Tank

"I want a new president," he said randomly to start our morning.

"Why?"

" I already know Obama. I want a new president."

I have no idea where that came from and we didn't have time to get into it, so I just left it at that. "Okay, what's for the snack sack?" I asked him as I always do.

"A tank."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah."

"What made you think of that just now?"

"My army wallet." We spent a few days, just the two of us, on Catalina Island last month. At an arcade there, he hit a 1,000 ticket jackpot. One of the prizes he picked was an army wallet. He doesn't actually use it and I'm surprised he even remembers he has it.

"Okay," I said. I ran a search and handed him my iPhone.

He picked this tank, but there was another tank he also liked that was firing a shot. He showed me that one but asked me to draw this one, "but with the gun firing." He was very adamant about it. I added it, per his request. Sometimes his choices are completely out of left field, but that's what makes it fun. I never know what I might be drawing!

Marvin the Martian

"What should we do today?"

"Can you help me pick again?" he asked. Yesterday, before we settled in on drawing Sylvester the Cat, I had helped him break out of his block.

"Yesterday, we said we'd do something else from Looney Tunes."

"Oh, yeah," he said flatly. He couldn't remember what.

"We said we'd do Marvin the Martian," I reminded him.

"Oh, yeah. Let's do Marvin the Martian."

He searched for a very long time again. It's frustrating when he does that because it gives me less time to do the work. In his defense, there actually weren't too many options and they all looked similar. I could tell he was trying to find something better.

"Pick something, please," I said, doing a better job today keeping my irritation with the delay to a minimum.

"They all look kind of like this so you can just do this one."

I added the landscape just to give Marvin some placement. Had we had more time, I would have left that for Victor to add, just like he had done yesterday. If only he had picked more quickly, this would have been another collaborative effort.

Sylvester the Cat

"What are we doing today?"

He thought for a while. He remained silent. "Can you help me pick something like you said you would?" he asked. He's been struggling on some days to think of something new for me to draw.

"Okay, let's think of categories of things, like animals, plants, ..."

He added, "Buildings."

"Yes buildings or places or your favorite shows or characters."

"Looney Tunes!" he shouted.

"Okay. Good. Looney Tunes," I said. I thought about which Looney Tunes characters I had done already. "I haven't done Foghorn Leghorn. Or Pepé Le Pew."

"You haven't done Sylvester," he said jumping in. "Have you done Yosemite Sam?"

"Nope."

"Do Yosemite Sam."

I ran a search and saw lots of the other characters too. I declared, "I haven't done Marvin the Martian."

"Oh, you can do Marvin the Martian tomorrow."

I handed him my iPhone. He took a long time scrolling through the options, so long that I started to get annoyed.

"Pick something, please," I said irritably.

"Here."

"You picked the only one that isn't a drawing," I said, unable to mask my annoyance. "Plus it doesn't really look like Yosemite Sam." It was an odd snapshot directly from one of the cartoons and Yosemite Sam had a really weird expression on his face. I should have had extra time today, but because it was taking him so long to pick something suitable, I'd be feeling in a rush. I don't like feeling rushed.

He picked another option, but this time it had both Yosemite Sam and Bugs Bunny. "This one."

"No Victor, that's two things. It's Yosemite Sam and Bugs Bunny. I don't have time to do two things, especially now that it's taken extra time to pick something."

He ignored me and picked another one. It was a classic Yosemite Sam front pose in which he is staring straight out, pointing two guns ready to shoot. I felt that it might be too much for today's schools to draw a guy (even if it was Yosemite Sam) holding guns pointed toward the onlooker. I browsed for something else similar but without the guns.

He noticed my concerned look and asked, "You don't like that one?"

"I'm not sure about drawing the guns."

"But he always has guns."

"I know, but...", I trailed off. Schools today can be very sensitive, and rightly so, about guns. Back when I was a kid, I wouldn't have given it a moment's thought, but now it was worthy of extra consideration.

He seemed to understand. "Okay, then let's do Sylvester." He picked this one of Sylvester playing guitar right away.

"If that's what you want."

