The Magic by Eight Hands

This Sunday, I woke up with sore throat that was followed by headache and fever. Thankfully, the medicine helped me relieve from the fever and the pain. So I was able to proceed with the to-do list of the day.

One of the important tasks I had planned was to get done with my son's school assignment.

The task was to draw imagery for four seasons of the year- winter, summer, autumn and spring.

Because I was at my mom's house and my nephews were also there, I had told them to join me when it would be the time to colour the picture. It would be a nice activity to spend time without playing fighting-like games.

Oh, the boys! It is hard to make them sit. They always want to run, jump, scream, push and pull. Amidst this, one gets hurt and the others get the blame. Then we need police and judiciary to calm the situation and do justice with the parties. 😬 Believe me, it is not an easy task.

Whenever I have something to offer them that can make them sit under my supervision without feeling bored, I do. Colouring is an activity they love, so it was a win-win to let them join me. I would get an assistance to finish the task quickly while they would get an opportunity to perform a task they love. The plan went well........

When I started drawing, the two nephews and one of my sons were around me waiting for the drawing to complete, asking various questions and commenting on certain aspects. One of their most favourite question was, “When will it complete? When will we start colouring?” Impatience......!🙃.
Let’s back to the drawing.

I first drew the whole picture with a pencil and then traced the outlines with black pointer. Mostly, I prefer to trace outlines with coloured markers. Nevertheless, they were not available to me at that time. So I just carried on the work with whatever the availability was.

When I was tracing the outline, my son asked me if he could do this. My obvious reply was a “No". The reason is that I often don’t erase the mistakes while drawing and just keep on creating the figure. That’s why this is only me who knows which line is to be traced and which to leave.

After the tracing was done, I erased all the pencil work. Then the picture was ready to be coloured.

The three boys had a little argument about who would be colouring which part. Nevertheless, with my interference, the matter was resolved. I assigned particular portions to each boy and gave them some guidance about how I expected the colours to be done.

I went away for a while and when I returned some unexpected things had already been done. For instance, the boy whom I told to only colour around the outlines of the snowman, had already coloured in the middle of the snowman's face with heavy strokes.

Well, that’s my five year-old nephew. I could say nothing but smile over his cuteness. I lightened the colour with an eraser and requested him to colour the summer, leaving the winter for me as it had some trickiness. Thankfully he agreed.

The boy whom I assigned the task of colouring the grass, burnished it with dark green, while I had asked him to scumble it with light green.

The act was irreversible, so we proceeded with it.

On our way to completion of the project, there were minute quarrels among boys, yet my timely intervention kept them from escalating.

I gave the last touches to the colouring, blended colours using eraser and appreciated the boys for their spectacular work.

This was the final result.

The boys were extremely happy for their accomplishment. They displayed the drawing to all the family members individually seeking appreciation and applause- an experience that will remain etched in their memories.

_{All the images are take by me using my mobile camera. Gif is created by me using viva video}