i let a bunch of kids use my art supplies and the world didn't end

I had the great privilege of collaborating with five great kids (three of them being mine, so of course they're great) on five pieces of artwork. For Father's Day this year I wanted to do something special and involve the kiddos. I'd seen an article about an artist who did a series of pictures by starting them and then letting her kid finish them. The results were pretty interesting. So I thought I'd try a variation on that. I started by doing a very light sketch of each kid's face on a separate piece of art paper. Then I told them to finish the picture but to leave the face alone so I could do that part. I gave them my art supplies to use so they had charcoal, oil pastel and Prismacolors. My three kids and a friend's two kiddos each made their own picture and then I spent this week working as hard as I could to get my part done.

So Calvin's picture looked like this when I got it back. My intention had been to do their faces in charcoal. I have more recent experience in that medium doing portraits and I felt like I would be more likely to get them done in time doing it black and white. I came up with this idea little late in the game so I had a pretty serious time crunch.

Well, at one point Calvin came to me crying because he accidentally colored on his face in oil pastel. There went my idea to do charcoal. I had thought it would be an interesting contrast, but that didn't work out.

So I did it in oil pastel and I think they turned out pretty well. The eyes and mouth are Prismacolor. Oil pastel is fairly imprecise so it took a lot of working to get the facial features the way I wanted them. Calvin really enjoyed checking in and seeing how his picture was coming along.

My original intention had been to do their whole face and have my part done before they even started drawing. I think this was much better though because then I had to work with what they had done. That made more sense to me considering it's their artwork.

Keep an eye out here and I'll add pictures of the others later this week.