Art Takes Time

Although I prefer to present myself as a moderately modest person (I'm so modest, aren't I?), I recognize that I do have a few talents up my sleeve. Fine arts are not one of these admitted gifts.

On the long drive home from Costco last week, I was searching for activities to keep both Harper entertained and our sanity. Harper loves to devour crayons (yes, she bites, chews AND ingests them), and giving markers to a 2 year old is a car sell-ability's death sentence. So, I handed Harper a pen and a cardboard box we used to package some of our bulk grocery items. She started doodling, then demanded that I draw a cow for her. Okay, I thought. I remember doodling cows in 6th grade when I decided to become a 12 year old vegetarian. I can do this. Then she wanted a snake. Easy enough. A few curved lines and a forked tongue. Done. Then she wanted a cat, and that's when her demands began challenging my 6th grade artistic abilities. When she called for a seal, I knew it was over. I did my best to draw my mind's manifestation of a monk seal. In the moment, I thought I did a pretty good job. Just as I was drawing the seal's fins (seals have fins, right?), Harper started to scream and whine that I wasn't drawing fast enough, to which I hastily (and seriously) replied: "Harper! Art takes time!", thinking I was teaching her a valuable lesson in patience and art appreciation.

Rivs gave a glance over his shoulder from behind the wheel to look at my self-professed "art" and snickered. I too decided to inspect my drawings, and upon realizing how amusingly awful they were, began to laugh.

Yeah, art takes time, and apparently vaguely decipherable animal drawings that could have been sketched by a stoned 3-toed sloth take time too.

Exibit A


Yeah, I labeled "cow" for my 2 year old. That's how bad the drawings were. Oh, and the blob on the far right corner? Yeah, the one with the inverted unicorn horn? That's right, the one that looks like a pick-axe with an eye? That's a seal.