Hi! Welcome to my website! I illustrate things that make me happy and put them here. I am building my portfolio so I can illustrate books. If you’d like to collaborate with me or hire me for an illustration job, firstly, thank you for being a decent human being that still wants real art from real human beings. Secondly, you can email me at amber.a.whitworth@gmail.com :) Stay excellent!
This scene is from Kingdom of Ash, the last book in the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas.
This is a continually updating blog post containing my sketchbook pages from the year 2022.
I gave Gwen a cute short haircut!
I got off social media a week ago (except for Facebook which I only ever use for Marketplace and group things) because my brain was melting out of my ears.
I was noticing my ADD getting really bad - executive dysfunction, anxiety, spiraling thoughts, and task overwhelm. I knew it was entirely related to the time I was spending on social media. I was DEEEEEEEP in the doomscroll whirlpool. TikTok. NPR. Instagram. Repeat. Hear this take. That take. Respond. Post my thoughts. Hear back.
In the real world, I take care of two small girls, run a household, and live my life. Social media was a cumulonimbus cloud dumping heavy thoughts over all of that, and I was so busy squeezing water out of my hair that everything else was suffering, but most especially, my mind was.
Since bidding farewell to that sphere for the foreseeable future…..
I felt instant clarity. I felt like an overblown & poorly tuned radio had been shut off nearby.
My days lengthened by 3-4 hours, or so it seemed! I’ve started reading books again. I’ve started WRITING a book. I call and text people. By the end of a week I realized I don’t have an adequate system in place that gets me enough in-person adult interaction, because WOOF - I got lonely quickly. I had no idea how much I keep to myself and fail to make friends simply because I fill that need with online interactions! By day 6 I was crying, just feeling absolutely gutted that Weston had to leave for the weekend.
I quickly reinstalled Facebook (which, again, I never use anymore) so I could find some walking buddies and join a playdate group. It’s time to make some friends here!
And finally, a little over a week after the big cleanse, I have decided to follow in my mother’s footsteps and do a weekly blog to document my life and share the things we are doing. I absolutely adore reading my mother’s blog every week - even when I was THERE and KNOW what happened!
The comfort level of this fuzzy blanket must be off the charts if it coaxes Abigail into a nap!
On Sunday I was sustained as the second counselor in the Young Women’s presidency. Weston was called as the assistant Financial Clerk. I got to know our darling Young Women - 4 out of the 7 were in attendance - and one of them had a beautiful blanket wrapped around her. When I complimented it, she told me it belonged to her sister, who passed away in a car accident nearly a month ago. I cannot imagine such a devastating loss. I’m honored to be working with these girls; each of them is stronger than I ever had to be at their age.
On Monday I spent hours (HOURS!!!!) sorting through the avalanche of reference material left to me by the previous art teacher whose job I took when she retired. I had to update my family as I dug through the mountain. A good 50% or more of it was unusable “whoops” photos - badly cropped photo prints, blurry screenshots, watermarked Google Image searches… I can’t have my kids wasting time sorting through all that just to find something good!
200 Cardinals, 400 wood ducks. We probably don’t need that many.
40% of the way through the material. Piles on piles. My brain went partially numb by the end of this.
LITERALLY FIVE COPIES OF THIS ONE
I was too terrified of this one to throw it away. Good girl, Precious.
After hours of sorting, and 5 MASSIVE stacks of photos (each as big as my hand could hold) thrown into the trash, I ended up with a neat little box of beautiful reference photos. The kids in my art classes the next day (Tuesday) were thrilled.
Tuesdays are our crazy days. My boss, Janice, is the woman whose AirBnB Weston stayed in during his final Optometry rotation earlier this year. She’s an amazing woman. She runs a tutoring center out of a tiny church here in Stonewall, which helps the church (whose membership is dwindling) and helps her, with lower rent. She organized all of my classes to be in one afternoon so I don’t have to pay for as much childcare for Gwen.
So on Tuesdays: Gwen and I eat lunch and I drive her up to Shreveport and drop her off at daycare. I teach a class full of homeschooled kids at 1pm - from 6 years old up to 15 years old. Then I go hop into the car pickup line at Abby’s school, usually with a drink and a snack in hand from Sonic (our one and only fast food place here in Stonewall). At 3 we arrive back at the church and I set her up with a snack and some tablet time while I set up for my 3:30 class, which only has one student in it! I enjoy being one on one. More students may join the class at some point; Janice found all my students for me, and she is always rounding up more. Then I teach one more class at 4:30, with after school kids. Everyone is always ravenous. The tutoring center has snacks and drinks, and sometimes I’ll bake something for those hungry kids too. Weston picks Gwen up from daycare when he gets off work at 5, and Abby and I get home after I’ve cleaned up my supplies, usually around 6.
