Jaci Dawn

I moved several boxes of artwork up into my room. Then I opened them and discovered a plethora of treasures, including some old homeschool work the kids did.

The art work is all undated, but it’s still fun to remember. I can guess at about what age they were when they drew or painted. It’s all high school and junior high school work because I was late to homeschooling and opted to homeschool two of the kids through high school. Most people homeschool early and send their kids to public school. I’m not sure what their thinking is, but I found extending our homeschooling into high school was very rewarding and it certainly didn’t hamper the kids from reaching toward their professional adult goals.

Obviously, homeschooling is near and dear to my heart.

Anyway, here is what I found: two self portraits, a fashion sketch, and several oil paintings. All three kids are represented.

This undated sketch of prom dresses has to date to before we moved into this house. Arwen was probably 15? She could have been 16 or 17. She didn’t go to any dances until she went away to college, but I remember the sketch. I love the hair style.

I’m going out on a limb here and guessing this is 8th grade. Arwen taught herself a different approach to pencil sketching when she started classes at the community college and this is pre-community college. Her renderings became more realistic and she branched out into pastels.

I’ll bet this was done at the same time as Arwen’s self portrait. So Levi was 13. He was taking oil painting classes at a home school co-op about the same time. Later, he took drawing 101 at the community college, but his art work (and there was a lot of it: he filled sketch books prolifically) always had this hard “edge” to it. Defiant. Rebellious. I love how he captured his own nose & the rebellious look.

This is very different for Levi: a religiously themed piece of artwork. Oil on canvas. He was 13 and taking the oil painting class (which he took primarily because there were cute homeschooled girls also taking it). I’ll hang this in my studio. I like the Impressionist style of art. I like the rays of light (or, knowing my son, the bolts of lightning) raining down on “Noah’s Ark”. That’s a pretty rough sea out there!

Chrystal was in and out of public school during high school, so this probably was not technically a homeschool work. She painted it and set it in the loft to dry and never finished it. She told me the koi still need fins.

I love it. It is by far my favorite of all the above: the koi seem to be dancing in the green depth of a pool. I don’t even care that they don’t have fins: do they have to have fins? If you’re looking into a murky pool, do you notice the dorsal fins?

There was a lot more and several entertaining items from grade school, when Levi and Arwen were still in a public one-room school. But these were the best examples.