Lesley-Anne's meticulous art

Unfortunately, I don't seem to have Lesley-Anne's early drawings. I remember she doodled quite a bit, but what did I do with them??

Lesley-Anne has always loved art. When she was much younger, she would make cards and pictures as gifts. Unlike Andre, she pays attention to details. Like a flower can't be just a flower, it must be a specific type of flower. When she draws, it tends to be small, detailed items with lots of blank space. She also bothers to colour her pictures (Andre finds colouring a waste of time).

Because of her interest, we used to bring her to drawing and colouring competitions. This is one that she did for a drawing competition held at our estate when she was 6. She was supposed to depict our estate. She took it literally - only our estate, no people! I remembered asking her why the building was so small and the butterfly so big. She explained, "the building is far away lah." Oh I see... perspective. She got third prize for it (granted the competition wasn't very stiff lah). The colours are a lot more vibrant in real life than my sucky camera could show.


This one was for the HSBC art competition the following year. The participants had to draw what they wanted to be when they grew up. She didn't win anything but it was quite fun and I thought it was very nice of HSBC to make miniature copies of the drawings for the kids to take home. Here is the picture. Lesley-Anne drew herself as a zookeeper and in the corner, she's feeding a crocodile with very large teeth. Notice how she allocated a large space to the snake enclosure - for some strange reason, that was her favourite animal exhibit at the zoo back then.


This next one she drew for me a couple of years ago and I love the thought behind it. If you can't read it, the title is "Uses for a Hedgehog" and there are four. The first picture shows a hedgehog being used as a holder for candied apples, the second is a quill as a needle (with the words "Hey! I'm missing a spine!" and "Note: Don't take the spine out of a hedgehog who counts its spines at night"). The third is as a pen and the words "Again, don't take it from a hedgehog who counts its spines". Fourth is a hedgehog breaking the world record for jumping and a speech bubble which says "He did it. He jumped over a block of flats."

Finally, this one on the right is part of a project she's doing now for school. She's supposed to sketch wetland creatures. Each creature has to be drawn in two ways - gesture, ie shaded to show the texture and flat style, ie clean lines to show details. I think her kingfisher drawings are still in progress.