Portrait of the artist as a young man

One thing that has given me great joy lately is to watch Isaac paint, which he has done on average about an hour a day for the last month. He is obsessed and very meticulous. When he paints -- and it is always with watercolors -- he chooses a main color theme, usually red (his favorite color) or blue. He paints a small patch with this primary color, and then makes patches to surround them by mixing the primary color with other colors in his watercolor set, with the end effect being that of a mosaic. It takes him a long time because of all the color changes, and because, to him, a picture is not "done" unless he has coated the entire paper. The following examples are not "done".

His paintings usually have elaborate stories behind them involving recently-watched TV. This was painted at Mamaw's house after watching Rocket's Firebird Rescue in the car for the third or fourth time. I was informed that the red and orange patches at the top are the Firebird, while the cooler colors below represent the Secret Palace of the evil ogre Katchai, who imprisons the Firebird.



This was an odd example of a picture without a story, probably because he was distracted by the balloons. We ran out of blank paper in our art box.


I know I am his mom and am almost required by law to say what a genius he is. Have you ever seen such a thing? It certainly runs in his blood -- not from me, noooooo sir, but Dada is pretty good and was offered a place in a prestigious Indianapolis art school when he was in first grade.

My thought is to buy some canvases at a craft store and have him crank out some Christmas presents for the grandmas.