Helmeted Knight with Background Dragon

Our younger son is working on a video at camp that features a knight and a dragon. We spent the Fourth of July making the knight’s helmet pictured here out of cardboard.

Fashioning compound curves out of corrugated materials proved way more challenging than I anticipated. I vaguely remember knocking out a cardboard “Captain Rex” Star Wars clone trooper helmet in an evening with time left over to draw the rest of the costume in Sharpie on white pajamas many years ago... So many years ago that my older son was young enough to develop a life threatening need for a clone trooper costume the night before Halloween...and apparently I was young and foolish enough to make him one. 

I don’t remember that helmet being so challenging, but perhaps I was just not sleeping enough at the time to form accurate long term memories.

Or maybe this loss of helmet building skill is a symptom of progressive cognitive decline: losing one’s keys, poor word retrieval, and the “inability to fashion helmets out of flat materials”

In fact, I am a little sleep deprived right now. Can you tell?

My son is now telling me that we need to remake the helmet over the weekend as he has decided that it requires a more complicated design.

At least the dragon is two dimensional.

Here’s the previous helmet from way back in 2009
Maybe it was more impressive in my memory...

Fourth of July Snack

We were going to see the latest Jurassic World movie today to celebrate our independence from weekday routine. But one kid was not feeling well enough to consider consuming a large soft drink and a tub of popcorn, so we are festering at home instead.

Alas, no bomb pops were consumed either.

DeadPooh and Cable Too

Consider yourself pounced.

Having sat through the “Christopher Robin” movie preview a couple of times now, listening to Ewan McGregor say, “POOH!” repeatedly....well, it seemed like we had to have a DeadPooh.

I was thinking about pairing him with Spider-Tigger-Man, or maybe Wolverine/Tigger, (too much claw similarity) but our younger son thought Cable was a better bet. 

Perhaps I was just trying to avoid the additional labor of figuring out what Cable was wearing in Deadpool 2 and exactly what his arm looked like.

As it was, I neglected to draw the stuffed bear on his belt...but perhaps that would have been redundant...or meta?

Incredibles’ Jack Jack and Jurassic World’s Carnotaurus

Which One Will Prevail?

We haven’t seen either The Incredibles 2 or Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom yet, and we are going to have to choose one movie to see first this weekend.

I think we are leaning towards The Incredibles. 

And clearly Jack Jack is going to kick that Carnotaurus’ butt anyway. It can’t even stand up to the tyrannosaurus long enough to eat Chris Pratt in the preview.

Not that we will miss an opportunity to see dinosaurs eat non super humans. 

Definitely not.

Skull Rings

Skull Rings Go Well With Everything:

(particularly with good dental hygiene)

In her office, our Pediatric Dentist has a bin of cheap toys that one might think that our kids are pretty much too old to find interesting...

But who among us can resist plastic skull rings? 

I certainly can’t resist drawing them.

They were a bit small for our giant son, however, so they were only first or second knuckle rings.

He was more conservative in his ring application on this visit having learned his lesson previously. At another appointment, we had to apply copious amounts of mom’s lip balm to his finger to remove the undersized kiddie ring. 

But that wasn’t a skull ring anyway. Just a plain old ring.

I tried to improve the rings for the napkin. The eye sockets weren’t quite that glow-y. 

My sons hair, however, definitely looks better in person. No matter how many times I draw it, I can still mess it up.

Deadpool Goes Full Winnie The Pooh

Deadpool Goes Full Winnie the Pooh

Amid the avalanche of pop culture references in Deadpool 2, there is a memorable one to the honey loving denizen of the hundred acre wood.

The reference comes up after Deadpool has been torn in half and is home regrowing his lower body as a pair of toddler legs with adjacent little kid anatomy.  Like the name checked bear, Wade is only wearing a shirt.  And there is also a “Basic Instinct” reference. I’ll leave it there.

Yes, so very inappropriate for family viewing.  That was the point of course.

But I find the display of male body parts in a mainstream movie in a non sexual (and non violent) context to be not entirely a bad thing. 

I realize this may not be a popular sentiment. There is a thicket of gender issues here that I will resist wading into today. But suffice it to say, while the Deadpool film franchise certainly prides itself on boundary pushing, it troubles me less than most R rated action movies as it is not so steeped in misogynistic imagery.

For the napkin, of course the pants had to be on, so the Pooh reference had to be shifted a bit....but the DeadPooh possibilities are there... My kids were not big Winnie the Pooh fans back in the day. (They preferred Curious George)

But, like most small children, they did enjoy reclining on the couch without pants. 

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?

Boy with Approximate Face

Boy with Approximate Face:

It has been a rough couple of weeks for napkins. I had a portrait related deadline that I failed to make twice...and am still finishing. But the end is in sight.

Here our younger son is posing with a drawing based roughly on his face that was included in the project. I’m only using adult faces, so I made him look a bit older...and maybe female? 

He was a good sport about it, mostly. 

Napkins will be returning soon. Summer camp has already begun.

