Picasso

I am a terrible artist.  I’m so terrible that I think even using the word artist is blasphemous.  I’m a terrible drawer-person.  I love art and I appreciate talent.  How I wish that I was talented!  My mommy and some of my siblings are incredible artists.  My main talent, however, is growing hair on my body and face in unwanted places.  I suppose it’s sort of an art. 

Eva likes to play a game where you draw something and she guesses what it is.  Michael is great at this game.  I am not.  Whenever I draw something for her, she stares at my picture and inquires, “What’s that?”  When Eva asks me to draw for her I stick to the things I’m really good at; a turtle and a pine tree.  Then the game is over.

 

Anything beyond that and Eva questions what the heck I’m trying to draw.  Like my rendition of an elephant.

And a duck.  Yes, ducks have four legs.

I work with the 12 and 13 year-old girls at church.  Last night for our mutual activity one of the other leaders gave us an art lesson. The finished painting was going to be two silhouetted lovebirds illuminated by a moon.  I started out feeling very confident in my painting abilities because we were just swirling the paint around in a circle. Then it was time to draw a branch and birds.  This is where everything nosedived for me.  Our instructor demonstrated how to paint a delicate bird.  She described it as drawing a semi-circle for the head and an upside-down teardrop for the body.  It looked very easy but when I loaded my brush with paint, I had no recollection of what a semi-circle or a teardrop look like.  And my attempt at leaves was deplorable.  My painting was looking like it was crafted by something without opposable thumbs.

There was supposed to be 2 birds on the branch, seeing as how they were lovebirds, but my first bird was so plump there wasn’t room for a lover.  My bird was neither delicate nor bird-shaped.  He was lumpy and round like a microwaved marshmallow.  The birds were also supposed to be all black with no definition.  My black bird was a blob that looked like I had spilled the paint when trying to pick it up without any opposable thumbs.  I improvised and added features to make it look like a bird: a beak, an eyeball, a mohawk.  Our instructor said my painting was fantastic but I could tell she was just being nice.  Craptastic was more fitting.

Here’s my finished piece of art:

By itself it doesn’t look too bad but it looks nothing like what it was supposed to.  I’m going to hang it above my computer anyway so I can remain humble.  I guess I’ll just stick to the things where I truly excel.

Which reminds me, I need to wax my moustache.