Puppy Girl Gets Artistic Too!

So, only as an adult have I found my ability to make things in an artistic way. I'm not talking about crafting...I've always been "crafty". I'm talking about actually making ART. Or at least, attempting to make art. I'm curious where this ability was when I was a child. Was it hidden? Waiting to be discovered and released? I know I had tiny glimmers of it here and there. I remember one time in particular - I had to do something for a book report, and I wanted to draw an eagle, but I hadn't ever drawn anything before. I got out a book that I had on bald eagles and set to work trying to trace one of the pictures. Well, it didn't work. I couldn't see through the paper I was using well enough to see the picture. But I HAD to have a picture of this eagle! So I attempted to draw it myself and it turned out GREAT. Everyone thought I'd traced it - including my own mother! Even after I expounded on how I spent the last hour and a half drawing it myself and just copying it, I still wasn't believed. Sad. Maybe if I was believed I would have fostered my artistic abilities earlier? (I wasn't believed because I had a tendency to lie - since I was the truthful child in the family - but because to that point I had shown absolutely NO artistic ability at all. I guess it's hard to believe something like that when you don't see it forming before your eyes.)
My Puppy Girl has always enjoyed doing crafty things, and drawing and coloring and painting...but like me as a child, she has shown no artistic ability - that is until a couple years ago!
About two years ago (ISH) she saw me attempting to paint something, and of course wanted to join in on the fun. So I sat her down on the floor, laid out a ton of newspaper, got her as undressed as possible (because kids ARE that messy), laid out a piece of watercolor paper, and gave her a couple of colors of paint, and a single paintbrush. Oh, and a cup of water. This is what she came up with:

This one shows the colors fairly well

Hanging up on my wall (REAL stained glass courtesy of my mother's amazing talents)

I LOVE it. It makes me think of poppies...except they're somehow in a blueish field instead of in green.
Since then she has wanted me to teach her to draw and paint. Well, I have a hard time doing that since I kinda make it up as I go. But I teach her what I figure out, and what I learn from others. She's made a couple other things between then and now, but nothing that she is proud of until a few weeks ago. So I'm not going to display the ones she isn't proud of here. Maybe she should think about painting over her "not so good" work? Make something new? Hmmm. I'll bring that up to her.
But the next one that she IS proud of (and so am I) is this made over the recent winter break from school:

Please excuse my husband's computer game! ;-)

A close-up of the middle

I made her sign her work :)

I love it. The colors in the bottom layer smooshed and blended to make a great background for the splatted colors. And the splatted colors just look wonderful together...and the way some of them almost swirl around others is really neat. She employed a few different "techniques" - one of which somehow included a stick.
Here are some pictures of her in the process...because she's my kid and she's so pretty and awesome. :-D

Mixing up her own paint colors

That's some serious concentration!

The artist hard at work! I love that child. Added to her budding artistic talent is incredible intelligence, and beauty. She amazes me constantly.