Budding Artists

 Grandma and I took the kids to Uptown Art for a painting class this morning.  They were so excited.

 At the beginning of the class, they got instructions on how to refer to their 4 different paint brushes.

 Grandma did a great job watching and assisting Gabriel. 

 I took charge of Grace and felt like I needed to sit on my hands to stop myself from taking over.  A few times I just had to walk away to keep from making her painting mine.

 I helped her scoop the paints and mix them, but she painted by herself.

 Gabriel was very good at listening to the instructor and following directions.

 After painting the squares, they painted their hands and put their hand prints in white on each square.

 I love those cute little hand prints.

 Next, they put a colored hand print on top of the white hand print.  Grace had fun getting messy.

 The final step was to outline the squares with a black line.  I was really surprised at how well Grace did with this step of the process.

 Gabriel was a bit slower and more meticulous.

 Once their paintings were finished, the kids got to eat pizza.  This gave the instructors time to add a finishing touch to the paintings and allow them to dry before the kids took them home.

 Sam was there with a group of his friends from school.  Gabriel has been begging to have a play date with Sam, so it was great that they got to hang out together a little this morning.

 I asked the kids to pose so I could take their picture with their paintings.  Well . . . Grace pretty well bombed this one.

 Then both of my little smart allecks were uncooperative for the next one.

Finally, I had to threaten to take away t.v. time in order to get a half-way decent picture of the two of them.  Geez!