After we put the boys to bed, my wife and I clean up the 3-year-old’s dozens of drawings he leaves all over his drawing space, deciding what to keep and what to recycle. The figures above were all drawn on the same piece of paper and I thought they could tell a story, so I cut them out and had my 5-year-old letter the speech balloons. They’re still too young to (peacefully) jam together, so I like doing these little orchestrated collaborations. (Previously: “What do you know?”)
Collaging with a 5-year-old
I’ve been trying to get my 5-year-old interested in collage. Turns out the answer is fart jokes. So now we’re “collaborating” on this very important project. His Bernie Sanders collage is delightful modern dada:
When you let your 5-year-old hang out in the studio with you
Sometimes I’ll let O come out to the garage with me if I know I’m doing some lighter work that doesn’t require my full concentration. Yesterday when we left to have lunch, he said this:
Write your own sequel
My kids and I are big fans of Jon Klassen’s hat trilogy. Our current favorite read is Triangle, his book with Mac Barnett. My 5-year-old was thrilled when I told him there’s going to be a sequel called Square, but when I told him it wasn’t out yet, he got so impatient that he decided he’d write his own sequel, Rectangle.
It reminded me of the Bradford Cox story in Steal Like An Artist:
Bradford Cox, a member of the band Deerhunter, says that when he was a kid he didn’t have the Internet, so he had to wait until the official release day to hear his favorite band’s new album. He had a game he would play: He would sit down and record a “fake” version of what he wanted the new album to sound like. Then, when the album came out, he would compare the songs he’d written with the songs on the real album. And what do you know, many of these songs eventually became Deerhunter songs.
When we love a piece of work, we’re desperate for more. We crave sequels. Why not channel that desire into something productive?
I posted the Cox story on Twitter and novelist Austin Grossman said of his book Soon I Will Be Invincible, “I got tired of waiting for a Watchmen sequel so I wrote one.”
Tired of waiting on a sequel? Write your own and see where it goes.
PS. My 2-year-old hasn’t drawn a sequel yet, but he is working on fan art:
Mood
Drawing by my 5-year-old.
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