My daughter is "in between books" right now. She has read all of the books she bought for this year but couldn't buy a new one because she has bought a lot of books already. A friend of mine gifted her a sort of mystery/detective kind of book but she found out she was missing 2 books in the series. She cpuldn't read the next book in the gifted series because that would mean she would skip one and it would spoil the story for her. But since she still couldn't buy a new book, she just revisits all of the other books she's had.
She has this funny habit of reading the foreword, the book publication details, the about the author, and any other words she might have missed on the book she's holding. She does this when she's in between books.
There's this one book that she found interesting before, Pibo. It's a book that's just all illustrations. I guess the publishers were encouraging their readers to widen their imagination as theyclook through the picturesnof every page. There is a story that you could understand for a picture actually does paint a thousand words.
My daughter, upon re visiting this book for the nth time around, found out that the entire book was painted using coffee. Her curiosity was piqued. And so, for today's art activity, she painted Pibo and the cat in the story using coffee.
She was really curious and wanted to know how it would turn out. She reminded me not to throw out the coffee grounds I used for my morning coffee. I'm just happy to oblige. Our arts lesson for today was supposed to be cartoon drawings from her Kamo book but since this is the one she's interested in, we went with it.
She first outlined the drawing of the cat and little Pibo. She looked for a scene in the book she liked the most and copied it. I really admire her patience with this artwork. She had to erase and re-draw lots of parts - especially the eyes- but she was really patient. I am loving that she is now developing an eye for beauty in her art. Before, when she has tried lots of times and got tired and imptient, she used to say "That'll do." Now, she really is thinking it through, analyzing where she might be doing it wrong, andncorrecting it on her own. I guess it really has this effect when kids are interested in what they do.
Come coffee painting time, she treated it like watercolor, only she's using coffee. I did make another batch of coffee and used instant coffee too just to get different shades of coffee according to my little painter's preference. It's really a win-win artwork. I get to have more coffee, she gets to paint and satisfy her curiosity. I did have to put my coffee away from her artwork because she might dip her paintbrush in my drink. Lol.
Thanks to the extremely hot weather we're having, drying the coffee painting layers were much quicker than usual. She did put on a lot of layers until she achieved the color she was looking for. The color also becomes a little darker as it dries so she was really happy with this artwork. To make the drawing pop, she drew in the outline with a dark brown color marker.
I was looking at her workflow, she was really immersed in the process. She experimented, and tried a lot of things, and really just had fun with it the whole time. She loved the smell of coffee, I guess I'll be looking forward to mother-daughter coffee dates in the future. ☕️ And maybe some more art sessions with her too as we sip our coffee.
