Napkin Portraits

Yearly Napkin Portrait Dysfunction:

The Cover Your Nose and Mouth Edition.

Every year I rediscover the information that napkins do not photograph well when put next to actual people. And that my kids are unwilling to cooperate for even the two minutes it might take to line up the image. And this time I did not ask them to embarrass themselves on a subway platform.

But it’s the dysfunction that makes it interesting....right?

If the photo actually lined up the way I planned, what would be the fun in that?

Back to School Napkin Portraits

Back to School Portrait:

It’s been a difficult end of summer around here. 

The summer itself was mostly filled with probably age-appropriate, incessant rejection of parental authority. This independence from authority primarily manifested as a refusal to attend to basic personal hygiene, and balking at the idea of going outside or engaging in any physical activity beside walking from the couch to the bedroom. ...And also rejecting any well-meant suggestions (ok, this is sometimes described as nagging by the recipients of the well-meant suggestions) that it might perhaps be wise to complete some of the enormous summer homework assignment a bit in advance of the weekend immediately before school. 

But this evening, I am focusing on the recently popular topic of gratitude, and reminding myself how nice it is to have the kids around now, and how much I will miss them in the future when I can’t nag them in such close proximity...and can’t spectate on the failure of my nagging quite so easily.

The following images are of the napkins without the kids, and an example of what happens after a stressful 2 minutes of posing for mom.

One can see many more instances of napkin portraits on the blog from many years past, but this is our first solidly profile view, so that is marginally notable. 

(See the all the napkin portraits over the years here:)

Selfie Day Napkin

Happy National Selfie Day:

There hadn’t been a napkin selfie for a while. 

Today I felt like maybe my eyebrows were the most relevant part of my real face.

Following is the napkin solo, photographed in more flattering light. today

(Somehow forgot that lumpy napkins don’t look good when lit from above... perhaps the same is true for me)

You can see the previous selfies at: 
https://ninaslevy.blogspot.com/search/label/Selfie?m=1

End of Summer Napkin Portrait

Mother and (Absent) Sons:

Posing for the napkin portrait for this year was slightly less compelling than various other screen based activities.

I might have anticipated this as the kids would have barely appeared beyond the edges of the napkin...but I was hoping to have some hair protruding on either side.

Maybe next year...

Ha.

(Somehow I neglected to post this one and a few others earlier this month, so my apologies for the time lag)

Napkin Self Portrait

Dysfunctional Napkin Selfie:

I try to do napkin portraits of myself & kids at the end of the summer.

I’ve been thinking a lot about portraits generally

...and how things that don’t quite work can be more interesting than a “good” likeness- 

particularly when it comes to my own geriatric face

Article in Esthetic Lens Magazine

Delighted to have something about the napkin endeavor posted by Esthetic Lens Magazine today.

Here, a napkins in the real world portrait of the kids included in the article. It’s from way back in 2014 when Minecraft teeshirts were super cool. 

There have been a great many napkin portraits of the increasingly large kids since, but I think this one remains one of the more convincing....maybe I am not improving in my old(er) age?

Mother’s Day Grandsons

Enforced Brotherly Togetherness for Mother’s Day:

My sons’ gift to me for the holiday was to pose for an image for my mother. 

They had to cooperate and be in quite close proximity for at least a couple of minutes without trying to stand on each other’s heads. 

This is a challenge that could only be surmounted on an official holiday.

Perhaps it was fortunate that Grandma was not here to observe the “friendly” wrestling that occurred immediately after the picture with the napkin was taken.

Happy Mother’s Day to all who try to take care of other people.

Portrait with Absent Sons

School is coming up soon, and we are spending some quality time together as a family.
So that the kids will appreciate going back to school.

They are rarely impressed by my parenting lately.

Myself neither.

But probably for not exactly the same reasons.


PS: I am still working on this one.  It's really hard to compose a photo of yourself with the non selfie  side of the phone.  My sons each came in to look at me a few times while I was trying to take this shot, wondering what could possibly be taking me so long when there was food that I could have been serving them.
It is still not the composition that I had in mind, but coincidentally, my phone is no longer functioning as a camera...or as a phone for that matter... so I am done for the moment.

Napkin Portraits

We are still working on the napkin portrait thing.
I have to embrace a certain amount of failure on these, since I can't see very well to compose the shot and my collaborator is definitely not a perfectionist.


And sometimes, just plain absent:

Subway Portrait Napkins

Public Degradation with Absorbent Paper Products:

(Perhaps not one of our more successful "napkins in the real world" photo sessions.)

I thought this year's napkin portraits should be staged in the subway since our rides back and forth to summer camp were a notable feature of the summer...for me anyway. I biked the boys back and forth to school for five years, so we did not see much of the trains on a daily basis then. And for the last two years, they have been at separate schools, and a three person train ride was relatively rare. Next year, perhaps they will be going to camp without me having to chaperone so consistently. 

So, I thought commemoration was in order.

Or, it is possible that I was just being a sadist.

The kids are always not up for having their picture taken with napkins (or without napkins, to be honest). And this time, I added the adolescent-mortifying twist of doing it in public with a selfie stick. My older son described our seven minutes on the subway platform as "just about the worst thing ever." He added, "Mom, this is why I resist leaving the house, because then stuff like this happens." 

