January 29th - Our Little Owl

My mom and dad are incredibly crafty people.  Mom's made quilts and clothes and pajamas for me and my brother and now for Elliot and Eleanor.  She's now made Superman capes for myself and for Elliot (I suspect a Super Eleanor cape is not far behind. Dad's carved ducks and built miniature wooden boats and has gotten into painting.  At the rehearsal dinner before our wedding, Dad presented my groomsmen with an comic book cover of someone that fit their personalities or interests.  Here's what he came up with:

Unfortunately for me, I didn't get those painting talents, nor have I found the time to practice them all that much.  However, after we saw how excited Elliot got around the "op-i-tus" at the aquarium, I tried my hand at something that could go up in his room:

That's an octopus if you couldn't tell, and it's painted on a page from Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  Specifically, it's the page where the Nautilus is attacked for the first time by the giant octopuses (some people describe it as a giant squid...read the book, folks, it says "pouples" and that's French for "octopus").

Eleanor is too little to have the same kind of specific excitement that Elliot does about animals.  At this point, shes just wide eyed about everything.  But she does make these little "hooting" noises a lot, to the point where we have referred to her as an owl.

On Monday, I wanted to do something for Eleanor that mirrored the painting I had done for Eleanor. First, I gathered my materials...

Then I put my stencil and the page of the book I was going to be painting on up to a window so the light would shine through it (I made a copy of the page because I couldn't bring myself to tear one out of this particular book)....

Then I started painting...

And this was the result...

In case you were wondering, I painted the owl on page 81 of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling.  That's the page where Hagrid buys Harry his owl, Hedwig (although we don't know her name at this point).  It's the first time Harry meet the owl, a character that will follow him throughout the series.  I thought that this a fitting canvas for my owl painting.

I'm going to put this up in Eleanor's room after I get a better frame for it.  I thought it turned out pretty well for someone with very little practice at all this.  I hope to get more opportunities to do things like this, and I'm excited to have the kiddos participate as well.  Hopefully talent skips a generation.