Drawing Progress

Suzanne has crossed some sort of drawing threshold. She used to draw wild scribbles that were almost always pictures of "rushing rivers." But lately she has graduated to actual representational shapes. It's awesome and fascinating. When I got home from work, she was drawing a "game" for me. When we played, it consisted of me pointing at the various shapes and structures she'd drawn, and her telling me what they were. I pointed at a pear-shape with radiating lines (thinking it was the Sun), and she said, "Spider." (Actually, she said, "'Pider," because Suzanne doesn't bother with leading esses at this point in her life.) Elizabeth, who was hovering jealously nearby, jumped in to count the legs. Lo and behold, there were eight of those radiating lines. It was, indeed, a 'pider.

Elizabeth knows she's a much worse illustrator than I am. She is. But she's fifty times better than I was at five. Nevertheless, it annoys her already to be worse at something than I am. This instills in me a vague fear of her teenage self. She's going to attempt to crush me -- or worse yet, she won't because she feels sorry for her old man.

She's really good at drawing, at least compared to me. Just recently, she's gotten lips down really well, and she's working on hands, which are super hard. Feet are also hard, but you can always encase them in sneakers. You can't realistically have all of your characters wearing mittens.

The heartbreaking thing for me is that Elizabeth regularly puts herself down because her drawings aren't as good as mine. I don't want to overpraise her, but on the other hand I'm thinking, "You're a better drawer at five than I was at ten." The trick is to get her interested in continuing to work and improve at her drawing despite the barriers to success. She obviously enjoys it, even if the product of her work is not up to her ideal standard. She gets frustrated at what she can't do.

Welcome to the party, pal.

Much as I like my own comics, few though they might be, I'm stymied by my inability to use perspective to position the "camera" where I want it. I can't put it above the heads of my characters at a 45 degree angle, because I can't draw figures at that angle.

In any event, Elizabeth is getting better every day. Here is my proof:

This picture is all about the hands. Check out the right hand grasping the needle. You can see some eraser marks there, showing that she worked at it. I have never given Elizabeth any instructions on how to draw grasping hands. She tried it for the figure's left hand, too, with less success. Still, pretty cool. The three-dimensional gems in the necklace are nicely done, too, but that's a trick I taught her. The eyes are her attempt to ape the anime-eyes of My Little Pony: big black pupils with two or three white orbs of reflected light. Another interesting point is the fact that she has spirals at the elbows. This is a well-established cartooning trope, and I have no idea where she got it from, if anywhere.  I don't do those elbow-spirals.

I like this recent picture for the content more than the craft. It's got the cartoon thought-bubbles showing what the flower is thinking. The flower is imagining herself cradling a baby flower in her leaf hands.

She drew this while I was brushing her hair this morning (and for a few minutes afterwards). This is by far her best human face yet. Those lips and that nose are a breakthrough.  Upper extremities are a bit Thalidomide, but so it goes.