Trollhunters’ Galadrigal Brothers

Old Troll Bros:

Our younger son had an bit of an upper respiratory thing that made it arguably necessary for him to stay home from school last Monday...which allowed him to watch a whole lot of Trollhunters on Netflix. 

Since he has aged a bit out of the “Mom has to sit next to me on the couch and watch every thing with me, preferably while giving me a foot rub or a back rub” model, (though that doesn’t mean he won’t ask anyway...repeatedly) I saw very little of this Trollhunters show myself. 

But I did notice that one of the main troll characters is voiced by Kelsey Grammer (known only to our kids for his Sideshow Bobness) and that his often antagonistic brother is voiced by the more-relevant-to-adolescent-boys Mark Hamill.

My younger son observed me drawing this napkin back on September 25th, which was, coincidentally, Mr. Hamill’s birthday. He remarked, “it seems like more people are posting things today for Mark Hamill’s birthday because he is getting SO old.” ... 

Dramatic pause...then the inevitable follow up question: 

“Wait, Mom, is he as old as you are?” 

My son was dubious that it was possible that I could be younger. I pointed out that I was a child when the original Star Wars movie was released, and while Mr. Hamill was a young man at the time, he was clearly not in grammer school.

Remarkably, I am also younger than Sideshow Bob. 

Laughing Skull

I’ll be entering your dreams tonight in the form of a laughing skull:

Our younger son very much enjoyed Matt Groening’s “Disenchantment” on Netflix. This was not exactly a surprise as he has watched much more of “The Simpsons” and “Futurama” than is appropriate for his age. Most of his cultural and historical references seem to have been filtered through one or the other of those two shows.

Disenchantment definitely works a similar vein of dark humor. The above quote comes from Luci, the personal demon of the show’s main character.

Luci is most often mistaken for a cat, not a dog, and we never get to see the skull, so this napkin is a bit of a departure.

But I figured if I were going to draw a dream skull, it might as well be on a cute dog.

The result, however.... definitely not so cute.

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

Live Action Naked Mole Rat

“My dad’s allergic to every kind of fur...”

Ron Stoppable and his pet Rufus the naked mole rat from “Kim Possible”

Our younger son was a bit of a Kim Possible fan in his younger youth despite the fact that the show ended in the year of his birth. It was one of Disney Channel’s most successful animated shows until the advent of Phineas and Ferb five years later.

Our son informs me that a live action version is in the offing. Images of the non animated Kim are easily found online.

We have to wonder, however, about Kim’s sidekick Ron’s companion Rufus. The naked mole rat is kind of cute in the animated series...cute for a naked mole rat anyway.

As we have the same problem as Ron-Dad is allergic  to most furry things- our son suggested that maybe we should get a cute pet like Rufus. 

I felt compelled to illustrate what Rufus might look like in a live action version. 

Unsurprisingly, the naked mole rat enthusiasm has passed. 

Baby Heads

Fortnite Skins

Upgraded in Pink:

Our kids found the upgraded versions of the Drift and Ragnorak skins in Fortnite pretty compelling.

But my younger son tells me that the pink version of Ragnorak depicted here is just fan art and it should be blue.

This was a quick sketch cludged together in the morning before departure for camp, so accuracy was not at an all time high. 

Inari Fox Selfie

Things are cuter and more furry on the internet:

We had some conversation about whether the “Inari fox” pictures you see passed around online are “real”... i.e. pictures of real animals. 

As you might imagine, no, they are not real animals, but they are real objects made by @santaniel_toys.

But if they were real, you would definitely bring one to summer camp and take a selfie with it.

Robot and Son

We’ve been enjoying reading “The Wild Robot” by Peter Brown on the subway to summer camp. A robot named Roz who is shipwrecked on an island populated by animals becomes the mother of a gosling. 

In my son’s action movie universe, the second act of the story would probably involve the revelation that Roz the maternal robot was actually a high tech killing machine from a future timeline, and she would have to use her previously hidden weaponry to save the island’s residents from an interdimensional menace. Many explosions would ensue. 

We haven’t finished the book yet, but I am pretty sure that is not what is going to happen. 

After looking at this napkin, my son told me that he envisioned Roz as looking more like Futurama’s Bender than the Terminator.

Bender would have been easier to draw.

Shark Headwear for Shark Week 2018

Chomp on Junior:

I hear it’s Shark Week. The folks at Fortnite companionably released a skin called “Chomp Senior” for some synergistic shark marketing. 

(The price and apparent desirability of Fortnite skins continues to boggle my mind...but I am a person who draws pictures on napkins for zero monetary compensation, so what do I know?)

Chomp Senior is a cool guy in a form-fitting shark-inspired outfit complete with a shark headpiece where his face is framed by the open shark mouth.

Sort of like this napkin, except I somehow forgot the important part which is that the cool guy is supposed to be wearing cool opaque black sunglasses.

Helmets on the Subway

What if we could all wear our favorite helmets on the train?

