Sea Otter and Harry Houdini in front of the Brooklyn Bridge

So long Second Grade....
One last image that doesn't make any sense without an explanation:

Our younger son is finishing up the school year tomorrow, and I am further behind than usual in figuring out how to express some small portion of the gratitude we feel towards his teachers and learning specialists.  Since I try to solve far too many problems by drawing on napkins, it is not a surprise that here we have a thank you napkin for his teachers. 

In addition to the class study of the bridge, our son did his independent research projects on Sea Otters, Harry Houdini, and Jacob Lawrence. My apologies to Mr. Lawrence for not including him here. While Mr. Houdini was well known for jumping off bridges while handcuffed and generally submerging himself in water, I could not make any such argument for Mr. Lawrence. Perhaps he would not be sorry to skip being submerged in effigy in a toxic urban waterway.

As it is, both the bridge and Harry look a bit off.  My older son glanced at the napkin yesterday and said, "Whoa! What is going on with his head?!!" When I responded self-defensively that I didn't think it was a terrible likeness, he soothed me, "Ok, it's probably just that I am not used to seeing him in color." Yes, that must have been it.

Harry, sans Sea Otter

From Halloween to Christmas

Ansel's napkins from the fall holiday season, more or less.
Certain themes stand out: Rocket Raccoon and the Guardians of the Galaxy, Sea Otters, Ewoks and Star Wars.

Ocean Animals Express Gratitude

An unlikely assortment of sea creatures crammed on one napkin:

It is challenging to come up with holiday gifts for teachers, tutors and therapists.

I am always extremely grateful to those people who are not even biologically related to my kids, but are consistently more supportive and tolerant than I manage to be on a good day.

When an opportunity comes up to be officially grateful to these generous, and most often colossally underpaid people, I always feel like there is not a good solution. At school, there is an official group class gift, and we are not supposed to individually give the teachers anything of momentary value.

One of Ansel's classroom teachers won't be coming back after winter break. While I was packing up the holiday card and gift trinket last night at 8 pm, Ansel told me what he really wanted to give to Elizabeth was a napkin featuring all of the ocean animals that the class had studied.

When I showed him the napkin this morning, he said, "Wow, you got all of them on there, good job!"

Can't say much more than that. 

But, yes, I did manage to get all of them on there.  

Holiday Season Sea Otters

Bi-denomenational Sea Otters acknowledge the holidays.

Yesterday was Ocean Animal report presentation day in Second Grade.
Afterward, Ansel officially informed me that now there should be no more napkin drawings of Sea Otters.

I am an occasional adjunct faculty member at the New York Academy, and am in the midst of end of semester thesis critiques this week.  While I am a sculptor, I've spent the majority of my waking hours over the last two days looking at, and attempting to talk about, paintings. Last night Ansel asked if any students were painting Sea Otters, and told me that I should definitely bring home a picture for him if there were any such paintings.

I debated whether I should be offended that he didn't want me to draw any more Otters, but was so keen to see other peoples images. Of course, I say that facetiously, as ever bothering to be offended by my kids would lead to constant tribulation and idiocy.

But I did draw some more Sea Otters last night, mostly just to be perverse.
Ansel seemed pleased enough with them this morning, but I can observe that while my 2D skills have improved over the years, I will not be getting an MFA in painting...or napkin drawing, any time soon.

Below is one of my son's nice drawings from his report.

Wolverine Sea Otter

I warned my son last night that he might have to take one of the napkins from the "bank" today. We always have a stack of 10-20 previously rejected napkins to choose from.  I was feeling more tired than usual and couldn't think of anything interesting to draw.

He said, "Oh, just draw a Sea Otter with Wolverine claws. That will be easy!"

Well, it was easier than trying to draw Hugh Jackman.

Sea Otter Pup Rides a Wild Turkey

(I was mistaken yesterday, and there was in fact one more napkin-requiring school lunch this week before fall break.)

My younger son  told me last night that not one person in his class thought yesterday's "Turkeysaurus Rex" napkin was funny, and that everyone said it was just weird.  He did agree nonetheless that maybe we could try something else on the turkey theme...as long as there was also a Sea Otter involved. 

