A Big Bundle of Church Doodles

It's been rough, these past few months.

Rough in that we have to head to church at 1 pm, which makes it a lot of trouble getting out the door and to church in a happy mood. You'd think with time to wake up, eat breakfast, play around and then get dressed, the kids would be happy happy.

Not so, especially for the oldest. It's been a rough few months.

So I've taken to desperation: Drawing a few doodles to try to encourage our oldest to crack a smile at church. Most of the times, I succeeded, and got him doodling on his own. Here's the fruit from the past two Sundays:

Found Art

I found this scrap -- obviously a map to some kind of treasure -- stuffed inside one of my Terry Pratchett books (Monstrous Regiment, in case you're wondering.) It's possible I used it as a bookmark on one idle night. More likely, however, some kid just stuffed it in the book out of mischief. As soon as I had it scanned, they reclaimed it and went on a treasure hunt. They never did tell me what they found. Probably another one of my books.

Doodles

Tonight, bits of "found art," mainly a palimpset of doodles on top of my own doodles.

I take a lot of notes. Important notes. Like the notes you see here, denoting the episodes of Jonny Quest I've moved to the iPod Touch. But because I leave notes like this and pens lying around my desk where the children can get them, I often get their own doodles along with my own. For example:

A dog and a bunny, this time in Bic blue ballpoint pen ink, from my daughter. And also this:

Of course, the companion animal of choice, a cat.

Not to be outdone, my oldest son also made this contribution:

The joy of found art like this is I never have to wonder where Gary Larson and the like found their inspiration. It's got to have been all around them. All they had to do was open their eyes and look. Or at least look at the papers they leave on their desks.