Dadding Badly – true tales of a first-time father

I’ve been including my kid in my MFA grad school work for the last couple of semesters. The first time he was just newly born so I would do a sketch of him everyday in a sketchbook to include my expanded family into my art practice. The following semester I tried to do the same but he was just moving too much to draw. So I decided to hold the pencil to the paper and have him move it, and then I’d make it into something. (You can see some examples here.) But that was getting harder and harder so, since he was doing pure mark making anyway, I figured I’d do the same.  He would draw first, I’d go second making my marks fit with his. But after a time I figured that I’d switch the order with me going first and he going second, so my mark wouldn’t be constrained by what was already on the page. (The boy was already unrestrained.) You know what? There was little difference in the outcome. (Sorry. I know that was a lot of grad school mumbo-jumbo.)

In the time tween semesters, the boy became conscious of the fact that he was drawing, and was really digging it. So this time ’round I’m just having him draw, although many times he seems more interested in putting crayons in whatever Tupperware is strewn about the kitchen floor. The strip above is what happened the first time this semester………..except we were on the kitchen floor. It was just easier to draw us at the table.