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Monday, March 17, 2014

The Batcave

The Batcave with Batman and the Batmobile

"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.

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