Happy Portraits

I don’t often advertise on my blog.  I’ve had offers to ‘go commercial’ and I’ve turned them down.  I’ve been cautious not to recommend products or services or suggest that you contact people whose skills I believe in.  That’s not been the purpose of my blog, but today I find that I must ‘advertise’ a young artist whose work I highly admire.  I’m not prejudiced at all – in spite of the fact that this young artist is my grandson!  You see, artistic ability runs in our family.  My grandmother was an extremely good artist, although she didn’t share her skills very often during my growing up years.  I remember when she told me that, as a young girl, she longed to draw so much that she didn’t let the fact they couldn’t afford artist’s supplies stop her.  She peeled bark off a nearby tree, took a piece of charcoal from the fireplace and drew to her heart’s content.  Her daughter, my mother’s sister, was a wonderful artist and her son, my cousin, attended art school after he graduated from high school.  His work was later featured in galleries and sold to discriminating buyers.  My father had some artistic ability, too.  My ‘art’ skills didn’t come through in drawing or painting – it came through music.  Music I studied and music that just came comes from my heart through my fingers on the keyboard.  Our son’s art abilities captured the attention of a middle school art teacher and she encouraged him to continue to learn and follow a career in art.  He chose not to do that, but his son – Mr. G. – has obviously inherited the same talent.  I would like to introduce you to him (my favorite young artist!).
Mr. G. loves to draw and it’s obvious he has a keen eye for the reality of his subjects.  At a recent family gathering Mr. G. proudly presented each person gathered there with a portrait he had carefully drawn of them.  It was obvious he had given careful thought to the personality of each one.  He has a book about drawing caricatures – he said it gave him some ideas.  So, without further adieu. . . here are the portraits he drew of my sweetheart and me.  My sweetheart . . .
And me. 
With each presentation he explained why he had chosen to draw each of us as he did.  I was almost afraid to hear his thinking about my portrait!  When he told me why he drew me as he did, I was a bit overwhelmed.  He said, ‘Grandma, I drew you this way because you are a happy person, and I wanted you to be happy in my drawing!’

If that’s how Mr. G. sees me, I have accomplished something I hoped my grandkids would see in me.  You can’t trick kids to believe you are something you are not.  I gained a bit of confidence as a grandmother that day and I am happy – happy that he sees me as a person who is happy!