This Monday’s post is courtesy of the lovely Steph, who photographs as a foundation for her illustrative work.

Steph bewitches me with her treehouse ramblings, her eye for super-funky little clothes, her sketches, and her perfectly joyful way of capturing life as a mama to scruffy, inquisitive, rollabout boys.

She writes:

There's a perfect riparian hike up an open space preserve near the house that pauses at a quarter mile, if you are looking for it, with a set of mossy stairs that lead down to an old pet cemetery.

As I had hoped, he became saturated with the place: jumping off every stone, stomping on every ant, smudging himself into the wet earth, collecting grubby fistfuls of small sticks along the walk. His proud stride, the happy, bouncy swagger he gets when we're together: it just makes me want to burst. I love it. And, as usual, in anticipation of this display, I brought my camera.

I wish I could sling a camera like the professionals do, working quickly with finesse and understanding the technical aspects of photography, but I simply am too busy trying to capture all of these fleeting moments.

The best photographs I manage to take are those that capture what all mothers adore: acrobatic preschool gestures, the details in terribly food-stained clothes, the paint that gets under fingernails, a mass of bedhead, a noble negative space, the thoughts behind a dark brow or the silence behind an overbite.

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I like to have an image library within the pages of my sketchbook so that I can refer to it for paintings or illustrations. While I have some practice capturing gestures freehand, my photography has been tremendously helpful in compiling studies of their facial proportions so that life-sketching is more fluid.

If I didn't have the photographs I'd have to make the kids pose, which would interrupt everything.

And by everything, I mean that chaos which is a house of boys: flying Legos, the hiss of supersonic jets, beaming laser blasters and the rubble of broken alien spacecraft. Dirty bare feet on clean white sheets. Questions falling like rain, books everywhere.

The dog chases the stampede, and I follow furiously with my camera.

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This week, show us your little boys. Let’s see your favourite puddle-jumpers, sandcastle-stompers and mischief-hunters. TAG! You’re it.