How about a playground...

How about a playground...

"I love you," he said hugging my leg in the bathroom vanity area. He had woken up just after I had. "You're the best daddy I could ask for because you draw so well." My heart melted in that very moment. Now that's the way to start a morning!

He had trouble picking something today. I prodded him to start with a category, "Think of people or places or things or activities."

"Things!" he said, but he still couldn't come up with anything. Then all of the sudden he suggested, "How about a playground?"

We searched and searched and searched. I thought it was a good idea, but it wasn't easy to find a good reference playground to draw. He kept looking though. Finally he said, "I'm just going to pick a random one." He did, but neither of us liked it.

"Can I try to find something?" I asked him, trying to be helpful.

"Sure," he agreed.

I searched and searched and finally found a suitable drawing of a playground. Good thing we had so much extra time this morning. I had to chicken scratch my way through this one finding it difficult to maintain depth and perspective.

"Whoa!" he said looking at it when I was finished. "How are you so good? How do you make it look just like it? How do you do it?" he asked insistently.

I'm growing more accustomed to this line of questioning since it keeps coming up. "Practice," I said, "and I believe in myself." I'm hopeful that these lessons will stick with him as he grows older.

"Can you teach me on the weekend?" he asked expectantly.

"Sure! You just have to be patient. You have to practice and believe in yourself," I said looking to reinforce my previous points.

"I should do drawing lessons, right?"

"You want to take art lessons?"

"No, not art."

"Oh, you mean just drawing lessons?"

"Yeah."

"You do good when you focus and believe you can do it."

"We should start easy right?"

"Yeah, we'll start easy and work our way up."

I am hopeful that he'll show some patience and begin to practice more. He loves creative drawing, that's for sure. He often comes home with elaborate drawings of dragons and monsters and volcanoes. But I wonder if he'll sit still through a real lesson. I suppose I'll try to give him a lesson and find out!

How about my letters on the top of a big splash...

How about my letters on the top of a big splash...

Right when he said it, I knew that he meant for me to draw a picture of the LEGOLAND Water Park. We had just been there the weekend before. He was mesmerized by the clock tower which every 5 minutes or so would blast out a giant gush of water down onto anyone close to it. I let him describe to me what he meant by a "big splash" and then asked him if it'd be alright if a drew the clock tower from LEGOLAND. "Yeah, yeah," he said. It took me so long to draw the tower itself that I had to rush to draw the slide so that there was some more context to the drawing. This one feels unfinished to me, but I'm trying to keep these to about 10 minutes of my time. Some days, like this one, I just don't have enough time to do the drawing justice.

Again, the scattered placement of his letters are my favorite part of this one. The "V" is going down the slide, the "c" is on its way up the ladder, the "i" and the "T" are waiting to get splashed on the steps, and the "O" and the "R" are hanging out at the top of the tower. I'm always wanting to put some order into where he places his letters, but at the same time I find it liberating to realize that he doesn't care about order and, perhaps, neither should I.