Colour Vision Envy

Dd got to try her hand at watercolour landscapes yesterday, at an art group for home educated teens. All these young people came up with rich and evocative blends of sky, sea and land simply by applying swooshes of colour to a page. Dd didn't enjoy it - being a sci-fi kind of gal, she thinks that only monochrome and bold graphic lines will do. This made me absolutely green (how much of the world we view through coloured lenses) with envy. She was casually dismissing something that I'd love to be able to do, but, as a colour blind person, I find incredibly challenging. (Remember these little tests from your school days? It was my first intimation that adults don't necessarily have all the answers when the school nurse was adamant that I must be faking my inability to discern the numbers hidden in the dots because "girls can't be colour blind". Wrong!!!)

Guided by a very talented home ed mum, all those at yesterday's art group could see colours in the world around them and then mimic these by blending paints on a palette. Yet dd complains that "watercolours just aren't for me", while I look on in awe at anyone capable of negotiating the colour wheel.

I hope she opens her mind to it all, but I guess that's the way things go when your child has freedom to choose - they're not necessarily going to place the same value on those things that seem deeply impressive to their parents.