Art lessons with my inner child

Recreating my earliest artworks.

Sep 18, 2024

You’re reading Soft Hobbies, a weekly newsletter for imperfect creatives with perfectionist tendencies. I’m Auzin, a Seattle-based writer in the fiction, poetry, and tech writing spheres. To see more of my work, go here. And if you hit the heart button on this post, it will help others discover my writing and also make me super happy <3

Hi softies,

When I visited my family a couple months ago, my Baba gave me a bag of art. It was a plastic bag with Mickey Mouse on it, a souvenir from our family trip to Disneyland when I was about 10. Inside was a treasure trove of paintings, drawings, and coloring pages that I made when I was between the ages of 2 and 5.1

My first thought was “Wow, I’m so happy to have these. These represent when I was making art without lessons, doubt, or perfectionism. These pages are from when my creativity was at its purest and most unfettered. So awesome.”

My second thought was “Omg, I bet I can make the sickest Substack post about these.”

I took the bag back home to Seattle. This weekend, I chose four pieces from the stack of paintings and attempted to recreate them. It was a very, very cozy experience, and not as emotional as I thought it would be, probably because I have no memories of making the original paintings. I don’t know what I was thinking at that age, or how I was feeling, or what my process was to make these.

All I have is the end result, and my aim was to duplicate that result as closely as I could, without forcing anything or getting upset at imperfections.

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Supplies and process

My guess is that most of my child-paintings were done with acrylic paint, or maybe “kid paint” that is washable and non-toxic. Since I’m no longer in danger of eating my art supplies, I decided to pick up a few primary colors in acrylic from my favorite local art store.

One of my biggest challenges during this project was mixing up colors that matched the originals. I think the red paint I bought is too warm-toned because I couldn’t mix an accurate burgundy/dark red. But I also couldn’t mix a proper carroty orange, so maybe my mixing skills were to blame :)

The original paintings were done on butcher paper and construction paper, so I grabbed some sheets of those. I think most of the originals were made with fingers, but I alternated between fingers and brushes. I spread out my supplies and my blanket on the living room floor, and spent a few hours connecting with my inner child artist.

The setup, and some very edible-looking paints.

Painting #1: getting my hands dirty

I chose the smallest painting to start with, a symmetrical composition on a square piece of construction paper. The green and red colors could seem Christmas-themed, but the cool tones of the red and the black elements seem to point towards something organic. Was I trying to paint pomegranates, maybe, or apples?

That “Auzin” at the top was definitely written by an adult.

This is the first time I’ve finger-painted as an adult. I don’t like dirty hands, and have always enjoyed the tidy elegance of using a brush, whether for art or for makeup. But this painting came from before I cared about any of that. And touching the medium by hand is a highly tactile (obviously, lol) way to create, which was very calming and grounding. I definitely recommend it and will return to finger-painting in the future as a way to let go of perfectionism or anxiety. Plus it’s fun!

I used a brush for the red spots and my finger for the black dots and lines. I painted using a wet-on-wet technique since I’m impatient, and realized that I probably did the same thing back when I was a kid, too. The technique creates a unique effect2 that shows up in both paintings.

My recreation of the original piece. Pretty happy with it!

Overall, this one was super fun and a great place to start!

Painting #2: living up to an example

I was actually nervous to start this painting because I didn’t want to mess it up — something I never would have worried about as a kid! This was the most “representational” piece I recreated. You can see dark blue trees, a yellow splotch which could be the sun, and two swords (!!!) going across the top of the painting.

Child painting #2, a dark and mysterious composition.

One sword is a classic falchion or longsword, and the other looks closer to a rapier or sabre. I think the swords look so cool and was surprised to see them. I wonder how old I was when I made this, where I was, and what had inspired me to paint these specific elements. Was I going by memory, or using a picture in a book as reference?

I had to scale things up slightly since my new paper was a little bigger. For the new piece, I was thinking a lot about “getting it right,” and that led to being unhappy with my color blends and shapes, especially for the swords. My original swords are redder and thinner (it’s hard to see in the picture above, but trust me). I used a brush, but honestly, I think the original finger-painted piece looks more confidently done!

I think this is a really interesting piece, especially with the cooler tones. The trees remind me of mushrooms or spaceships. It’s so funny how much better the original version of this is. Maybe I’ll give it another shot some day :)

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Painting #3: struggles with color

I love the orange color in this, it’s so bright! The large carrot especially makes me really happy. It’s funny because at the time I painted this, I’d probably never seen a carrot with a leafy green top in my life — I bet these are pulled directly from cartoons.

Some cartoon carrots, a blue puddle, and a fresh bloodstain?

For some reason, I couldn’t recreate the shape or the color of the carrots to my satisfaction. I used my fingers, but I think a brush would have been helpful for the tapered shape. And I wasn’t able to mix the correct orange for the carrots, or the right tone of red for the big burgundy splotch, which is so distinct from the carrots in the original piece. They’re too similar in the new version.

These look more like strawberries and a sweet potato.

I kinda want to buy a pre-mixed carrot orange color and try this one again, because I like the original so much and think I can do a better job. With that being said, I had a lot of fun dragging my fingers through the paint, and got a lot more comfortable with getting paint under my nails. Finger-painting gets you closer to a deep creative root because it requires no interstice between the medium and its manipulator.3

I’m shocked at how I painted carrots more clearly as a child, lol. Maybe there was less stuff in my brain getting in the way of seeing or conceptualizing an object?

Painting #4: abstract means no pressure

I love the primary colors on this one, there’s something very primal and abstract expressionist about them. It kind of reminds me of Yves Klein Blue. You can notice the blue color dripping down the page; I wasn’t sure how to recreate that, so I just dragged the brush off the page in my version. Fingers + water might have worked better.

Due to the non-representational nature of this piece, I didn’t feel as much pressure to make an exact duplicate. My colors and shapes are slightly off, and that’s okay. The only reason I could create a piece like this in the first place is that there were no expectations placed upon me to be “good” or “talented.” I was making art because the materials were in front of me.

My blotchy recreation of a blotchy painting.

Not else much to say about this one. It serves what it needs to serve!

Project takeaways

I’m proud of Little Auzin! These are bright, joyful, and interesting pieces. I wish I had her confidence and lack of perfectionism. It’s nice to know that I can approach that headspace again whenever I want to, and I still have over a dozen pieces that didn’t make it into this project. If you’d like to see a Part Two, let me know!