art time!

I needed to wait until after Christmas to post these as they were made into a calendar for our families. But now they're all out and I wanted to share.

Our Christmas present to our siblings, grandparents, etc. was a calendar of ourselves. But we didn't want them to be any ol' pictures. So I came up with the idea last year to reproduce famous paintings. My plan was to do two a month and then we wouldn't be rushed. HA HA HA HA HA! Who was I fooling?

I completely forgot about it until late October.

But...I always do better with an impending deadline...

We ended up revamping our choices anyway because some paintings were too ornate or the costumes too difficult to reproduce and our budget was rather limited.

The unexpected part was that the kids learned all sorts of truths about paintings and photographs. As did I.

Truth #1 - Posing is hard work! And painful! Sometimes the shoots would take upwards of 30 minutes and we were constantly taking pictures and making minute adjustments.
"Move your foot just a titch more to the left."
*snap picture and compare to original*
"Nope, not far enough. A little more."
"Mom! My leg is starting to ache!"
"Just a few minutes more...I promise!"

Truth #2 - Paintings, while looking real, do not necessarily adhere to reality. My daughter, reproducing Flaming June, found that there was no way, short of breaking bones, to get her body in that exact pose. She's a child and the woman was full-grown, so there are some proportion issues, but frankly, I'm not sure even a professional yoga master could do it. Let alone fall asleep in that position! All the time the kids were realizing as they looked at these great works of art, "Hey! That's not even possible!"

Truth #3 - Photographs are just as dishonest. As a group, we were constantly looking at the paintings and asking, "What do we have around the house that we could use for that?" By the end, we were all outside-the-box thinkers. Strips of cut t-shirts became suspenders, a swimming medal, while being careful to hide the bright green ribbon, became a royal pendant, and very carefully placed fabric transformed into a beautiful, flowing dress, to name a few. And in the end, shoulders wrapped in towels, and bed sheets piled on heads, became pretty close representations.

(As always, click on the pictures for enlargements.)