Fortnite Rogue Agent Birthday Card

This is another mother/son collaboration card.

The birthday kid’s Fortnite skin is Rogue Agent, therefore, this.

Sadly, none of my son’s friends favor the more outlandish, more entertaining to draw, Fortnite skins like, say, Cuddle Team Leader or Leviathan.

Fortnite Birthday Card Collaboration

Sadly, not a napkin, just plain old paper

When the gift for a good friend is a lame gift card... you might have to make an extra special card. 

Rust Lord is the birthday kid’s favorite skin in Fortnite  so he seemed like the appropriate bearer of birthday greetings.

I drew the ink outlines and my son did the color. He did a much nicer job than I would have. I would have been all wrapped up in the light problem with the glowing candles reflecting off the helmet and such...and past experience indicates that I probably wouldn’t have been able to make any of that work.

There are more birthdays coming up, (with more lame gift cards) so perhaps there will be more such Mother/Son collaborations.

Turbo and Deadpool

The super speed healing man and the super speed mollusc:

We still haven’t seen Deadpool 2 yet. 

My sons are suffering mightily. 

And loudly.

But we did see the more age appropriate snail with Deadpool’s voice way back in 2013.

(Did you remember that Ryan Reynolds was Turbo? 

Are you now as irritated as my sons were when I reminded them?)

Mercenary/ Furry Acroyogo

Aspirational Yoga: Wade and Cuddle Team Leader get their namaste on. (Characters our kids have been deprived of do some acroyoga that we are not capable of)

Deadpool 2 opened and somehow we haven’t seen it yet. I haven’t figured out how I am going to fast forward through the parts inappropriate for an 11 year old in the theater.

And, curmudgeon that I am, I refused to give my older son $20 to purchase the Cuddle Team Leader skin in Fortnite.

But I drew this napkin. 

Because every mother wants provide her sons with an picture of an amoral violent superhero and a sexy furry...?

Birthday Card/Couch

Birthday Napkin for a Significant Birthday:

I was lacking an appropriate gift for a kind and generous relative who has often been particularly kind and generous to my sometimes apparently ungrateful sons.

Napkin: The answer to every problem. 

(Or perhaps not.)

We are past the point where I can get the kids to make charming decorated cards.  Let’s face it, a card perfunctorily scrawled by a disgruntled 15 year old is definitely less winsome than a cute drawing labored over by a six year old.

How winsome is a drawing on a napkin produced by a perpetually disgruntled middle aged woman?

Best not to answer that. 

Suffice it to say: we do cherish the recipient, and I definitely meant well. 

And there is always the chance that a drawing will turn out better when I produce it quickly under a time pressure.

Yes, that sometimes happens. Not frequently.

(I was in fact trying to make the family couch say happy birthday...if that is unclear)

Grandsons

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.

Deadpool and Jack Jack

Successful Childcare Always Requires Some Invulnerability...or at the very least accelerated healing.

Deadpool 2 and The Incredibles 2 are movies we are looking forward to right now. Our sons like the idea of the multi-super-powered baby running his less super father ragged almost as much as they love the promise of sarcastic violence and inappropriate sexual content in Deadpool.

It seemed to me that, while he might be extremely unqualified to babysit, Wade might be one of the few supers who might survive an evening alone with Jack Jack....without cookies anyway.

My younger son points out that I should have drawn Jack Jack’s lasers blasting through the top of Wade’s head rather than just having set his suit on fire.  

I am sure that would be more, ahem, “accurate” to the nature of the baby’s lasers. And more in keeping with the Deadpool genre. And more appropriate for the childcare theme: taking care of an infant can simultaneously make one feel as if one has brain damage and that one might benefit from a lobotomy. 

But my sons read these posts, so for the record, neither child has ever set one of their parents’ heads on fire, ever. Or been the verifiable cause of definite, diagnosable, parental brain damage.

Not that we couldn’t use some invulnerability and speed healing, both literally and metaphorically.

Chewy and Rocket

You can never go wrong with a furry sidekick: 

Chewie (or is it Chewy?) and Rocket affirm how much they have in common

...though the raccoon looks a bit concerned about the situation.

Probably what my sons really like most about these two is their weapons, not their furry charm.

This one was for Star Wars Day (May the fourth be with you) ...but it did not get finished or posted then as dinner has to get made, even on Star Wars Day.

Unicorn, Raptor, Wade, Rocket and Groot

Much anticipated spring movie characters with weird, awkwardly drawn, pink furry unicorn:

Yes of course we saw the Avengers Infinity War. 

And we will not miss Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom, no matter how ridiculous the premise necessary to allow dinosaurs the opportunity to eat humans again.

Deadpool 2 presents another challenge. 

We were able to all watch the first Deadpool movie courtesy of some fancy editing by mom on the iPad. While our eleven year old son has definitely viewed more material inappropriate for his age than I care to admit here... I will probably have to put the popcorn bucket over his head if we see the movie in a theater.