Tuesdays are fun and fulfilling, but so exhausting! I am usually trashed on Wednesdays.
I’m working with Gwen on her letters so she can learn to read soon. She enjoyed writing the letters in salt, and I enjoyed having a robotic vacuum to help with cleanup!
Gwen is on a Harry Potter kick lately. She found the Halloween costumes in the Costco magazine that came in the mail, and now she knows what she wants to be!
Gwen’s current obsession is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. She will talk your ear off about the “Harry Potter baby” (in other words, Harry as a baby getting left on his aunt & uncle’s doorstep) and everything she draws has Hogwarts as the main subject or in the background.
And finally, I treated myself to this JUICY set of gouache paint from Amazon (I’m not a rep or anything, I don’t get compensated for linking Amazon products). I can’t believe it’s only $24 for paints this vibrant. The paints come wet and creamy in jelly cups, like colorful Chick-fil-a sauce. I joked with my sister in law Amy that Van Gogh would have dipped a nugget or two.
Gouache is like watercolor, but it’s opaque like acrylic. It can be re-wetted so it’s very forgiving in terms of waste and reuse, but I’ve never painted with it in a creamy state before. Life. Changed.
I haven’t had the chance to paint anything else yet, but I am so excited. I knew the girls would be excited, too, with those juicy colors just waiting for fingers to be dipped in.
So to pop the balloon of curiosity, I sat them down, gave them dots of the paint, and let them experiment with the new medium.
I tried to coach them not to grab the entire glob of paint and use up an entire color at once. Both of them followed my advice… to a point.
Gwen’s palette took a predictable turn.
Abby didn’t mix any of her colors together. Gwen mixed all of her colors together. (and painted Hogwarts)
Weston went down to New Orleans this weekend to help with relief from Hurricane Ida. He arrived home this afternoon, sunburned, exhausted, and ravenous for homemade Chinese food.
Have a fun and safe week, y’all!
Oh shoot, that’s a Texas thing. I need to switch to Louisiana’s goodbye.
Have a blessed day! Praised be the Lord for another week!
This post contains products and links to those products. I am not affiliated with any program that reimburses me for influencing, posting, reviewing, or sharing their products. I am simply a homeschool mom who has finds these things extremely groovy. I am sharing them because I’m currently waiting on the 2020 election results and I need to keep my hands busy so I don’t eat too much Halloween candy.
HELLO to all my homeschool parents, COVID-school parents, public school parents, and everyone in between.
I’ve been getting a handful of people asking me for advice on curriculum lately, so I’m here to type up a grand list of WHAT WE BE UP TO. A collection of the things that have MADE THE CUT in our home this year.
First, let me lead off with a description of my children and their learning styles. The best part of homeschool is deciding what works for YOUR family. So if your kids sound anything like mine, I am here for you. If your home dynamic is drastically different, you should definitely utilize personal revelation to help you figure out if anything listed below is worth your checking into.
ABIGAIL: As many of you know, Abby is now 5-and-a-half and reading up a storm. She is greatly driven by charts and rewards, and very visually influenced. If I write something on the chalkboard, she has dialed in before I even try to draw attention to it. She once memorized an entire scripture that I had written up there just for my own sake and repeated it back after it was erased.
Abby also has a love/hate relationship with written curriculum. We have used The Good and the Beautiful for math in the past, and though she always begs me to pull it out so we can work on it together, she is frustrated and bored after 10 minutes. She thrives best when SHE decides what to do, when to do it, and what order to do it in. She does not appreciate having to follow things in a prescribed order.
This is a blessing for me, because I am the same way. This is why UNSCHOOLING has appealed to me so much from the very beginning. Boooo, structure! Begone, scripts!
Abby is highly social. She has been known to sit in on adult conversations and politely chime in with precious tidbits of her own advice, without guile. She remembers names, she remembers if you mentioned you’re going on vacation (and she will ask you about it the next time she sees you) and basically, Abby’s learning style is REAL LIFE IMMERSION.
Recent wins with Abby: READING, of course. Her reading really took off like a shot at the beginning of September. She reads rapidly, with great inflection, and conquers longer words with ease. Her emotions are under better control now that she is older. And I feel comfortable letting her be more independent; making her own sandwiches, etc.
GWEN: Gwen just turned three. SHE HAS NO CHILL. She is impulsive and energetic. If there is ANYTHING in front of her that she could touch, eat, drink, color on - she has to. She can’t hold herself back. In stark contrast, I frequently find her in her own little world with a pen and paper, carefully drawing tiny shapes, and she cannot hear her name being called. So, basically a mini-me.
She’s snuggly, as she always has been, and a VERY hands-on learner. She’s also extraordinarily brave - shoving unfamiliar food into her mouth, riding on a pony, jumping into water. Her attention span is freakishly long when it comes to puzzles - 20 minutes or more!
Recent wins with Gwen: I CAN LEAVE HER ALONE WITH BOOKS NOW. It’s been months since the last tearing-up incident, and more and more books are lingering in bed with her with no damage done. She has gained the attention span to allow me to read longer books to her. Her comprehension is increasing daily. She’s still frantic and random in most of what we do together, but every day she is learning a little better to sit down and listen to instructions.
So let’s dive into what we’re doing in our homeschool!
THE MORNING 5: My girls are banging on all cylinders the second they come out of their rooms. They are rushing to jump into anything that pops into their heads - Dress Up, going to the park, writing a letter, getting out a game… all before they’ve even gotten dressed or eaten breakfast. I’m constantly fighting to solidify their morning habits so we can then MOVE ON with our day.
So I created the Morning 5 - Make Your Bed, Say Your Prayers, Get Dressed, Use the Potty, Eat Breakfast. Abby functions better when she can see things in a list. We put all our efforts into accomplishing those five things FIRST. Then we’re not scrambling between wanting to start an activity and a certain 3 year old still being in her nighttime diaper. Our rule is - NOTHING ELSE until we’ve done our MORNING 5!
OUR CHALKBOARD: I did an Instagram Story highlight about how I made this giant chalkboard for less than $30. If you follow me on Insta, go take a look! But I’ll tell you here too: a giant piece of Masonite board from Lowe’s (about 8ft in length) is $8.99. A bucket of chalkboard paint is $10. I used painter’s tape around the edges to give the appearance of a “frame” that was still wooden in color. We have yet to hang this puppy up on the wall, but it is alive and well and serving us even while sitting on the floor.
The chalkboard is a central part of our homeschool when it comes to scriptures, quotes from General Conference, poems, and songs that I want to write on my girls’ hearts. It also helps centralize our schedule for the day. I write the date, the Morning 5, our scripture study, and then any activities, errands, or projects we need to tackle that day.
THE BOOK OF MORMON FOR YOUNG READERS: My mom bought this study aid for us a few years ago and it has been a GAME CHANGER this year. I know 2020 is almost over and next year we’ll be studying the Doctrine and Covenants, but I plan to keep using this as we read the Book of Mormon continually as a family.
It’s a happy medium between the Illustrated Stories from the Book of Mormon (which simplifies the scriptures down to a summary; one or two lines per illustration) and the Book of Mormon itself. The scriptures are still written verbatim (I’ll get to why I think that’s important in a minute) but charts, pictures, journal prompts, timelines, quotes from prophets, and other helpful graphics adorn each page. It takes much of the pressure to be a “natural scriptorian” off my shoulders, and provides me and my girls with tools to help us easily understand the scriptures.
I think it’s very important for young children to hear the scriptures read in their purest form, even if they understand very little. The scriptures contain complex language not found in today’s writing. Being exposed to this from an early age gives their minds a jump start on processing larger, older, more mature words. I think kids need a mix of hearing the scriptures read to them while they are eating (a full mouth is a quiet mouth!) as well as having doctrine explained to them in a simple and loving way, according to their questions.
DAILY THEMES ON ROTATION: I’m a very spontaneous person, so I prefer to create “guidelines” for myself rather than plan everything to the letter. I created a theme for every day of the week. This ensures that I’m giving all the important subjects in my children’s lives equal focus, while giving me the freedom to make up what we’re going to do each day. They are as follows:
Sweet Spirit Sunday, Musical Monday, Tell Me A Story Tuesday, Write It Out Wednesday, Thinking Thursday, Friendly Friday, & Sparkly Saturday.
Sweet Spirit Sunday is a day for us to rest and be together, to go to church, and listen to soft music.
Musical Monday usually involves learning a new song, playing freely on instruments, having a dance party, or getting technical with music notation.
Tell Me A Story Tuesday is the day we visit the library. We load up on books, sink into the couch together, and read until Mom gets a sore throat. Then Abby usually keeps story time going.
Write It Out Wednesday is about the different parts of the writing process. We color to work on motor skills, we practice some letters, we write messages to each other in creative ways. We retell, summarize, and spin stories that we’ve already heard. We illustrate. We Marco Polo and text our friends.
