The Inner Artist

A new creative side has woken up in my son. Its arrival was heralded by a two hour tantrum, but all genius is born through pain and it was my eardrums that had to suffer.
He wanted the crayons and I couldn't tell what he meant, as his only was of communicating with me was to shout "Da! Da!" and point roughly to where the crayons were, at the back of the detritus on my sewing table. I hadn't let him play with them for a while as he'd not shown a lot of interest, had struggled to get them to make any sort of mark on the paper and had been more interested in trying to colour in the carpet. We've got a buyer for this house now (wehey, woo-hoo let's have a party) and the last thing we want is for them to change their minds because the the carpet has developed large purple marks.
Grandma has been letting him have a go with colouring pencils while she looks after him during my one working day of the week. It's obviously made an impression, but you have to watch him like a hawk or he draws on the walls. At least ordinary HB pencil can be rubbed off.
Now, at least, he's big enough to sit at the table. When we bought our nice Ikea table I also bought some plastic coated fabric and made a table protector to go under the table cloth, lest one of us should happen to be enjoying a nice glass of port and lemon and accidentally spill it on the table in a humorous middle class manner and the top of the table is ruined for ever.
The great thing about it is that it is wipe clean, even from the waxy lines left from large Crayola crayons. The best thing about crayons is that they're much softer than pencils and if he gets a bit carried away then it's the crayon that gives way and not the surface of the table.
So far all his works have been something akin to post-modern impressionism with a touch of post-pointilly abstraction (I studied some art history at college, not by choice). There's a great deal of energy in his work, perhaps showing the inner frustrations of what it's like to be a toddler.
At the moment all his work begins the same way.
A piece of plain paper is presented to him and he carefully selects a crayon. He looks up at me, looks at the paper, looks up at me again and smiles. Then he whispers his favourite phrase - "Go vroom!" and looks at the paper again. His left hand, clutching his crayon, slowly touches the paper and he draws -
A small ovoid shape object. It is carefully and gently done.
He looks up at me and points to the shape - "Voom." he states. Then he draws another one.
After that it gets trickier. A line is drawn on the paper, sometimes connecting the two bean-like objects, sometimes more random. Either way, he usually states "Car!" looking proudly up at me.
At this point it can go two ways. He gets bored and runs away or he selects another crayon and decided to express himself a little more energetically. Now we see bright swathes of colour appearing in big swiping motions across the page. It's now I'm glad of the plastic fabric as he's never totally sure where the paper stops and starts.
Eventually he has had enough. The paper is presented to me, sometimes still flat, sometimes crumpled. Perhaps he has a touch of the artists self-loathing and wants to destroy his work if he feels it's not up to scratch. Either that or he just likes the scrunchy noise.
Anyway, my fridge is starting to groan under the weight of accumulated paper.
By the way, if any of the brands mentioned in this blog would like to send me stuff then :-)