The Mischievous Mommy

As artists, Eve and I are always growing and evolving so I was extremely excited to teach her one of my favorite tricks. You take a spray bottle filled with water and create a small puddle on your watercolor paper. Then you fill your paintbrush up with color and carefully dab into the puddle of water, it is truly magical to watch the color spread and determine it's own path. The next trick is getting as close as possible to blow the newly colored water whichever direction you would like. (Eve ended up using a straw to help her out as you can see in this video she had a difficult time getting a big enough breath.)



 

 With most of our collaborations, this one included, the concept is never known beforehand but developed throughout the process. It keeps us on our toes and pushes us to adapt to change as art is always evolving. I had no idea that this would turn into two little ballerinas but after Eve created these lovely colorful explosions using the technique above, I knew it couldn't be anything but tutu's.

This collaboration piece is almost complete and has a magical sisterly story, stay tuned for the video time lapse and the full story behind this piece!

Wow.

I just want to start off by saying from the bottom of my heart thank you. Thank you to everyone who has supported Eve and I before all of this attention and to all those of recent as well. I am very humbled by all of this support and know that none of this would be possible without God providing me with this gift and giving me my most beloved treasure, Eve. Without Eve and her constant inspiration that motivates me to create and explore art outside of my comfort zone I would still be stuck in my cozy nook.

Eve is truly my muse.

I truly believe every single person is given a talent or gift that once sparked should be constantly flamed and encouraged, it is part of what makes you unique and fills you with passion for love, life and laughter.

I encourage each and every one of you to share your talents and knowledge with your own children, grandchildren or nieces and nephews. The end result may be special but the journey you share to get there will be magical and those memories will last forever.

I also wanted to grab this opportunity to give a little more insight into our collaborations.

Eve and I have spent hours on end drawing together and painting canvas after canvas. I loved being able to share my passion with her and love how excited she is to partake. I have been dreaming of the day that we could sit down and talk about what we could create together and the vision she sees, nothing is more amazing then a child’s innocent insistence that anything is possible. However, her being not even 2 and a half I felt that was at least a year or more away. With her limited vocabulary we have still been able to enjoy our time spent together and it slowly dawned on me that we had already been collaborating this whole time!

That thought was what was going through my head when I was going through her piles of drawings and the one, that is now “The Red Boat, caught my eye. I had been letting her use my black ink pen and realized that if I used watercolor I could use the shapes and darkness to create a painting that I would have NEVER been able to even think of on my own.  Without those shapes and markings of endless possibilities from a precious child’s point of view absolutely NONE of those paintings could or ever would exist. Eve has pushed me way past my comfort zone and I am very grateful for this, it is truly motivating and inspiring for me. When I do paint it is done as speed painting. They are all created in a short time frame so I can’t sit back and over analyze the process, I want to keep it simple and true. I am never trying to paint over her marks but blend them into mine to become a collaboration. Just as my painting forms I make sure to follow her outlines and leave some of her drawing visible keeping it a collaboration, it is a fine balance that I am continuing to learn from.

At this point our collaborations begin with her and when she is finished her drawing she passes it off to me so she can watch me paint. If there are any she wants to keep as is, I can assure you, she will not hand them over. I find myself choosing the ones that are the most challenging for me to expand on as this forces me to grow. She enjoys watching me paint them and often will suggest different colors to use. As these next few months go by I look forward to letting her take part even more by letting her finish my paintings and perhaps I do the drawing and she paints! This journey of ours has JUST begun and if I look through it from her perspective, our creativity and possibilities are truly endless.

If at any point Eve does not want to continue these collaborations I will happily let her move on to something else. Even though I am an artist I heartily accept she may not be, and when and if she moves on to something else I will support her 100%. I am already just so grateful to have shared this with her to this point.  All the profit we make from our collaborations will be going directly into her college fund, this way it can support whatever dream she ends up pursuing.

For all those with children in their lives I encourage you to try this with them, even if you don’t think you can draw you might just surprise yourself! It is an amazing and fun process and I encourage you to message me your creations and I will try to post them on this blog to share with others.

Thank you again for all of your support and kind words!

Eve and Ruth