FLEETING - Illustration Friday

I always have that small moment of panic when a new Illustration Friday prompt comes out. I think 'I have no clue what to draw!' (We drew and watercolored this time.) Today, the easiest way for the girls and I to get started was to look up the word.

Fleeting: (adj) - passing swiftly, transitory. Vanishing quickly, Ephemeral.

Then, of course, we had to look up ephemeral being the wordy nerds we are. *eyeroll*

Ephemeral: (adj) - Lasting for a markedly brief time.

Then we searched Google images to give ourselves ideas of what others think of as 'fleeting.' We found hummingbirds, butterflies, time, days, life, age, beauty and more. After that we had ideas start to pop in our heads. Some slower than others (ie: me.)

The little one thought of dandelions, flowers that go to seed and those little helicopter plants that fall out of trees.


The teen thought of emotions and how you get butterflies in your stomach at times but it goes away eventually.


I started working on a sunset. They are so quickly absorbed back into the sky that if you don't watch carefully, you will miss it. However, my piece is needing to be done in layers so I set it aside to work on something else. Here is what I have so far on the sunset. It's from a pic I took last July when we were at the beach. Be kind, its a work in progress...


The prompt from Illustration Friday included the quote 'Art is long and Time is fleeting...' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Since he is a favorite around here, especially with the little one, I wanted to add the actual quote to my piece. I tried to interpret time as fleeting while art is long. Can you see an adaptation of the sunset I'm working on, on the wall?! ha

The girls have been painting all week. You should see the gorgeous pieces they've created. They're improving by leaps and bounds. See my homeschool blog for pics.