Matthew's Art

Matthew really likes to draw. Here are some of his most recent doodles:

Boy with Glasses (From his minimalist period)

For a long time Matthew primarily drew with pens. Lately he's become fond of oil pastels. Regardless of his medium, he often puts glasses on the faces he draws.

Valentine's (still from the minimalist period)

This was a card for Jonathan and me. Inside he wished us a Happy Valentine's Day and ended it with "Love, Matthew" Notice the glasses, and the spiky hair. A fairly accurate representation of Jonathan, I'd say! Matthew's let me know that he wants to be able to spike his hair next time I give him a haircut.

Birthday Cake

This one I think is inspired by the Hispanic culture here in San Antonio. It's supposed to be a birthday cake, but he used colors you would find more at home on the Mexican flag than a traditional birthday cake.

Boat on the water

If you look closely you can see all of the smiling people in the portholes. Guess they aren't seasick yet...

Starry (Day?)

Matthew has a series of drawings inspired by Van Gogh's starry night. This is the only day time one he's done, and I can't seem to find the night scenes (sometimes he draws a mountain, sometimes not)... Additionally he doesn't typically asked how to spell words, if he doesn't know he just guesses phonetically. Hence the "Mete the new picture. I like it. What do you think about it." I'm rather surprised that he knew how to spell "picture" but not "meet!" Go figure.

A Game

This is a game Matthew designed. He explained all the rules and details to me, but it was pretty involved. Rather than misrepresenting some fine point I will just say that it included robots, guns, tricky parts and was "cool."

[Jonathan notes: he got our neighbor Joseph to play the game with him. It involved killing bad guys, of course. It sounded an awful lot like Savage Moon on paper. After about ten minutes Joseph started asking plaintively, "can we play something else now?" Matthew tried and failed to get him to keep playing until they beat the boss. Then he tried to get Rachel to play. And then me. I sort of felt turning him down but it really did sound excruciating.]

Untitled

Not sure what inspired this next one.

Bluebonnets

Van Gogh had his sunflowers, Monet favored water lilies, Matthew likes bluebonnets. He has a whole collection of bluebonnet art on all different kinds of paper and varying styles. This one needs to be mailed to Grandma and Grandpa as you can see. Why bluebonnets? I'm guessing it must be the Texas indoctrination education system. It's the state flower naturally, and Matthew knows all about it. He is slowly imprinting on Texas. One nice side effect is his use of "sir" and "ma'am." Melissa has picked up on it as well, but she just uses "sir." Think of Marcie in comic strip Peanuts.

And finally the artist himself: