PETER’S DRAWINGS.

Thames Star, Volume LIX, Issue 16625, 22 October 1925, Page 6

PETER’S DRAWINGS.

THE WALL AS A HOARD. 1 admired Peter’s drawings on tlie sand. “Do you draw on paper a great deal at home?” 1 asked him. “No,I draw on the nursery wall,” lie said. “But isn’t that very naughty,” I asked with visions of an expensive and artistic nursery paper scrawled over with tlie promising, but raw, attempts of a five-year-old. “Naughty? course no. Mummy does, and Daddy does ,and they .’ o\v me bow.” Later I had the pleasure of seeing Peter’s nursery. And I was even allowed to draw on the wall uv» self. A large, smooth, dark sween panel had been marked out on me side of the room, and a convenient shelf held chalks of various pale shades, a damp sponge, a ruler and blackboard compasses.

“1. did it myself,” Peter’s mother explained. “There is no room here for an easel blackboard, and 1 want Peter to have the advantage of making drawings of anything in which he is interested. The nursery wall from which 1 got the idea was literally a. blackboard, made by applying a mixture of lamp black, turpentine, every powder and varnish, to a carefully primed plaster. But when 1 found 1 could hny green ‘blackboard’ slating ready mixed, I. decided it would be better for Peter’s eyes. I scrubbed off the old distemper with very hot water and vinegar, before applying a couple of layers of undercoating, and a couple more of the dark green ‘blackboard’ slating. T change the prints which hang on the other walls far more frequently than f could afford to change a wallpaper, and our crude, home-made pictures are changed from hour to hour. Altogether, I think it is an even more useful idea than the educational wallpapers.” Having observed Peter’s sureness of hand and eye, I am sure she was right.