"Yeah, because he's being silly and he has a guitar and silly's my thing."

I had to rush through this one, but it wasn't too difficult. "Done. What do you think?"

"Oh cool. Can you put some clouds 'cause he's in the air?" he asked.

He started to show me and I said, "You do it."

He added the ground, the trees, the birds, and the clouds, talking all the while. "'VICTOR' is sitting on a cloud. Cool, huh?" He just then noticed the design of his name and added, "Oh, you made 'VICTOR' out of guitar strings!"

As I was taking the picture I appreciated his additions. It looked pretty cool with Sylvester looking like he was jumping up above the trees. "Nice additions, Victor," I praised. I could tell he felt proud of his work.

When he got home in the afternoon, he brought with him a good bunch of the snack sacks he had taken to school yesterday. "I left several for my teacher to put up in the classroom," he told me.

"A rotating gallery. Nice!"

A Tornado Sucking Up a Cow

"What's for the snack sack today?"

"Rainstorm," he said right away. It rained here last night.

I shot him a look.

"I know that look on your face."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. It means you don't know."

"It's just that a rainstorm is more of a picture, not a drawing." I looked up rainstorm drawings just in case, but I was right. There were no good options. 

"Tornado!" he exclaimed, shifting gears.

I figured that might have more promise and it did. I ran a search and he picked this one out of the bunch right away. "Can you do this one?" he asked. "A tornado sucking up a cow," he laughed.

"Sure." It looked easy enough.

I got started and it began to take form right away. "How are you such a good drawer?" he asked me as he's done several times before. "I'm not a very good drawer."

"Yes you are. You're doing good and getting better because of practice."

"Yeah, I know," he agreed, acknowledging his progress.

I was finished quickly today. "I like it," he said. "It's cool." He stared at it and laughed, "It's funny because it's sucking up a cow." He's right. The cow really makes this one.

He went back upstairs to get his socks and didn't come back for several minutes.

"Hey Victor! What's taking so long?" I yelled out to him.

"Remember, I'm getting my favorite snack sacks to copy at school," he shouted back from upstairs.

Copy? Hmm that's new. Last night, he explained that he'd taken down all the sacks from his classroom to make room for new ones. Since he had a stack of them with him yesterday at school, he showed them off to all his friends. Apparently he made it a group activity to lay them out and copy them. Many of his friends joined in. 

He came home with his own rendition of Marshmallow the snow monster and Olaf from Frozen. He also did Maleficent.

"Are they good?" he asked, seeking approval.

They were pretty good. "Well, I know exactly what they are supposed to be and that means they're pretty good." I could tell that he was comparing his versions to mine. "You're doing so much better because you're practicing," I said, wishing for him to focus on his own progress.

He finally came downstairs bringing with him a stack of snack sacks about 50 deep. "These are my favorites," he told me.

"Hey, maybe you don't need to bring them all," I suggested.

"But they are for other people to try and copy them."

"Other people copy them?"

"Yeah. One girl did Olaf yesterday. She did really good. It looked exactly like yours."

"Oh really. Cool."

It's nice to think that our little project is encouraging other kids to have fun with drawing. How cool is that!?

Carnotaur

"What's it for today?"

"Dinosaur?"

"We've done lots of dinosaurs."

"How about a Carnotaur?"

"I'm not sure if we've done that," I admitted. I looked it up. We hadn't, but dinosaurs are one of our most popular subjects. In fact, we've done Brontosaurus, Diplodocus, the Talking Dino toy, T-Rex, Allosaurus, another T-Rex, Ankylosaurus, T-Rex vs. a crocodile, a robot dinosaur, and Triceratops. He has even added some of his own dinosaurs to the Starbucks logo.

We'd recently seen the Disney movie Dinosaur in which the Carnotaurs are the main antagonists. It turns out the movie shortened the name to Carnotaur from Carnotaurus. I wasn't much in the mood for a dinosaur but that's what he chose so I got to work.

I started with it's face and he looked over the table to see how things were coming along. "Can you make the eye more angry-er?" he asked.

