Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall

My friend Helene holds a paint night at her art gallery every few months and I've tried to make it every chance I get. It's just fun to slather paint on canvas and drink wine and chat and walk around looking at everyone's creation. This month we painted a snowy scene with a tree and a little house. Right now mine holds the place of honor over our mantel, because I got sick of our Modigliani print last summer and I haven't found a piece of real art that I can afford that will fit there.

The next day after paint night, I got the boys going on a paint project. I'd seen in a coffee shop with art for sale on its walls a picture of birch trees on a solid background and thought "we can do better than that." I picked up some smallish canvasses at the craft store, and gave one to each of the boys (and myself) and we taped strips of masking tape from top to bottom. I then gave them each a palette of paint to represent one of the seasons (purple, white, and blue for winter; red, yellow, orange for fall; dark and light green and yellow for summer; and blue, green, yellow, and pink for spring). I couldn't quite think of how to differentiate colors between summer and spring, and having unrelated colors on a single palette ended up being a mistake, especially since E, who likes to mix his colors into mud, chose spring.

After we painted our backgrounds, we went out for a stomp, looking at birch and aspen trees along the way.

When we got back, we peeled off the tape and added the dark lines (lenticels and branch scars) to the trees.

From left to right: Winter, by M; Spring, by E; Summer, by Mama; Fall by Z.

I absolutely LOVE how they turned out (even E's mud. Spring is, after all, mud season here in Maine). Perhaps I should stop looking in art galleries for a piece of artwork to hang over the mantel and turn instead to my resident artists.