elliot’s drawings: you will be visited by three spirits

 

Elliot drew the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. Can you tell which is which?

elliot’s drawings: haunted house

 

Elliot drew this awesome haunted house for me a few weeks ago and If forgot to post it.

elliot’s drawings: caped crusader

Check out this cool drawing Elliot did for me a few days ago:

It’s Batman! I love that Elliot’s getting to the point where his drawings are starting to look like stuff and make sense. I’m likely going to be scanning some more of his work over the next few weeks and months. He’ll be the Billy to my Bil “Daddy” Keane, if you will.

Elliot’s first comic

I have to admit, I’m a little proud of this. Yesterday, Elliot decided he wanted to do some drawing. We draw together sometimes, but by and large, Elliot hasn’t been very interested. His preferred artistic mediums are big smeary fingerpaintings or his Play Doh.

Yesterday however, he was ALL about drawing. Not only that, but he drew a little story that I’d like to share with you. Elliot’s story is in bold, my comments are in italics.

A dinosaur saw people walking around with their children. The dino saw them and ate them in his green tummy. Their mommy and daddies were sad. 

The green blob is the dinosaur. The brown scribbles are the children… and the sad faces are the mommies and daddies. Get ready now folks… the story is about to take a turn for the AWESOME.

Ghost Obi Wan Kenobi the Bat turned into a bat came and said “Go away dino!” He had a big snake. He scared the dino and the children came out of the tummy. 

Elliot and Henry occasionally play with an old shoebox full of Star Wars action figures I own. One of the action figures is a translucent blue Obi Wan Kenobi, portraying Old Ben as a ghost. He told me the blue scribbles are Ghost Obi Wan… I can’t quite figure out why he’s a bat in this tale.

“Go away dino!” is something I suppose he took from a few weeks ago when I took him to a cemetery near where I grew up. He was worried about ghosts and I told him to say “Go away ghosties!” if he saw any. 

Needless to say, I was impressed. Elliot’s nearly four years old and this a decently sophisticated story to make up, to say nothing for his work trying to illustrate it. Now, here’s the thing that impressed me the most. Look at the red bubble with the scribbles in it, in the upper right hand side of the drawing, I asked Elliot what that was. He said they were the words- that’s where Ghost Obi Wan says “Go away dino!”

He tried to write the story using word balloons! Go Elliot!

Anyway, I just had to share. Oh, I forgot… there was an epilogue. No picture, but in case you were wondering what happened:

The children were dirty and the mommies and daddies had to watch their children.

sketchbook: elliot’s monsters

In the last few weeks, Elliot has started showing an interest in drawing. Before this, he would draw or color, but there wasn’t much excitement attached to either pastimes. I’m assuming that some of his newfound love of art comes from preschool, but whatever the case, we’ve been spending quite a lot of time in the afternoons drawing when I get home from school.

He’s been very interested in monsters lately, so I thought I’d share a couple of his masterpieces with y’all.

Two things:

1) Elliot usually wants to draw with me, so I’ll let him doodle and then I’ll add a couple of details and hand it back to him. He tells me what kind of monsters he’s drawing and I’ll use that to inform my artistic choices. For example, the monster on the left was an “air monster”.

2) I’m also starting to write whatever it is we’re creating somewhere on the drawing. Listening to this interview with Sophie Crumb on NPR last week, I liked the fact that her dad saved every drawing she did with a little reminder of the context of the drawing.

Elliot specifically drew a “floopy” arm on the little monster in the corner in homage to James Kochalka’s Johnny Boo series of children’s comics. We got him Johnny Boo and the Happy Apples a few weeks ago and he’s OBSESSED with it, running around the house yelling “Squiggle power ACTIVATE!”

It’s kind of funny to see him become so obsessed with Kochalka’s work. Kochalka’s the godfather of autobio journal comics (at least in the “one a day, everyday” variety) and he’s definitely a huge influence on me. Further, Kochalka often posts his sons’ monster drawings on his own site!