I am always happy to draw something at least tangentially related to actual curriculum rather than trademarked characters that suggest that my kids watch too much television.  I don't, however,  get requests for school subject matter very often. In my younger son's case, I have to reach back to 2012, when he was studying Owls to come up with a series of school related napkins. (see the poorly photographed Owl napkins here)

Annoying mother that I am, I still frequently suggest school related napkins.  My kids' teachers always make a point to give me lots of positive reinforcement when my son shows up with a napkin that is about an edifying school topic. I am perhaps more responsive than my sons to praise from school authority figures.

Early on in the napkin project, my older son's Pre-K teacher took a hard line.  She told us that she was not going to read the text to him on any napkin unless the image was related to curriculum or at least portraying some other wholesome topic like real animals or plants: No Star Wars characters, even if Luke and Darth Vader were hugging and proclaiming the virtues of Quaker non violent conflict resolution.   This restriction of course only increased my son's determination that the napkins should havenothing to do with school. As it turned out, he was surreptitiously reading to himself, so he did not need her help with the text anyway. 

Our younger child's teachers have been a bit more relaxed, and perhaps, as a result, he is less of a pop culture crusader

I had to go with a baby Otter for today's image, since it seemed too improbable to put a 70 pound, four foot tall adult animal on the back of a Turkey....unlike a pup, which is completely plausible astride a Wild Turkey....

(There is a now famous rescued Sea Otter Pup at the Shed Aquarium in Chicago which can be seen at great length online.  for instance:Sea Otter pup 681)

Sea Otter with Sonic Screwdriver

I wonder how much overlap there is between the "fandoms" of Doctor Who and Sea Otters?

Eager to share his trove of Sea Otter knowledge, Ansel was telling us yesterday about how they use stones to  hammer shells off undersea rocks and open up oysters and abalones. They are some of the few tool using mammals, and the only marine mammals besides dolphins.

Since these Otters can use tools, I thought, why not provide the ultimate tool?  Maybe the problem was that Ansel did not give me a request last night, and I was deluding myself that the green glow of the sonic screwdriver reflected off the water was going to be fun to draw?

When I showed the napkin to Ansel this morning, he rolled his eyes and said, "That will do."
Not a very successful crossover, apparently.

Sea Otter with Teddy Bear

Continuing to work on his 2nd grade research paper on Sea Otters, Ansel told me that people call them "The Teddy Bears of the sea."

In a sleep deprived haze last night, I debated the visual possibilities of that statement:  Teddy bears swimming in the ocean (surfing! scuba diving!) or Sea Otters reclining indoors on beds or having tea parties.  The options seemed mostly too insipid. 

In the end, as usual, I took the path of least resistance and just put the two together. Speaking of insipidity, I feel like I have seen a lot of images online of animals snuggling with teddy bears.  "Rat with teddy bear" autofills on Google above even "rat with tumor." There are endless images of dogs and cats clutching plushes. We like our online animals cute, and even better, cuddling an unrealistic stuffed animal. 

And speaking of unrealistic, Ansel mentioned several times how great it would be to have a sea otter as a pet....If only we had  room for an animal that is 4 to 5 feet long and between 70 and 90 pounds, plus a large salt water pool well stocked with tasty benthic invertebrates.

The Sea Otter on today's napkin is definitely not snuggling his teddy, and seems mostly annoyed by the lack of realism in the situation.

Sea Otter with Crab for Lunch

Ansel is pretty excited about his research project on Sea Otters,  Thus, we have a rare napkin free of trademarked character infringement, featuring a real animal in a real environment without lasers or a jet pack.

Did you know that Sea Otters can weigh up to 90 lbs? And that they have something between 26,000 and 165,000 hairs per square centimeter of skin, yet they never have to comb it because it never gets tangled?

At least that is what Ansel tells me.

The crab is not particularly accurate.  Around midnight last night, I realized I was making it cooked crab color.  There are crabs with shells in that color range, but I cannot say if they are on the menu for this sort of sea otter.  I just thought it would be nice if the crab popped out from the background...or maybe I wasn't really thinking and was just drawing a cooked crab?