June 2 - Superhero Drawing Studio

Today for Superhero Drawing Studio, Zephyr wanted to make his own Pokémon cards... well, his own brand of Pokémon called Z-Me. Sounded good! I sized out the frames for him (so that when we cut them out they would fit in his new binder) and let him go to town. 

Lyric wanted me to make a picture of Batman, Robin, and Stripe man for him to color. And he wanted a giant Stripe robot behind Stripe Man. 

Work in progress.

While I was doing it, Lyric saw what Zephyr was doing and started to make up his own cards. Hey, why not?

I'm going to give myself an incomplete on this one. I got to show them how I draw a stick figure out of circles and lines and let them work on their own cards, but I feel like I started too late. We had to stop just when we were really starting to roll. 

May 4 - Superhero Drawing Studio

HYPOTHESIS: If we let my youngest son design his own clothes, he'll want to wear them.

Let me explain that a bit further: I have two sons who are both great, but very different from each other. Zephyr, my oldest, is a very snazzy dresser who loves to wear stylish clothes. He likes wearing a tie, for example, and he always has. Lyric, my youngest, not so much. He fights me constantly when we get dressed in the morning, refusing to wear lots of clothes we have for him (many of which are hand-me-downs from Zephyr). Where Zephyr likes fancy things, Lyric likes superhero clothing, and will (as another example) wear a mask and cape for a shockingly long period of time.

The other day as I was getting Lyric dressed in something fancy, he told me "I just don't like wearing fancy things". I asked him why not, and he said, "I don't know... I was just born that way". I'm not sure if he knew how affecting that answer was to me, but it really got me thinking. I want Lyric to be happy being who he thinks he is, and I want him to feel comfortable being the person he feels like he should be. I don't want to impose my own idea of who he should be onto him, I want him to come to be the person he feels like he's meant to be.  As a dad, of course I'm going to shape him in certain ways, but I feel like it's my job as a dad to not just raise kids to be what I want them to be, but to raise kids to be the best possible version of who they actually are. So I decided I'd try to work with him to make some new superhero clothes based on superheroes he makes up.

The first step would be to draw out the designs for the costumes, which is why I scheduled this very special episode of Superhero Drawing Studio.

PROCEDURE: We talked this morning about which made up superheroes we wanted to draw... Zephyr made up an alien named Zemore on the spot, and Lyric said he wanted to make a drawing of Crocodile man, a superhero he's made up before. I took a piece of paper and gave one to Zephyr, and drew an outline for Lyric so we could talk about how the costume would be designed.

Lyric said he wanted two crocodiles in the middle, and we looked up crocodiles on our iPad as a reference. I started sketching based on his instructions, trying to place how he wanted the crocodiles to look. He wanted two crocodiles but also wanted a symbol in the middle like Batman, so I came up with a way to make the interior circle formed by the negative space of the crocodiles:

And then from there it was about figuring out the color patterns. Again, I did the coloring here, letting Lyric act as the foreman... his drawing skill is coming along nicely, but this time I wanted to concentrate on him ideating more than using fine motor skills.

And of course while we were busy doing that, Zephyr was going to town making his drawing:

So that was phase one. Today I went to American Apparel and my local fabric store to get shirts and felt and fabric markers, and tomorrow we'll start constructing some new costumes. Stay tuned!

April 5 - Superhero Drawing Studio

HYPOTHESIS: By drawing with younger subjects, you can impart a variety of lessons about how to draw and help develop the right side of their brain.

PROCEDURE: Started to draw a superhero on my own as subjects were finishing breakfast to model creative behavior for them. When I asked older subject (Zephyr, age 7 and a half) what he wanted to draw, he said he wanted to draw the cartoon birds from mobile game Tiny Wings (a current obsession). Demonstrated to subject how the characters are designed on a basic circular model and showed him tips on drawing in that style. Subject retrieved iPad to base drawings on actual images.

Subject was especially dubious about method of drawing the nest ("It's not an oval shape! It looks like a U!") but came to see how one shape was actually in front of another. Subject colored in drawing with sharpies.

Younger subject (Lyric, age 4 and a half) did not want to draw superheroes and preferred to dress up as a superhero.

As Robin, natch.

When I suggested that maybe he might want to draw a bird like other subject was doing, younger subject suggested we dress the bird as Robin as well. I immediately praised the idea of the younger subject and got right on drawing a version of a Tiny Wings bird dressed as Robin.

Note: we ran out of time and didn't get to color it in (maybe some other time we will), but I like that I showed the kids they could think of an idea and just draw it out of thin air.

RESULTS: I feel like I got to impart a bunch of lessons and model a lot of good creative behavior for the subjects with a minimum of effort. Very pleased with the results.