Digital art with my twins
My kids create buckets of artwork. On any given day, I receive letters, pictures, origami made by them, scrawled with “I love you”. Well, they’re getting older now, and the cheekier one writes stuff like, “You’re a flying bum ” and annoying things like that, thanks to YouTube encouraged by my husband.
That’s my family, my husband and my 8 y.o twins hunched together sniggering over silly vids on YouTube. They always try to call me over to watch yet another vid that has them in a fit of giggles, but I glare at hubby and refuse. He’s also to blame for any games, including Pokemon Go, that they play. He’s unrepentant too!
It should be no surprise that I’m the bad cop and he’s the good cop. When they were 4 y.o, I tried doing the strike sheet thing on them when they were naughty.
The reaction was interesting.
Twin 1 waited until my back was turned and then got a stool to reach the sheet. She added me to the list and gave me a strike back.
Twin 2 went a step further, she made her own strike sheet, stuck it in her room and then proceeded to give daddy a good strike and a fantastic strike, for going to work apparently. Mummy only got a bad strike for being naughty.
And when they get mad at me these days, the emotional blackmail starts flowing:
“Mummy, I’m not going to visit you or buy you chocolates when I grow up! I’m only going to visit daddy!”
Geez…
They’re very much daddy’s little girls.
Anyway, in all my badness, I’ve always strongly encouraged my daughters to focus on arts, on drawing and storytelling. But it’s meant that our house is buried under papers, textas, pencils and I’m forever tripping over artwork.
Something I’ve started and will continue to encourage my daughters in is to take an interest in digital arts. It’s an easy sell, since I’ve taken an interest in drawing again, they’re always wanting to draw on my iPad too. I have this fantasy that one day my house will be paper-free. I love all their projects, but we just don’t have the storage to keep up. In fact here is another gift I just spotted stuck to my study door from Twin 1. She’s going through a phase where everything winks. That’s why I have one eye, the messy hair looks right too, but I’m not sure about the 5 o'clock shadow...
At first, I thought I’d just download some children’s drawing apps on the iPad. But then I noticed how tech-savvy (even at 8) they were. So I decided, no. They can learn to use a full drawing app. Twin 1 has all the hallmarks of future geek girl and has said she wants to be a games developer. I support her of course, so it’s on my plans to introduce her to some basic programming concepts and we can learn a bit of animation together when I find the time to play myself.
One weekend, I sat both down separately and showed them the basics. Then I left them to it. As expected, Twin 1 absorbed it quickly and was showing Twin 2 the tricks to get the effects they liked. In fact, I once had to ask Twin 1 advice on how to get that cool effect she did. Lol
Another great feature that parents can enjoy is the video playback to watch your children’s drawing process. I don’t like to use it for me because it’d be embarrassing, but as a parent, it’s fascinating. Below are a couple of my favorites because it is illustrative of their personalities and interests.
Twin 1
Twin 2
I highly recommend digital art for children. The very first image is a combined digital image with some minor touch ups. All done with Procreate too. It’s so my girls won’t complain I was playing favorites! The life of twins....
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Haha sounds like dad has the market cornered on fun. Don't feel bad, even though 80% of my son's waking time is spent with me, mom is still his favorite. He wants nothing to do with learning to say "daddy" - "momma" will do just fine, thank you very much.
I liked watching the Procreate sketch vids - I think you should try to teach your daughters how to use "layers" so that they don't have to color around everything when they are putting in a background color. That's actually the one and only thing I know how to do in digital art anything past that and you're on your own. But layers can take you a long ways... some of my graphic art pieces might have 30 or 40 layers by the time I compress.
Oh yeah I got a kick out of one-eyed mom in need of a shave. =p
Yeah, these programs it’s all about the layers. But initially, they wanted to draw with their fingers! So for now, as long as they’re using the stylus, I leave them to it. It’s a lot of fun to see how they use special brushes. There’s so much they can do before we get to more advance stuff, and being digital, they’re already spoilt. There’s no 5 o’clock shadow problem for example... I asked her about that. She was like...
“hehehe, I know, mummy. You got a moustache after I tried to rub out the mouth. I didn’t like how I drew it. But maybe it can be chocolate...”
WTH?! That’s NOT better!
WTH!! It's TOTALLY better!
At least, that's what I think, so I took it upon myself to fix it and make it so. All in good fun of course =p
Should I ever decide to commission a portrait, I’ll make sure not to enquire at your place of business!
Okay....I laughed...
If someone "commissions" me to do a piece of art, well they will get exactly what they payed for. I can do classical painting when the situation demands =)
Otherwise... watch out =p
Honestly, your daughter is the genius artist I just helped her finish
Well we know where your twins get their artistic side from. They sound very cheeky too. It seems to me you have 3 kids, with the eldest being the most naughty lol
You’ve returned and I spied a fly under your microscope! I can see steemuauto kicked in and upvoted you with my account, yay!
Also yes, I’m married to a big kid. I have to remind him that he’s in his 40s often, which he hates being reminded. XD.
He’s extremely patient and good natured considering he has to deal with 3 whiney females in the household. I found this pic on my phone and had laugh. It’s typical of how photos turns out and describes his situation perfectly. Cheerful dad + two sour-face chickies who never cooperate! It was from Halloween last year. Rather than agree to the girls bothering the neighbours with a non-Aussie tradition, I decided to take them to a Halloween festival. It was hot, blustery and the event was lame...Even hubby complained!
hahaha the poor twins. They really look like that had enough.
They look like they regretted asking in the first place. Wonder if they will ask again this year?
Never say ‘poor twins’! The moment they think you feel sorry for them, they’ll use that against you. This year I might relent and do the pumpkin thing. That might be enough to convince them they celebrated Halloween.
LOL
How old are your twins???
So talented
Like mother like daughters
They just turned 8. They’re very creative both in art and also verbally. They play rhyming games, sing and tell stories to each other. One thing I have pushed and they have taken on board is imaginative play.
They used to fight and get seriously angry over imaginary things they stole from each other. It was mind boggling to watch.
The cats are too cute
They are origami?
Yes, they are, Twin 2 is always doing folding papers. She explained these were meant to be cups, but that she decided to flip them over and make them into cats. She seemed to be having a cat thing then, atm, it’s ninja stars. :)
I ABSOLUTELY love that ausbitbank logo, Linny 💓💓💓💓
Thank you! 💜
I missed this one. Awww. I'll be back to read in detail, but what I'm reading so far is so adorable. I know nothing about digital art. Perhaps your post will teach me something new.
I will never, ever, introduce that flying bum song to my son. We’re currently trying to potty train him and I can only imagine his toddler mind trying to imitate the action. Lol, I would have given Hub a sh*tstorm for introducing that video. I’m sure at 8 your twins probably just thought of it as being the funniest thing ever.
That is wonderful how you are encouraging art with them. MY lil ones are too small but I really do need to introduce more creativity into their lives. My son seems to like music so we may be going that route. Of course, he is comp savvy too (they start young these days).
Love the digital art by your twins. I really want to learn digital art myself. I don’t think it would be anything as good as their work. 😂
(Read, enjoy but do not reply! Busy lady exemption.) That Vid is like the most ‘crappiest’ vid, millions of viewers don’t agree! However, you really can’t leave them alone with the iPad, you come back and your YouTube ‘recommends’ looks like this...
I am too tired now to capture a photo and send to my computer, but my toddler has similar videos, except they are on surprise eggs @linnyplant. What is up with the surprise surprises?