Wednesday, December 14, 2005

A Designing Daughter

I've always liked art. I used to draw alot, and once I even painted ducks on the ceiling of my bedroom, as a very good friend who knew me in my duck-painting days recently reminded me. When we were kids my parents would take us to art museums, and I remember looking forward to these trips, and even enjoying them. When we became parents, Hubby and I tried the art museum thing once. Once. Bored Out Of Her Mind Daughter discouraged us from trying it again.

Our daughter has never really cared much for art. She loves music, but art just wasn't her thing. So I was a little surprised this year when she chose Design 1 as an elective. When we went to Freshman Orientation at the high school, we were told that the school used to discourage kids in honors-level classes from taking non-academic electives, like art, because it would bring their GPA down and hurt their chances of getting into a good college. Which is insane. Isn't the whole idea to try a bunch of different things, to find out what you like? If not in high school, then when? Fortunately the school must have figured this out, because they've changed their policy. Now kids in honors classes can take nonacademic courses, and "contract-up" to a higher level by doing extra assignments. To contract-up for Design 1, you have to profile several artists, and recreate one of their works. You can choose any artist you like.

Glutton-For-Punishment Daughter chose Escher.

For those who don't know him, Escher does optical illusions. Detailed architectural drawings, with arches and staircases that go over and under each other in ways they couldn't in real life. Really, really hard stuff to draw. This is an example of an Escher drawing:

If it were me, I probably would have chosen something like Van Gogh's "Starry Night", or Munch's "Scream", which are bascially a bunch of swirly lines. She could even have chosen abstract art. But she picked Escher. The simplest drawing she could find of his to recreate is this one (which really isn't anywhere near as simple as it looks):

Yeah. Good luck with that.

If she lets me, when she's done with the drawing I'll try to take a photo of it & post it (we don't have a scanner). If she lets me. The good thing about all this is that she's discovered she really does like art. Which she never would have known if she hadn't been allowed to take Design 1.

Now to plan that trip to the art museum...

Posted by The Gradual Gardener :: 8:36 AM :: 1 Comments:

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