"Huh?" I said, looking up.

"When you're all done," he explained, "draw the eye bigger and draw..." He gestured in the air what I believe was supposed to be an angry eyebrow. He likes drawing angry eyebrows when he draws villains or ferocious animals.

"Okay, let me finish the rest first," I said.

When I was done, I asked him to come over and show me. He took the Sharpie and waved it in the air demonstrating how to draw an angry eyebrow. I looked at him unsure. He asked, "Can I just do it?"

"Yeah, sure," I told him.

He drew the angry eyebrow, but it didn't quite have the effect he was hoping for. The eye didn't look "more angry-er."

"Huh," he said. "Oh well. That usually works." I had to chuckle. We decided to just leave it as is.

This afternoon, he brought home all the snack sacks that were posted in his classroom. "Hey, what's this?" I asked when I found them in his backpack.

"I'm making room for new ones."

"Cool!" I guess it's time to bring down the old and bring in the new.

Angry Birds Go!

"What do you want me to do today?"

"Can you please do something Easter?"

"Like what?"

"The Easter Bunny!"

"Um, okay, but Easter is 4 weeks away."

"Okay, let's not do Easter stuff then." He thought for a little bit. "Hmm. How about you pick?"

He had asked me to pick yesterday, but I encouraged him to keep thinking. He ended up picking Lord Business which was fun to draw. Today, I was ready with a suggestion, "Okay, how about Angry Birds Go!?" We played the game for the first time yesterday and he was very excited about this racing installment of the Angry Birds franchise of games.

"Yes!" he shouted.

I knew he'd like the idea. Of course, he picked a reference with not one, not two, but 5 cars and birds! The scene itself was simple enough so I gave it a go. I ended up running over time to get it done and we got to school a minute late.

"Do my name like the 'Go!' And make it 'Angry Birds Victor'!" he told me. He thought about it some more, then corrected himself, "No, make it 'Angry Birds Victor Go!'!" I did and he loved it. "Yup this is good! Yup, this is my favorite! This is my favorite one this month."

That's new. He's never classified favorites by month before.

Lord Business

"What are we doing today?"

"What's the next season?"

"Spring."

"Oh, so Easter? Easter is in spring?"

I guess he meant holiday, not season. "Yes. Easter is in April."

"Can you do something Easter-y because I'm out of Leprechaun-y things."

"No. It's too early. It's not even April yet."

"I have no ideas." He thought for a moment. "A four leaf clover...that's boring!!!" he expressed in the most dramatic way possible. I laughed out loud. "A rainbow...that's boring!!! Just line, line, line," he continued, gesturing with his finger in the air. "Can you think of something this time?"

"Just try one more time. You can do it," I said encouragingly.

Some of his drawings were on the table. He glanced over at them and said, "Oh, I know...President Business...from The LEGO Movie."

I did a search and it turned out he wanted Lord Business, President Business's alter ego. He had drawn his own version a few days before. I didn't have much time and made quick work of it.

"Yeah I like it. It's good!" he said when I was done.

Sea Monster

"What should we do today?"

"I have no ideas!" About 10 seconds later, he said, "Okay, I have 3 more ideas left." He paused, then suggested, "The Devil's Triangle."

He's been watching Discovery Channel shows on YouTube and got into this one segment on the Devil's Triangle (otherwise known as the Bermuda Triangle). He can't stop talking about it. Of course, the Devil's Triangle isn't a good drawing subject. I explained this to him, but ran the search anyway. There wasn't much to choose from for drawing purposes. Eventually, we settled on this sea monster gobbling up airplanes and battleships.

This is a weird monster and a bizarre scene. The reference was some kind of digital rendering. It wasn't easy trying to pick out the solid lines. I struggled mightily. I was all too happy when time was up and I could put the Sharpie down.

"I like it!" he exclaimed when it was all done.

Today, I didn't capture all our dialog in the moment. He said some great stuff about the Devil's Triangle, shared some thoughts on magnets, and more. I'm disappointed that I don't have any of it written down. This will serve as a reminder for me to be more diligent about capturing notes each and every morning. I could paraphrase what he said, but that would be doing him a disservice. It's his delightful take on things, the inflections in his voice, and his actual words that I wish to capture here.

