A Colorful World

Bubba's 1st Watercolor Painting

I spent Sunday with the grandkids. Bubba, my grandson (the twins still call him Bubba), wanted me to see his latest artwork, three pieces on their refrigerator. This grouping was all crayon drawings. Bubba explained the first one is "A Colorful World," the next "The Letter U" and the third "A Colorful World Too." Bubba's vision of the world is definitely beautiful. He loves color, his favorite being the color green. But for this grouping he chose a variety of colors, except for the "U" drawing. That was a big letter "U" in a pale orange color.

At age four and in PreK4, Bubba is still working on the alphabet. He tells me, "Nana, I know almost all of my letters now." I'm sure he'll have the rest of them down in no time. He tells me that "U" is his current favorite letter. Bubba is also anxious to learn how to read, as he loves books and wants them read to him over and over again, just like his Mama did when she was little. When I read to him I'm supposed to point to all the words, so he can follow along. That's the way Bubba says I'm supposed to do it. He's a bossy little guy and things have to be done his way. Ah, another budding "Alpha Male" in the world. So I understand the rules. We have to do things his way. He'll learn to read, but only in his own time.

Well, back to Bubba's artwork. Since I'm an artist myself, or at least I like to think I am, then I'm elated that my grandson loves to draw and to paint. I remember last November when he wanted me to work on his school art project with him. He was to decorate a big "turkey feather." So we used markers, stickers, pipe-cleaners, feathers, etc. (all supplied by his Mama). His Mama helped out and used the glue gun on the feathers and pipe-cleaners for us. Anyway, Bubba was very proud of the end result. A few days later I was able to see his turkey feather, along with all the other turkey feathers done by his classmates, gracing a big wall art of a turkey in the school hallway which was festooned with turkeys from every classroom. Wow! What a cool concept. I never went to a school that did cool stuff like that.

On our refrigerator we have two earlier pieces of Bubba's artwork. One is the first watercolor he did with the paints I bought him last year. He did four watercolor paintings that first day. He was careful to paint just about every square inch of the paper and he had an interesting use of color. The other painting on our refrigerator was done sometime after Christmas, using a gel-paint set he'd received from Santa. The colors he used that time were more pastel. I'm going to have to get a bigger refrigerator, because I refuse to remove those two early works of art any time soon.