Bubble and Children

Bubble and Children

 ​Today, I completed a watercolor work with the theme of Bubbles and Children. 

  ​This painting is also one of my everyday painting projects, painted with watercolor paints for $1.

  There is a small and beautiful beach in the neighborhood where I live. It's called Sand Street Beach and it's near the Stony Brock Village Center. It's in a isolated corner, so at first I wasn't aware of the beach's existence even though I lived here for a few years. For most locals, West Meadow Beach is more popular.

West Meadow Beach

  But I personally prefer Sand Street Beach. It is a small and cute sea like a small child because the sound of the waves is not too loud and give us cozy feeling. 

  Every time I go there the sea stands in a different color, wave, sound, light refection and different feeling.

  ​I remember seeing the beautiful light and color of the sea together with my children and their friends at this Sandstreet Beach.

 ​It is a happy time to see children in the sea collecting shells, observing fish in the clear water and making sand castles.

  ​With those happy memories in mind, I started drawing three children.

 And I start to color it with watercolor paints. The space above is still empty. 
​Personally, I think the best paint to express children is watercolor. Clear, pure, innocent  and improvised, like children.

---

 Then I drew  bubbles in the empty space. 

  Soap bubbles have been used as entertainment for at least 400 years, as evidenced by 17th-century Flemish paintings showing children blowing bubbles with clay pipes. 

 ​ Adriaen Hanneman was a Dutch Golden Age painter best known for his portraits of the exiled British royal court. His style was strongly influenced by his contemporary, Anthony van Dyck.
Impressive, he captured and painted a boy playing with a bubble. 

Adriaen Hanneman, Two Boys Blowing Bubbles (ca. 1630)

  If you look at his paintings, the expression of the child in the overall greenish dark brown painting changes the mood of the painting. The eyes of the boy lovingly watching the created bubbles fly are very impressive. Perhaps the painter wanted to capture the kind, lively and innocent energy that the boy displayed.

  ​As a child, I look at the bubble with excitement and curiosity, but when I become an adult, I no longer look at it with the same heart. There are probably very few adults who make and blow bubbles for themselves and not for the purpose of showing children.

  In this way, soap bubbles are considered a symbol of childhood innocence. 

​ And when adults see soap bubbles, they can remember their childhood. I drew small droplets that evoke all memories of the past, present and future in the empty space of the painting.