Leprechaun

"What's for the snack sack today?"

"Cheetah!"

"We've done a cheetah," I said without thinking. Actually, I wasn't sure. I looked it up and, sure enough, we had done a cheetah, exactly 13 months ago.

"Leprechaun," he said, quickly shifting gears.

"We are a few days late. We should have remembered to do a Saint Patrick's Day theme on Monday," I told him, as I ran a search for a leprechaun.

Right away he found one that he liked. "Can you do this? And tomorrow can you do a pot of gold?"

"This is a pot of gold."

"Oh, okay, never mind."

I was thankful that he picked something that wasn't too complicated. I was sick today, fever and all. Chills were running down my body as I drew. I found it hard to stay focused. I wasn't too happy with the finished drawing, but had to laugh because the leprechaun kind of looks like former President George W. Bush. Ha!

He didn't have much to say about it, but brought it home as he has done with all the snack sacks as of late.

"How come you're bringing them all home lately?" I asked him in the afternoon.

"It's because my teacher has run out of room to display them."

"Oh really?"

"Yeah. There are over 20 of them up in the room."

"That's pretty cool!"

It's become clear that he's going to bring them all home from now on. Originally, I drew them as disposable sketches and pretty much expected them to be tossed out. He only brought back the ones he especially liked. But now, for us, they are treasured works of art and carry with them special memories we don't want to forget.

The Joker

"What should we do today?"

"Lightning striking a house."

"I've done that once before," I said. It was our very first Haunted House. I did a search anyway and handed him my iPhone. He looked and looked, but couldn't find anything I could draw.

He thought and thought. Then he exclaimed, "The Joker!"

"Makes sense," I said. Yesterday we had done the Batcave. The Joker is my favorite comic book villain.

We searched and searched but there weren't too many good options. He kept scrolling and scrolling. When he finally picked, I didn't have very much time left to draw.

"Here, I couldn't find anything better," he said, somewhat dejected.

I'm not sure why he didn't like it so much. I personally like this style for The Joker and it was actually pretty fun to draw.

The Batcave

"Can you draw a gem from this book?" he asked me. He had brought home a book of gems from the school library and wanted to me to draw one.

"These aren't good for drawing," I told him. They were vivid photographs of beautiful gems and wouldn't be easy for me to reproduce in Sharpie.

"How about a building?" he said.

"No," I protested. I didn't want to spend all morning doing something super complicated. Plus, he had no specific building in mind. "Which building?" I asked.

He thought. "How about the Capitol Building?"

"Um," I said. I couldn't remember for sure, but it felt like I'd done it before. Turns out I had not.

I searched for drawings of the Capitol Building and handed him my iPhone. He chose one with a lot of fine details. "Here," he said.

"No, I'm not doing that."

"I'm out of ideas then."

"Be more creative," I prodded.

He stewed for a long time. Eventually he said out of nowhere, "How about the Batcave?"

"Yeah, okay."

There weren't too many drawings to choose from, but we settled in on this one. I started out the morning not wanting to draw anything too complicated. What a surprise to end up with such a detailed drawing that needed to span the whole sack. I went ahead with it because it was cool looking, unlike the earlier Capitol Building. You can't go wrong with the Batcave.

I spent a long time working on this one. When I was done, he asked, "Where's my name? I don't see it."

"It's hidden in the Batcave," I told him. It took him a long while to find it.

The Batmobile was in the reference, but Batman was not. I felt like he should be in there, so I added him in. I wasn't happy with how he turned out, though. I didn't know how to make it better without making it worse, so I just left it as is.

"Where's Batman?" he asked. Clearly he couldn't make out the black smudge in the middle as Batman. Oh well. I try.

Elephant and Piggie

"What should we do today?"

"Elephant and Piggie."

"What are their names?" I asked. He's a fan of all the Mo Willems characters so I was familiar with the books, but not sure what to type in for the search.

