Friday, May 19, 2006

Colouring

This morning when Helena woke me up, I installed her at the kitchen table with crayons and colouring book. I sneaked back to bed to steal a few more minutes' rest, kicking J-F out to take care of child and coffee.

Some minutes later, J-F brought me latte and Helena brought me this picture.

It's the first picture of hers I've seen that looks coloured. That is, somehow ordered, controlled.

Till recently, it seemed our colouring books would just as well have been filled with blank pages. While Helena might take a second to remark on whatever animal or flower was outlined, the crayoning that ensued was a chaotic tangle of colour scribbles with seemingly no correlation to the underlying image. Lately I'd noticed a more careful approach: a proclamation that a particular object should be a certain shade and then a token wisp of wax to make it so.

But this is colouring.

4 comments:

Suzanne said...

Wow! I am impressed. Sean displays no interest in coloring; when he does it's just one big tangle of lines.

Anonymous said...

Amazing! Given that I've seen what she does -- and she has never paid attention to lines, outlines or anything -- this is truly impressive. Almost like one morning she realized how it was supposed to work, and there it was. Hugs.

Anonymous said...

Wow! Great colo(u)ring, Helena! Those windows are rendered in two of my very favorite shades.

Anonymous said...

Lovely!

And you expressed this wonderful moment so beautifully, as always.