I’m not the kind of guy to go bragging about my kids – I know everyone thinks their kids are the greatest, as they should, but lets face it, most kids are simply average and don’t merit any sort of special acknowledgement unless they truly do something worthy of mention, just like everyone else. Basically, it’s just annoying when a parent constantly praises their kid for mediocre achievements. Commend them when they do well, encourage them to put forth the effort, but let them know when they fuck up. That’s just my opinion.
Not sure why I felt the need to preface this post with all of that, but I’m sure you’ll come up with a reason why.
Anyway… My 5 year old son draws all the time, just like a lot of other young kids, and his stuff is usually pretty good for his age. He generally spends most of his drawing time on images of Star Wars characters, Batman and that Blade guy from The Puppet Master (no, he hasn’t actually seen that movie). He’s also pretty anal about accuracy and details on these established characters, making sure everything is just right.
There are countless drawings he’s done that I think are fairly amazing for a 5 year old to be able to produce, but I’ve never posted a single one. He’s done everything from elaborate battle scenes, with full color, between Obi Wan and Anakin on Mustafar and X-wing and TIE Fighter dog fights above Tatooine, to simple head sketches of Batman and Captain Rex. Most of these always amaze me on some level, but looking at them, you could probably figure it was drawn by a kid between the ages of 4 and 10.
Then there was this sketch I found laying on my desk the other day. After completing it, he didn’t even bring it over to me to show off for approval, like he usually does. He just left it sitting there, thinking nothing of it, I’m sure. It’s a simple little line drawing, but when I saw it I was blown away. It’s not full of scratchy lines and careless, “5-year-old kid attention span” proportions and generic facial features. The lines are fluid and rhythmic, the proportions show character and it looks like there was real thought put into it. It was the first drawing of his that didn’t immediately look like it was drawn by a little kid – I thought that was something special. I was genuinely impressed and made sure to tell him as much. So to show him how much I liked it, instead of putting it up on the fridge with a magnet, I told him I’d put it on my website for the world to see… A world populated by about 3 people.
Click for a larger image.