Run Silent. Run Deep

For the longest time, I've had this idea that I wanted to write a play about roommates fighting over something and making several attempts to jump, leap, or crash on their junk-covered couch, all the time complaining about the slob who lives with them and who always leaves the place a perpetual mess. They never get to sit on the couch or set it afire, covered in junk as it is. which is a good thing, since the slob is asleep under the rubble the whole time. This is the closest I've ever gotten to writing it down.

TR's Scribbles

How cool is this? Teddy Roosevelt drew pictures in the many letters he sent his kids. Including a rough copy of this photo:

Socks with Sandals

When I showed my kids this video: I knew a drawing inspired by it would be inevitable, given the guffaws. Even though I had to explain the humor -- several times -- they still guffawed. Here's the drawing. I think our oldest did a fine job keeping Scooter identifiable as a character, even through the troll face.

Reality Drawing

Took my kids to the St. Anthony Sand Dunes today because, well, the idiots with the ATVs have chased all the snow geese from the Egin Lakes. It still turned out good, though. We had a lot of fun climbing the dunes, poking around among the junipers, digging the sand and dodging other ATV folks who can't just bebother the Egin Lakes and have to roam all over the place anyway.

After the trip, the kids were on the post-trip "I Don't Know What To Do, Daddy" thing. I encouraged them to draw pictures of their experience. Our daughter did so, with a vengeance. This is one of the more detailed drawings she's ever produced. That guy wandering off over the dunes? That's me. There's a shovel on the ground behind me because I found a little kid sand shovel that I carried forever because I assumed it belonged to my daughter. It did not. So, if anyone out there is missing a purple sand shovel, let me know and we'll return it.

In the lower right, that's our daughter playing with her sand toys, including the sand scoop that looks like a hippo. And yet, that on the left if one of those dad-ratted ATV drivers. I love the detail on the helmet and in the machine, since we've never taken them to see one of these things up close and we only saw these today from a distance and for about twenty seconds.

And in the upper right quadrant, there's something that looks like a sculpted rock. It's actually a drawing of the cab of a pickup truck somebody dragged out into the dunes so they'd have something to shoot at. She would have drawn the bullet holes except she didn't want to get that close.

Here's a closeup of her sand toy setup. She does look like an angel with wings because she drew herself making sand angels.

In His Father's Image

When I was a kid, I really, really wanted to be Carl Sagan. His PBS show "Cosmos" was the big hit at our house, so his weekly installments of billyuns and billyuns of fun and fascinating facts about the universe really inspired me to check out all the books I could on space from the local library, multiple times.

And, of course, to make maps of the solar system. Many, many maps of the solar system.

Now our oldest is following in my loopy footsteps. Here's the Davidson Version of the Universe.

The Suit

Children, when they really get interested in art, go for themes. With the girls (and I have to say, even though this is a stereotype, it holds true no matter the culture of art ability of the child or parent) go for the cutesy: Ponies, pretty ladies, et cetera.

Our youngest goes for the suit.

He had a suit he wears to church on Sundays. Or at least had a suit until he grew out of it. We're too cheap to buy another -- the one he had was a hand-me-down -- and since he's far too small for the next one in line, he's currently suitless. He tried to make us feel guilty and buy him a new suit by wearing the vest from the suit as part of his pajama ensemble for a few weeks, but we didn't fall for it.

So he draws lots of pictures with him in a suit. Except he can't quite draw the lapels, so we have to help him (I think he's going to grow up to be an Ankh-Morpork wizard; he INSISTS on lapels).

Rhyming Rebus Love Poem

Today I present a quadruptych -- if such a word can be cobbled together -- of rhyming words in art form from our middle child, a girl, all pink and purple and pretty. The text for the poem is here, if you're having trouble reading.

I love the anachronisms here, evidence of a child's art imitating the art made by an adult at school, or by adults for schools. First, the telephone (second picture). It has a dial. IT HAS A DIAL. My daughter has never seen a phone with a dial on it. I haven't seen one used in a house since I was at least her age. But her phone has a dial nonetheless.

Then there's the hat (fourth picture). Now, to her credit, she has seen a hat like this one. Her mother, of all people, has one, an Indiana Jones fedora souvenir from Disneyland. But still, who sees hats like this on a regular basis? Not around here you don't. But the hat is still there.

I love her more free-form art. The wave, for one (first picture). And the bat. I'm kind of scared of that bat. If I saw someone with that bat approaching me in a dark alley, I'd run. It looks pretty sinister. But that's art for you.