Childhood summer

Before creating artwork for the upcoming Summer exhibition that Simon is organising, I asked my 5-year-old niece what she would draw for a summer-themed exhibition. She sketched out a few things that I decided to replicate while trying out the Iportnovs en branch of MyPaint…

Her birthday is during summer, so she said that she would draw that. I asked how she would draw the event and she drew Granny and Poppa’s house. I noted that it was just an empty house, so how would one know that there was a party happening? So quickly drew a bunch of people inside the house. After observing her creation, she proclaimed that it looks like a hairy arrow!

So what else occurs during summer? She looked momentarily thoughtful and then started to draw a girl. Immediately afterwards she drew a whole bunch of circles and lines over the girl, and informed me that it was a picture of her in the swimming pool. I’m not sure why she was at the bottom of the pool… and I’m not going to read too much into it.

I had committed to three submissions, so I asked her for one last summer drawing. She thought about it for a while and then explained that during summer, plants tend to die. Heaps of plants die. There’s just dead plants everywhere. So she drew a sort of wilted grass/weed that had been burnt by the unforgiving sun.

It was interesting to get her take on summer, but in the end I decided to work something else out for myself. 😉