"Gerald and Piggie. Piggie's name is just Piggie."

"Really?" I looked it up and sure enough they are, "Elephant and Piggie."

He browsed through the options for a very, very long time. Then he picked a shot from a book that had them both together with Piggie on Gerald's head, twice. "This one!"

"There is no way I'm drawing them both...twice. Pick something else, please."

He picked this one of Gerald holding a book with no cover art and Piggie sitting on top. "This one then."

He started to suggest what I could draw on the book cover and I said, "No, you can draw on the book."

That worked out perfectly because I've been looking for a way to get him involved in the drawing, something he hasn't done in a long time. I drew the setup and left the book cover empty for him to fill in. He was excited to draw, but earlier before breakfast, I had given him a big speech about having to do reading practice this morning. I couldn't back down from that, so he read for about 10 minutes before he got started.

He planned to do a shot of the three main Mo Willems characters, Pigeon, Elephant, and Piggie. I had drawn the Pigeon last year. Victor typically holds the marker so tight and presses down so hard that he's messed up a few tips by using a marker just once, so I picked out an already worn down Sharpie. I handed it to him.

He sat down and looked like a mini version of me staring at the reference, then back at the sack, then back at the reference again, drawing in short stages. He did a great job and I coached him throughout the process. I taught him how to cover up mistakes, how to decide which was the next line to draw, how to estimate distances, and how to make sure it looks "close enough." He took direction well, although he was anxious at times to keep drawing when I paused to explain a technique.

He thought the elephant looked like a girl, so he labeled him "Boy." Ha! 

Then he started adding more stuff. He added the title of the book next. I looked over his shoulder and asked, "Do you want to actually spell it right?"

He paused looking down at his words. "No," he said and continued to spell things his way. 

He added Piggie Mom at the top who was "falling from somewhere." Then he added Piggie Dad at the bottom.

I was very impressed by his work, especially with his Gerald. "Great job today!" I praised him.

"That was fun drawing and reading!" he said on our way out.

When he came home, I saw the sack in his backpack. I asked him, "What did your friends think?"

At first he lied and said, "They liked it." Then he paused for a moment and admitted that they didn't. "Some hated it. But I like it," he said. 

"Well, remember that we do these for us, not for everyone else. It's nice when they like what we do, but it's more important that we have fun and are creative, just the two of us."

We shared a warm hug and headed into the kitchen to get a snack.

Dukey and Johnny Freaking Out

We forgot to bring back his library book yesterday, but he chose not to pick anything from it.

Instead, he said surely, "Dukey. But this time, freaking out." We had done Dukey from Johnny Test just a few weeks ago.

"I don't want to do something that doesn't look like Dukey," I told him. "Last time you wanted to pick things that didn't look like anything."

He searched and searched and ultimately picked this silly shot of Johnny and Dukey.

As I was working through it, I made several mistakes that I had to cover up. I didn't mean to, but said out loud, "I'm not doing very well."

Later, he looked over the table and said, "You're doing good, Daddy."

It's makes me feel warm inside when he's sweet and encouraging.

When he saw the finished sack, he laughed, "Oooh, he-he." He took a closer look at the reference and asked, "Can you draw the background?"

I looked closer too. All I saw was some green and white. "There's nothing in the background," I said.

"Yeah. It's the hill and the fence."

I had to stare for a long time to see it, but I finally did. I added the arc of the hill but didn't think the rest would work. "I don't think the fence posts will be recognizable. That's all I'm gonna do," I said firmly.

He protested a little, "I know what they are and can recognize them."

"No. I'm done," I insisted.

"Okay," he relented.

Later after school when I pulled the snack sack out of his backpack, I asked him, "What did the kids say about it?"

"A lot of them really liked it," he told me. "Dukey and Johnny freaking out!"

Darth Vader 2

"Another one from the book?"

"Darth Vader."

"Also not really a monster, but at least he's a bad guy," I remarked. I find it so odd that the "Draw 50 Monsters" book has so many non-monsters in it.

"I know," he replied.

