My sister is a kindergarten teacher and she invited me to come out to read a story to her class and do some illustrations. She told me that if I wanted to I could bring Francois. We had talked about doing this when I first started getting into this but since I work full-time it never seemed to work out. Since I’m off on maternity leave I finally had the chance to do it.
We read, Jerry Pallotta’s book, Who Will Haunt My House on Halloween.
I had so much fun doing this. I hope the children enjoyed it as much as I did. After the story I opened it up for some Q & A but all they wanted to do was tell me what they were going as for Halloween, which was totally fine by me.
Once that was over my sister had an activity for us to do. She gave them all one large sheet of black construction paper and some chalk. I was going to do some drawings on the board to help them come up with their own spooky illustration.
I had them tell me some basic shapes and from there we made a house. Then, we added some other elements like ghosts, spiders, witches, mummies, zombies, a full moon, bats, pumpkins, a tree, a black cat, lightning, etc.
They were really well behaved. I was very impressed with how well they listened. As a guest who has the tendency to make most children go completely spastic I thought they handled themselves nicely.
Afterward, when it was time to go, the kids gave me a round of applause, a thank you and a group hug. It warmed my heart. My sister told me that her school did not have an art teacher so me being there was a real treat. My heart sank when I heard that. That should not be the case in the U.S.A.
I’m obviously a big fan of Halloween and I like to sculpt so I opted to do a little sculpture out of Sculpy and photograph it in front of one of my paintings. I’ve always enjoyed scarecrows. There is something very sad about them, all alone in a field, crucified with it’s only purpose being to scare and keep things away, a solitary protector of corn fields, exposed to the elements wearing nothing but rags and forced to keep a constant grin.
In the Wizard of Oz movie the scarecrow is so inept at his job the crows mock him. How pitiful.
There is a beautiful short film done by Carlos Lascano that I’d like to share with you. The Legend of the Scarecrow
Enjoy!
I hope to do some more spooktacular work here in the next couple weeks.
Yesterday was our first big day out. We started off the day with a trip to Massillon for some consulting in feeding practices. Then we had lunch in Canton, followed by several disappointing trips to various big box stores, shocking I know. Afterward, we drove back to Akron and stopped at Szalay’s farm for some fresh veggies and a quick photo shoot.
Above we have little Tiger Lilly with mommy sporting her knitted pumpkin hat that mommy made her.
Right next to the farm is the Tow Path so we went for a gentle stroll through the woods. Two kind passersby offered to take our photo to which we obliged.
At this time we were pretty tired so we went home. Auntie Liz and Grandma Gold came over to offer some help. Grandma and Grandpa Gold bought us some wedding soup and deli meats to make us some delicious sandwiches for dinner.
Now it was time for a bath. We all worked together to give little Lilly a nice warm spongebath. She was so well behaved.
Needless to say, we were pretty tired after all this and motored on off to bed. I’m so grateful for this opportunity to stay home from work to bond and help my wife with different duties. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in my entire life.
how could you not be on pins and needles. My baby is in there and I’m freaking out about this ticking time-bomb of a wife and uterus. My wife continues to be a model of pure baby magic.
My sis in-law came over tonight and took some pics. Here is one of my faves.
When we first moved into our humble abode the spare room had wood paneling covering the walls painted beige with odd pieces of base boards and trim to give the illusion of proper trim work. Eventually we learned that drywall had indeed been installed at one point in time in certain areas, but not completely [...]
My name is Kirk Olmstead. I'm an artist. This is my creative outlet. All work displayed on this site is copy-righted material that cannot be used or duplicated without my consent.
