.
Carmela is four, and her drawings are still toddler-level with a circle representing the person containing eye and nose circles, mouth lines, and long lines for the limbs attached directly to the main circle. But this doesn't stop her from being really interested in my drawings (more accurately, doodles or sketches - she's not very patient...) and I've recently hit a GOLD MINE in Carmela-entertainment by offering to "draw together", which means she holds a coloured pencil and adds scribbles as necessary while asking questions about the details of whatever I'm drawing. She sometimes asks me to choose the subjects myself but is interested in little beyond princesses. (YESTERDAY, walking out of Moomin World: SMILING MW EMPLOYEE: Would you like a free colouring book page? WAX'S MOM: Carmela, want a little magazine sheet, see, it has a colouring page? CARMELA: NO I DON'T WANT IT! WAX'S MOM: Well, that's okay, Grandma will just take it then - CARMELA, bursting into tears: NOOOOOOOO! I DON'T WANT MOOMIN MAGAZINES I ONLY WANT PRINCESS MAGAZINES! I DON'T WAAAAAAAAANT IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!)
So there was no recourse to drawing in the car, but after about an hour when we were standing in line for french fries, because she didn't want to walk out of sight of Grandma to do anything with me, she was whiny and tired and I had to cajole her into sitting down on the deck of the french fry hut while we waited, and happily pulled out the book and coloured pencils... and she instantly was not just calm, but cheerfully engaged. Meanwhile I drew an audience of several mothers and little girls as well as two tiny boys (TINY BOY to his sister: That was really cool!) from the french fry line as I drew the butterfly-theme bedroom from the Moomin House, the canopied princess bed, and a Princess Carmela in a blue floral dress to inhabit the room. (Her butterflies were named Flower and Flutterby.) Well, uh, GOOD THING I BROUGHT THAT THEN. It's like a magic wand. The four-year-old version of a pacifier.
