Thursday Lights Out

The power went out today from about 12:30pm to about 6pm. The wind gusts were so strong that somewhere power lines were interfered with and 4000 homes lost power here. Life is initially so very very boring when the electricity goes out, but after some necessary diversions, one is led to the conclusion that it was a blessing in disguise.

In lieu of being glued to the computer all day, as has been my practice lately, I was forced to do something with the children. Therefore, I decided to pull out all of our painting supplies to fulfill my daughter's long-ignored wishes of "painting, Mom, please!"

Here are the results of our artistic abandon. (If you want to see more detail, click on the picture, and you should get a larger image.)










To the left above is a butterfly by the Kitty Cat. To the right above are two paintings by the Transformer. As you can see from the top picture, his first choice in art is depicting Transformers. After his sister produced a butterfly, he decided to paint his own.










Being uninspired to be inspired, I decided to find my inspiration within the covers of an art book we recently purchased, The Story of Painting by Sister Wendy Beckett. Above is my rendition of a detail from Kirchner's Berlin Street Scene. You can see how my painting is almost indistinguishable from the book's image pictured on the right. Well, except for the curl of the cheap paper on the bottom left.

Here is a pic of the entire artwork:

Uh... ignore Hitler on the right side of that image.













I actually painted the following art before the one shown above. This is from another detail, but this time the image is from Paul Klee's work called The Golden Fish. Note my amazing attention to detail and my own twist on the fishes' personalities.










Below, you can see the entire piece depicted in the book. The two little guys from above are in the bottom right of the larger work. Note how they stand out and seem to command the viewer's attention, despite the magnificent golden fish that is obviously hogging the shot.


Despite my newfound status as an artist extraordinaire, as evidenced by my children's amazement at what I had produced, I am yet quite humble about my abilities. Despite that, I would not be embarrassed by any accolades that you might want to post in the comments section.

After our artistic adventure, my little girl wanted to cash in on her earned 1-on-1 time with me (from her behavior incentive map), so we went on a hike. There is a greenbelt just a block away from our house, so we walked through there, mysteriously ending up at the playground about 20 minutes later. I had never figured that letting my 4.5yo daughter lead was going to do anything other than have us go in circles or get lost. Apparently she knows the trails.

Here is the beginning of our "hike."









This is where we ended up.


All in all, not too bad of a day for losing our beloved electricity. I just hope it never happens again.