Over the past several months, I have spent hours painting babies…yes, you read that correctly, babies. Over one hundred of them to be precise.
You might ask why; I know my husband did, especially because he knew I could paint one and simply use Photoshop to create the different versions I needed, but that wasn’t what I wanted. I felt strongly, that while I used the same template for every baby, each one had unique brush strokes and no one was quite the same as the other, and so, I painted 110 babies.
When I had this idea for these offerings on my Etsy store, I knew that I wanted to be able to offer different colors in various skin tones. I know that for myself, anyway, it’s incredibly annoying to find something that would be perfect…if only it was going to match the room colors or the baby looked more like who it was supposed be for. So I set off on creating many different versions of the same thing to make it perfect for whoever may be looking for something like these.
You may ask why I feel like hand-painting each baby seems worth the time when there’s no guarantee that I’ll ever sell a single one of these digital prints. The reason is simple: my boys saw me put the same amount of effort into each and every baby, no matter what they looked like. So when my older son asked me, “Why did you paint babies with dark skin?” I was able to reply, “Because all babies are beautiful and unique and deserve to see themselves in the artwork they have.”
Very simply, this project made a very small way to talk to my child about what can be a difficult conversation. It wasn’t in depth by any means, but it did open a door, and for that alone, the effort was worth it.
You can find the baby quotes or baby statistic digital prints on my Etsy store, but here are some pictures for you to see. I think they are adorable!
