The artist in residence

It's finals week and The Kid and I have been working our little artistic tails off to finish up projects. Last night, The Kid did the final drawing in a series of self-portraits.


The Kid's bedroom doubles as a studio. It's a large room that previous homeowners created out of a backyard patio. The antique mirror -- actually a real antique -- is supported by The Kid's guitar stand and positioned with a roll of packaging tape. Let's say it's a creatively improvised studio.


The assignment was to create a work reminiscent of a famous painter. Only in this case, The Kid is required to use pastels. For this work, The Kid chose Van Gogh's self-portraits.


A closeup shows The Kid's technique to simulate a heavy oil paint texture with pastels.

OK. I admit that because he's my kid, I'm a little biased. But I think this is damn good work for a freshman in college.

The quality of The Kid's work makes my final project in my Adobe Illustrator class pale in comparison. My task was to create three posters using no words. The posters were to speak to preschool children. One poster had to discuss sharing, one table manners and one reading. Here's what I end up with:




I expect to get a nice grade for my work, but I don't expect any art agencies to be knocking on my door asking my help. No, this type of work is a lot of fun, but I just don't have The Kid's talent, his artistic eye. I can try real hard, but The Kid's gift isn't something you learn.