Thinking Thursday is when we dive into STEM. We ask questions and get those questions answered. We do math worksheets, and we watch “How It’s Made” videos. My objective on this day is to follow their curiosities and open up new doors for them.
Friendly Friday is a day for friends! Even in the middle of a pandemic, no child can survive without other children. We tend to hang out with the same families, and we are always completely forthcoming about any exposures or symptoms before we get together.
Sparkly Saturday is all about making our home S P A R K L Y. Folding laundry, cleaning, vacuuming, doing outside chores that need doing. Then we spend the rest of the day having fun!
BRAIN QUEST: This clever, stimulating workbook is available at Costco (and Amazon) for all elementary grade levels. Abby, as mentioned before, is very chart- and goal-oriented, but also loves to be able to set her own schedule and skip around as she pleases. She is currently working on the 1st Grade workbook because I flipped through a few at Costco and that seemed like the one that would maintain that challenging threshold she so desires in her learning. Gwen has been having fun with the old Pre-K one we have, but I don’t think she’s ready to dive into it quite yet.
KIWICO SUBSCRIPTION BOXES: I bought 6 months of this back when we got our stimulus checks, and then forgot to cancel so I got 6 more months. I don’t mind one bit. We love when these little green boxes arrive. Each one contains all the materials necessary to build something step by step. We’ve gotten a doctor kit, a mechanical arm, a mechanical sweeper that eats pom poms, a kaleidescope kit, and many more projects and activities besides, in the past 6 months. Gwen has a hard time keeping her hands to herself during these activities but they are always educational, always easy, and always stimulating and fun. Plus they come with many more educational materials relating to the concept being taught by each project, like stories and extra activity ideas.
MUSIC NOTATION: Music is such a powerful way to teach so many subjects at once - language, social skills, gospel studies, mathematics, artistry, movement, history, and most importantly, joy. And music was put on the earth as a teaching tool to help mankind because it enters so easily into the heart.
I found a folder of old pieces of sheet music that my piano teacher used (circa 2003) to teach me to read music. I erased the note names I had written in and whited out what I couldn’t erase. Now I can make copies of these pieces and focus on helping my children recognize the different components of a musical piece (which, in this photo, I am in the middle of listing on a post-it). Staff, clefs, key, time signature, note value, rests, dynamics, accents and other markings. This is another moment where the chalkboard comes in handy. And thanks to our copier I can copy these as many times as I want to!
We also have a glockenspiel that allows us to play simple songs right at our kitchen table. On our real piano, I put special piano key stickers that show the note name and where it appears on the staff. I think this has been just as helpful for me as it has been for Abby and Gwen, if not more so! Haha! (I took 3 years of piano lessons from 2002-2005 and can fumble my way through a hymn. I’m much better at sight singing than sight playing, thanks to high school choir.)
WELL-EDUCATED HEART: This resource - this movement - deserves its own separate blog post, but I’m going to try to condense it into this one, and keep my enthusiasm for it reined in enough to be understood. The Well-Educated Heart was created by Marlene Peterson, who many many years ago felt prompted to begin collecting, compiling, and organizing a library of literature, inspiring artwork, poetry, music, and the other creations of human history. She felt in her heart that MOTHERS would be the ones to lead out and change the world; that we would be a key factor in rescuing the goodness of humanity.
Because of the internet, we each have access to the greatest books and creations of human history. What a privilege for our children!!!! This website is at the base of everything I do in our school. It’s an organized library of good, uplifting material, most of which is free or public domain. There’s a library of beautiful fine art and a rotation of historical literature and other topics that’s further broken down into Elementary, Middle, and High School levels, with a collection of enrichment materials and activities to go with the topic. Recipes, music, movies from Sweden. Paintings of the American Revolution. Poetry from the Civil War.
The most important component of the Well-Educated Heart is the Mother’s University. Teach a mother, open up her heart, inspire her, help her, and you will have lifted an entire generation. A gigantic portion of the content on this website is FOR MOTHERS. It helped me tap into my influence and power, and ignited my own studies, which inspires my children.
Please, the next time you’re in the kitchen or folding laundry, pop on the Catch The Vision introduction on your phone (this site has an app too!) and give it a listen. You’ll understand right away that this is no ordinary homeschool group.
So those are the biggest components of what we do! We have a fun game here and there, a useful teaching tool, a book we love to read together. But unschooling isn’t about following a curriculum, or a prescribed order or grade level. It’s about real life experience and immersion in curiosity. It’s about doing the things we like to do, learning about the things that we’re curious about, and making decisions on our own.
“The way kids learn to make good decisions is by making decisions, not by following directions.”
From left to right: Come Follow Me for Primary: 2020 - Book of Mormon. A Girl’s Guide to Heavenly Mother by McArthur Krishna & Bethany Brady Spalding, The Book of Mormon Journal Edition, Book of Mormon Stories, The Book of Mormon for Young Readers By Kelli Coughanour, The Book of Mormon, The Gift of Self by Marion G. Hanks, The U.S. Constitution and Other Writings by Canterbury Classics, The History of the World in Bite-Sized Chunks by Emma Marriott, Minna’s Patchwork Coat by Lauren A. Mills, Anxious for Nothing by Max Lucado, and my composition notebook journal.
If you want to learn more about the unschooling style of learning, I suggest this blog post for a crash course, as well as this one. It really delights me, and even though we’re only a year into it, I can tell that I chose the right course for me and our family. If you want to ask me anything, drop a comment below! I’ll probably do another whole homeschooling post in a month or two and talk more about my philosophy and desires.
I am by no means a perfect parent, or even an exceptional one. I am simply a strong-willed mother who throws off outside pressures and expectations with wild abandon. I enjoy being the “overlord” of my children’s education AND allowing them to fill their own plates at the Curiosity Buffet. Gently pushing them to do hard things AND seeing their enjoyment when we focus on what’s fun. I make the rules. But so do they. We have defined our homeschool for ourselves and get so much satisfaction from that.
I hope this post has been helpful. I am always open to questions and discussion!
Love you all!!
xo Amber
Golden hour light. Wildflowers. Warm undertones.
Even filled with all my uncertainty and stress, I prayed that I would be able to imbibe this painting with peace; knowing who is was for, and how much she was probably worrying about the world, her primary class, her friends, and each person in the ward. I wanted to be able to bring peace into her home.
I won’t dig too deep into Jacob chapter 5 in this blog post, but I will pose a few rhetorical questions.
Who do you love?
How would you feel if you suddenly lost someone you loved? What would your grief include?
Rewinding a bit, what would you do in an attempt to save this person? What would you be willing to give up?
Finally, and most importantly, what emotions did these questions bring to the surface?
I’ve mentioned this before, but the strangest shift has occurred in my studio over the past couple months. When I packed away my oil paints to move to Texas 2.5 years ago, I thought for sure I’d never open that box again. Oils were so frustrating to me - I could never make them do what I wanted, and the smell always gave me a headache in the little basement room where I painted at the time.
But in September of this year, I got them out again. I had been feeling for months like the paintings I REALLY wanted to make, required the velvety smoothness of oils. And I was COMPLETELY RIGHT.
If you are an artist now, you always have been.
If you will be an artist in the future, then you are an artist now.
You’re an artist whether you’re producing any work or not. Being an artist is a way of living and seeing the world.
So an interesting change took place in me after I had my first baby. Suddenly my trajectory toward a college degree (already a bleak-seeming path) was in jeopardy, and I was knee-deep in motherhood and LOVING IT. I loved being a homemaker and shaping a tiny life.
Out of the blue, an itch to create became so loud I couldn’t ignore it. Being a mom meant I was plenty busy, but it also included naptimes. So I made the transition from deeming my art unimportant (a mindset born from years of being scolded for making it more important than school) to opening my life and my world to include it.
I started on this painting after putting the girls to bed, knowing that Weston would be studying until at least 10:30pm or so. Immediately I felt like I was painting my life. The sweet little house is us; our world, our domestic little bubble. The woods is everything that calls us outside and keeps us out of the house, and therefore, apart.
FLOW is something that’s difficult to define in a scientific way, but it’s a thought state where your brain becomes loose, and starts thinking at a higher & deeper level. It happens quite often to people while they’re in the shower or doing something mindless like the dishes, mowing the lawn, or riding in the car. You “zone out” and start thinking deep, creative thoughts.
The first photo I took after moving all my supplies out and lining them up, ready for action!
I have a new spot to make messes!
Watercolor paper is not that expensive. Be thankful it’s not football equipment.
I have been painting as often as possible for three straight years.
Searching, experimenting, stretching, and balancing the care of my children.
I am ready to sell some old work to clear space for new work.
On February 8, I will list a collection of my paintings on my site, some of which are as old as 2016, which was a year I finally started to believe that I was meant to do this.
Be sure to add yourself to my email list so you can be notified when the sale goes live, and can be notified when new paintings are added!
Kind regards,
Amber