I'm surprised that he's been choosing the most familiar characters for me to draw. It'd be nice to draw an actual monster from the book before we have to return it to the school library. I would have picked Medusa today, but I don't get to decide. He does.

I've done Darth Vader before, almost a year ago, but I didn't want to deny him today.

I'm not happy with this one and he didn't make any special comments about it. I drew Vader too thin, just like I did Yoda yesterday. Oh well.

Yoda

"Do you want to pick a thing from the book or something else?" I asked him. Turns out the "Draw 50 Monsters" book is full of lots of things that aren't really monsters.

"The book!" he exclaimed. He started flipping. Literally two seconds later he shouted, "Here it is!"

"Yoda?"

"Yup."

"Do you thank me for picking fast?"

"Yes, thank you," I said graciously. I often give him a hard time for taking too long to pick something.

I wonder what Yoda would think about being in a book of monsters. "Wrong, it is," he might say.

I started strong and confident but had to throw out my first attempt. I hadn't left enough room for his right ear. Victor took notice. After that, I worked diligently, hardly looking up from the page.

"Oooh, I like it!" he said sweetly. "It looks just like it," he added encouragingly. "You left enough space this time."

I overcompensated is what I did, I thought. Overall, Yoda is proportional, but because I needed all that space for his ears, his face is tall where it should be wide. Luckily it still looks like Yoda, but in retrospect I needed to have turned the bag sideways, drawing in landscape, to fit his wildly wide ear-span.

This eagle looking thing...

"Are we doing another one from the 'Draw 50 Monsters' book?" I asked him.

He flipped through it some. "This one," he said pointing, "This eagle looking thing."

"Yeah, okay," I said looking at the griffin. "That's not really a monster either," I added, comparing it to yesterday's funny faced monster.

"I know."

"And Darth Vader's not a monster either." Vader was on the page opposite the griffin. "He's more of a bad guy." I flipped through the book some more. "And Yoda's in there too!? He's not a bad guy. He's a good guy. This book is very confusing."

"I know," he agreed.

I worked from the bottom up, starting with the back legs. I think that was a mistake. It had me drawing backwards from right to left which made things tough for me. Some days I'm just not that into the drawing and today was one of those days. I just wanted to be done with it from the moment I started.

"It's good," is all he said about it when he saw the finished version.

Surprisingly, he brought it home. He's grown more sentimental about them, as have I. I expect most of the sacks will likely make it back home from now on. I can understand that it'd be hard for him to intentionally throw them away anymore.

Funny Faced Monster

Last night, on the way upstairs, he grabbed the book he had brought home from his school library and said, "I have to show you something so funny!" He was giggling just thinking about it. "My friend and I couldn't stop laughing all day," he told me. The book was "Draw 50 Monsters" and I couldn't imagine what might be so funny in it. He flipped the pages pausing on this "Esobite mouth creach" (whatever that is) and gave out a laugh as loud as any he'd belt out from a good tickling.

He looked at me for my reaction. I was smiling but only because of him, not because of this "monster".

"You have to do this tomorrow!" he shouted.

This morning, he again started to giggle as he found the page for me. When he found it in the book, he belted out a laugh loud enough to wake the neighbors.

I got started with the fat tip of the Sharpie for a change. I drew the mouth outline and realized I hadn't left room for the tail. I tossed the sack and started over, this time inking the tail first. As a consequence, I ran out of room for the full width of its face. If you can believe me, the original reference has an even wider mouth. I switched to the thin tip of the Sharpie mid-way as I lost confidence and didn't want to make any other major mistakes.

After he finished his breakfast, he walked over and laughed another big laugh as he saw this monster coming to life on the sack. "It doesn't really look like a monster, right?" he commented.

I nodded. "It reminds me of the warthog in the Lion King."

"Yeah, but the warthog doesn't have elephant feet."

He went to go brush his teeth and I wrapped things up with a smile on my face. He's been critical as of late so I expected him to pick this one apart. He didn't. When he came back into the room, he bursted out laughing as soon as he turned the corner. He slapped his hands, his head, and threw his whole body onto the sofa as he convulsed from laughter. I think he liked it.

Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey

"What should we do today?"

"Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey."

That came out of nowhere. He's never seen Fantasia. I did a search and handed him my iPhone.

"Do you remember this, Daddy?" he asked, pointing to a classic shot from the cartoon.

"No. I've only seen Fantasia once so I don't remember it."

"Do you think I'd like it?"

"No, not really. It's all about nightmares."

"I didn't think Nightmare Before Christmas was scary."

"That's true, but you asked me and, no, I don't think you'll like it."

I paid special attention to detail on this one. I wanted to get it right.

"Oooo!" he said, looking at the finished sack. "I don't see his mouth. Did he he have a mouth?" Without waiting for me to answer, he continued, "Let me see. Oh. No. He didn't have a mouth. Okay. Good."

This one came home! Three in a row. It's one of my favorites too.

Hades

"What should we do today?"

"A rocket."

"I've already done a rocket." He said rocket because he studied rockets and did related experiments in his Mad Science class yesterday.

"A real rocket."

"I've already done a rocket several times."

"Have you ever done a bomb?"

"No and I'm not going to. I don't like bombs."

"Okay, something cool." He thought for awhile. "Hades." From the cartoon Hercules he meant. We had just seen the Disney version recently. I had to look up how to spell the name and learned a little more about this Greek god of the underworld from Wikipedia.

He took a long time finding something. I didn't see many good drawings so I let him pick out a movie frame snapshot. I didn't expect to do the background but he asked me about it, so I scribbled in the curtains quickly. It doesn't look great, but it looked empty with an empty background. 

I really wasn't very into this one today; not like yesterday's Dragon Maleficent. He's into villains, though, so this sack came home too.

Dragon Maleficent

"What's for the snack sack today?"

"Remember the Dragon Maleficent!?!"

He had picked Maleficent's dragon form before we did Maleficent yesterday. He woke up very early so we had plenty of time. The problem with having the time is that I take the time. This was about 40 min of work as opposed to the usual 15 to 20.

I worked from the bottom up which was a bit odd, but that helped me maintain focus. Instead of trying to draw the dragon, I was drawing the lines and shapes I saw before me. Toward the end, I was pressed for time and was forced to rapidly worked in the details of the castle. I filled in the black parts as quickly as I could.

"Whoa! Now that is good! Now that is good!"

"Show me where the mistake is," I prodded.

He found it right away. "It's good. Except that the face doesn't look so mean. But it's good," he repeated, reaching out to touch my arm affectionately.

This one came home today. I knew it would.

Maleficent

"What's for the snack sack today?" I asked as we poured pancake batter into a pan. We made pancakes together this morning for the very first time ever.

He startled me when he blurted out, "Maleficent!"

After we finished off our pancakes, I ran a search and handed him my iPhone. He picked the dragon first off. 

"Hey, that's not Maleficent," I said.

"Yes it is. The dragon is Maleficent."

"Well then, I'd have searched for the dragon if that's what you wanted."

"Okay, I'll pick Maleficent."

He did. I don't normally eat breakfast but did today. My side of the table, where I usually sit to draw, was all sticky from the syrup.

He must have noticed my dilemma because he asked, "Can you sit next to me, Daddy?"

"Yeah!"

"You know why I wanted you to sit here?"

"Why?"

"Because I wanted to look at your drawing."

"If I sit next to you, I don't want you kicking my chair."

"I won't."

Sure enough, just after I started drawing, he started kicking my chair. I reprimanded him pretty strongly and he withdrew. He pouted, but I stayed focussed on the drawing. He got up. Unfortunately, he ended up not watching me at all today.

"Oh, okay," he said approaching me when I was just about done. "Um, can you put her parrot on here?" he asked, pointing to her shoulder. The crow was in the reference drawing but I had planned on omitting it.

"You really want it?"

"Yeah."

"I thought you wouldn't be able to tell what it was."

"I can tell."

"You really want it?"

"Yeah," he said walking away again.

I added it and wrapped up the drawing.

"Did you do the bird?"

I showed it to him.

"Yeah, that's better."

It was.