How about King Kong...

"What should we do today?"

He ignored my question.

"I need to know what to draw so I can get started."

"Um, not Mario because he's too violent." That seemed like a random comment, but I remembered that he mentioned seeing a YouTube video where Nintendo's Mario was portrayed as a character committing a lot of violent acts. I haven't seen it for myself. He's brought it up from time to time, so it's clear he was a bit traumatized by it. He assured me he will never watch it again. I believe him.

"How about a different character from Mario?"

"No," he said quickly. Then out of no where he asked, "How about King Kong?" He'd seen a few scenes of the newer Peter Jackson version of King Kong a couple of weekends ago at a friend's house. The fight scenes in that movie are pretty impressive and he was naturally struck by them. We didn't sit to watch the whole movie though. We just watched bits and pieces as we did other things.

"Okay," I said, a little concerned about him picking something really complex to draw.

I ran a search and handed him my iPhone. "I found one," he said right away, "It's going to be easy." He handed me the iPhone.

"Does this one seem easy to you?" I asked him, tilting the iPhone back toward him.

"Not exactly...because of all those teeth, but it's so awesome."

I couldn't disagree with that. It did look awesome. I worked with the fine tip of the Sharpie and chicken scratched my way to a pretty cool looking King Kong.

Angry Gorilla

I was able to get right to work this morning since we had already picked out an angry gorilla before we settled on the funny gorilla I drew yesterday. I started from the angry gorilla's mouth, drew around it, and then up. I always get nervous about getting the proportions wrong when I don't start top-down, but it came out pretty good.

When he saw it, he exclaimed, "Whoa! It looks a lot more scarier than that one!" He pointed to the original reference.

It did, kind of, I thought.

"Can you do my name super sharp?" he asked of me. I tried with the "V" shooting for something like the gorilla's teeth. "That looks like a leaf," he informed me.

I remained silent, but I had to agree with him.

"I mean sharp," he said. He took the Sharpie and did it himself. "Like that!"

"Fair enough," I said. I took back the Sharpie and continued adding details to the drawing. The reference was a cartoon picture, so the color and shading was hard to emulate. I did my best.

He finished his breakfast, brushed his teeth, and did his morning reading all very swiftly today. He came up to me and asked, "Can I mess around?"

"Sure."

"Can I get started on my Pop-Tarts box?"

"Yeah!" I exclaimed. He had brought home a drawing he had done of a Pop-Tarts box, copying the style of the famous pop artist Burton Morris. I guess they had covered this at school. Upon closer inspection, what he had drawn was actually a mashup of Burton Morris's popcorn box and Pop-Tarts art. It was a drawing of popcorn with the Pop-Tarts art on the popcorn box.

He sat next to me, beginning to draw over his pencil lines with a Sharpie. "Dadda?" he said without looking up.

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

"I love you!" I said with a warm feeling in my chest.

We sat drawing together, side by side, for 10 minutes as I added in details and shading to the angry gorilla and he added to his pop art.

Funny Gorilla

Victor is going to be in a school play about the rainforests and rainforests' animals. He is playing the part of a gorilla. We are responsible for coming up with a creative costume for him to wear in the play. While we searched last night for costume ideas, he saw a cartoon gorilla that made him laugh hard.

"It's so funny, right? Can you draw this tomorrow on my snack sack?" he pleaded.

"Yeah," I agreed.

I tried to find it again this morning, but couldn't track it down. I searched and searched. We began searching together. We found many other gorilla faces that made him laugh and a few that were scary.

"If you can't find the other one, can you do this one?" he asked. "His face is angry!"

"I'm running out of time," I said, feeling a bit anxious. I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to finish the angry gorilla. I kept searching for the one we saw yesterday because I remembered that it looked pretty easy. It took another couple of minutes, but I finally found the one I was looking for. We agreed to do this funny gorilla today and the angry one tomorrow. I could see us doing silly gorillas for weeks. There are lots of funny options. We'll see how it goes.

When he saw my finished drawing, he laughed and giggled. His laugh is infectious and, soon, I was laughing and giggling too. I wish all our mornings were filled with such laughter.