I found this drawing last night, along with a stack of others (some of which were very humorous and brought memories flooding back) The date is stamped on it as the 29 March 1994 - so I was just 5 and a half.

I drew the picture and wrote the sentence. Then the teacher would write it in proper English and I would rewrite it.

Ihwemotmrm = I went to my friends house.

I like the positioning of the house. It appears I was aware of visual composition back then too
Some of the pictures I found were actually quite good for a five year old, like one where I used two different colours on a guys shoes... instead of just flat colour, and it actually looks like a sort of shadow. And one where I am riding a bike away from a house, and I actually got the scale right.... it looks like the rider is a lot closer than the house. That sadly didn't have the date on it though, and I think I did it when I was 6 but in my kindergarten book.

There was one re-occuring theme in the drawings. This was when my parents sold our cat because Mum was pregnant with my younger sister. One was a series of drawings, about this. There was me playing with the cat in a few pictures, then the cat in a cage, then handing it over to a stranger with tears rolling down my face, then a picture of me alone surrounded by a lot of angry dark purple. Then there were drawings of what came after the cat (my little sister) and I. One she was showing fierce teeth, another she was pulling my hair, one we were lying in bed together and another we were sitting at a table. Odd. Damn children are interesting.

I'm going to write my interpretations of all the drawings for future reference. I could hardly recognise what the drawings were trying to symbolise now, I doubt that when I'm 30 I'll easily remember. It was the most amazing feeling when I recognised though. I remember looking before and thinking it was all pointless mess.... but some of them I can see now are drawings documenting things that were important in my life at the time. I could tell this from the colours mostly. Like there were people building a building with a red roof.... with lots of yellow around it. I now realise that was the time when they were building our new school.... my Dad used to help them on the weekends and I'd go along. The schools roofs are red and the main concrete play area is yellow. I used dark blues and purples alot in angry type drawings. Sometimes I was completely careless and others I tried really hard, surely due to my mood at the time of drawing.

I also liked to trace book illustrations and colour them in. And make collages out of faces in magazines. I found one piece where I'd used the exterior part of a round sticker (the left over bit when they cut it from a square shape) I'd drawn a picture, cut it out and stuck it on a piece of paper with curled up edges, then stuck the circle around as a frame.

I found other things I'd done at 6-7 years of age.... like a finger puppet and a picture frame made out of fabric, foam and lace. I really loved my art and craft. I found a religion type work sheet where we had to write down all our gifts. Mine were 'art, listening, good worker' and one or two more I can't remember. I still say that's true, even if it was 10 years ago.

Anyway, I just felt like rambling.