Indeed. Leave your seat on the couch, and the next thing you know, your sadistic (and masochistic) mother might be forcing you to do dumb stuff on a subway platform. Well.... there was no actual forcing. I did bribe them with a somewhat indulgent lunch, so I don't think they suffered all that much. But I'm sure the psychological scars are deeper than I can imagine.

Nobody on the platform gave us a second look. It is New York. We have all seen so much worse in the subway.

Goofy Self Portrait Napkin

Every summer I try to do a set of portraits of the kids and maybe myself. I am not always successful. Last summer, we never managed to get a good picture of the napkins. Even when there is bribery involved, the kids usually have about 90 seconds of patience for me and my dippy napkins, and that is not always enough to orchestrate the real world shot.

This year my plan involves a selfie stick and the G train platform. The kids are fairly horrified by the prospect, and I anticipate an even lower than previous level of cooperation. 

I've almost finished the napkins, but now have the much more challenging prospect of luring the kids back to the G platform.

My napkin face looks a bit startled here in a test shot, perhaps by the goofiness of the idea...or maybe just the goofiness of my hat.

(Go to "Napkins in the Real World" to see previous attempts)

Happy Mother's Day Grandma

As usual, my rather pathetic offering for a significant day is a napkin for my mother.

My kids gave me the gift of letting me sleep in today...

They slept in later than I did, so it was not a high effort gift.

But once awake and reminded that today was Mother's Day, they were quick to assert that it still counts as a gift that no one woke me up early.

I did not wake my mother up early this morning either.
No doubt she was grateful.

Big Brother

The older brother was unable to join us for this iteration as he was engaged in super important online activities at the time.

But I find I almost prefer this picture of the napkin with the younger sibling with his second, superego-like head.

Big brother is always there in spirit if not in the flesh.

Couch Potatoes with WWE Custom Avatars

School starts next week. In view of this impending doom, our sons' preferred activity is holding down the couch while staring at a screen. While I am philosophically against extended periods of this sort of thing, knowing that they will soon be unable to drive me crazy with the excessive watching of utterly inane youtube videos has mellowed me out a bit this week.

They have also been testing the limits of my sanity with the WWE 2K16 game on the X box. Let's just say that being able to bash one's brother repeatedly on his virtual head with a metal folding chair prompts excessive glee.

Much time was invested (when they should have been getting ready for bed) carefully crafting their avatars, which are rather appropriate for each of them.

They were pretty enthusiastic about me drawing their WWE 2K16 avatars... But definitely not interested in interrupting their viewing of YouTube videos long enough to pose with them.

Family of Pinheads

Family of pinheads:

Still need to work on this one a bit.

It's been a very difficult summer.

Can you tell?

Portrait Test Shot

Napkin Selfie?

I usually try to do napkin portraits of myself and the kids sometime near the end of the summer.

This set isn't going so well so far. I find my facial expression on this one somewhat troubling.

I asked my younger son to help me line things up and take a snapshot of the thing in progress.

It did not occur to him that my napkin face should be anywhere near the center of the frame.

Upon further reflection, and given my demeanor on the drawing, I think his sense of composition was perfect.

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to Grandma:

This was an attempt at a Mother's Day card for my own mom.
Unfortunately the drawing, as well as Mother's Day in general, was pretty much done in by a virus.
Our older child very suddenly produced a temperature of 103 yesterday, just as we were getting ready to see Grandma and Grandpa. He followed it up this morning with 104, so visiting with non essential personnel was definitely out. My parents are relatively quite young and healthy (so much younger and healthier than I am going to be by the time my kids reach adulthood. But they are perhaps a bit past the point when they are willing to casually expose themselves to something beyond garden variety childhood pestilence.

And with the continuing pestilence in the house, I did not have much time to work on the drawing...and any Mother's Day acknowledgements (if any were planned) were definitely cancelled.


My husband did make me a cup of tea this morning, so it wasn't like nothing special happened.

Happy Mothers Day

  

Happy Mothers Day to my sons' Grandmother:

An image where they look sort of cute....and you can't hear what they are saying.

 

Bedtime Monsters: Predator and Devil Wolf

And one last poorly executed iteration of the napkins replacing faces concept before we return to our regularly scheduled schoolday napkin programming.

The kids are each sporting the face of their favorite monster: Archer has a specific Predator named Dark from the "Alien vs. Predator" game, while Ansel has a non-trademarked red eyed "Devil Wolf" of his own design.

They are holding monster faces in bed, because...well...more often than not...they are monsters at bedtime.

LEGO Hulk with Kids

Tourist trapped: The kids in the Toy R Us in Times Square.

Who goes to Times Square in August? 

Apparently we do.  There were extenuating circumstances that brought us to the Toys R Us two days in a row, but I can't say that they really constituted a valid excuse.

Since I knew we were going to return the next day, I thought why not do a couple of portraits overnight so I could torture the kids on the second visit?...And that way I could be extra sleep deprived while navigating the seething masses of tourists.

I completely failed to match the green of the Hulk's LEGOs. I should have posed them in front of the animatronic dinosaur instead. 

They were much more enthusiastic about posing for this one.  If only I had known ahead of time that there would be a Predator among the bedraggled Elmos and Spider-men...