Everyone is absorbed in their phone on the subway- a sort of digital, mental helmet.

But wouldn’t it be more fun to wear a Fortnite or Halo helmet? And you could worry less about other people sneezing and coughing on you.

I started thinking about this after watching our younger son wear a cardboard helmet on the way home from camp.

I seem compelled to draw things on the subway, though the environment is clearly way too complicated for my skill set (and maybe the napkin genre) 

Just struggling to put one thing in front of another lends a weird outsidery art quality to the endeavor. And as a teacher at an institution that grants MFAs, I am afraid that my outsider privileges have been permanently revoked. Hashtag “notoutsiderartjustawkwarddrawing”

And despite the crowded train scene, I only managed to include 7 helmets, just the tip of the desirable helmet iceberg around here.

Shark vs. Knight

Left Shark vs Daedric Knight:

The kids have been playing Garry’s Mod. They are mostly interested in repeatedly blowing one another up with ridiculous weapons.

I thought their avatars could be interesting to draw in unweaponized acrobatic combat.

I might be alone in that interest.

...and while the Left Shark was not all that challenging, the Skyrim armor was clearly a bit more complicated than I needed. 

Fortnite Llama

Llama, Llama, Fortnite Drama:

Damaged as I am by 15 years of sleep deprivation, I cannot hear the word “llama” without mentally echoing “Llama,  Llama, Red Pajama.” This is the hooky title of a children’s book that I read over and over again to at least one of our kids. (The younger one claims no knowledge of it, but that probably means I only read it to him 50 times instead of the 100 times I read to his brother.) 

Five minutes of googling tells me that this 2005 book by Anna Dewdney has since become a “cultural touchstone” and a franchise (several sequel books, a Netflix series, a rap by Ludacris, etc) So I am no doubt not the only one burdened by the mental compulsion to echo all instances of “llama” with “pajama.” 

But there is a strange relevance here in regard to Fortnite and online gaming.... 

Ms. Dewdney’s book was about a young person’s difficulty with staying alone in his bedroom without his mama.

As I recall, baby llama’s poor self-regulation eventually led to much “llama drama,” boo-hooing, and wailing, which finally summons his annoyed mother to tell him to simmer down and go to sleep....while of course reassuring him of her love. 

The drama, wailing, and general poor self-regulation in our house is now less about separation anxiety and more about the frustrations of online gaming in general...and Fortnite in particular.

We had intense stress about llamas over the weekend. I cannot claim a deep understanding of these “llama”/piñata things’ role in the game, but their acquisition is essential. Hysteria can easily blossom when they can’t be found...or when, GOD FORBID, one is snatched away from under ones nose by another player.

Listening to my sons intermittently screech in frustration is perhaps unnecessarily traumatic for me. If only I, like the mother in the book, could successfully encourage less startling expressions of llama drama.

... but let’s be serious, I never succeeded in getting them to go to bed without drama.  

At least we did get a llama, so there’s that.

More Fun with the Giant Pet Rat

Riding a Giant Rodent to Peer Group Notoriety:

While we were on the pet rat topic, our younger son observed: “if the rat was big enough for me to ride to school, and then it climbed up the building...I would be the talk of the school!” Indeed he would.

The rat here is climbing up the facade of the building that houses summer camp. I think they might be more flexible about that sort of thing than would his regular school.

Ghost’s Mask From Ant-Man and the Wasp

The Joy of Headgear That Totally Obscures Vision:

Don’t get me started about the quantum realm where Michelle Pfieffer apparently had decades of access to shampoo, mascara, and fingerless gloves... 

And besides the character’s problematic relationship to physics, Ghost is definitely not a satisfying villain, or anti-hero, or whatever. 

But, as far as our kids are concerned: she has a cool mask, so it’s all pretty good. 

This particular napkin was a slapdash effort, produced in a rush in the morning before our departure for camp...when I was supposed to be making breakfast, folding laundry, unloading the dishwasher, packing the lunch....

I did not have time to capture the weird retro textural variations on the hood and suit...but did at least draw the weird, can’t-possibly-see-out-of-them, glowing, pseudo eye protuberances.

NYC Subway

Handheld Puppies:

(What if everyone on the train had a personal puppy instead of a cell phone?)

I might be on the edge of becoming a full blown tinfoil hat wearing crazy person at any moment...but I will spare those not in my immediate family my thoughts on the topic of radiation. Let’s just say that I have a suspicion that maybe it is not a boon to one’s health to spend a lot of time underground in a metal tube full of cell phones that are constantly searching for a signal. 

These sorts of thoughts don’t stop me from riding the subway daily. But I am grateful that our younger son is tall enough that strangers on a crowded train can’t hover their phones directly over his skull while they scroll Facebook between stations. 

But wouldn’t be nice if we were all looking at our own personal puppies instead of phones?

Dogs have been clinically proven to improve the health of their human companions, but they are not exactly encouraged on the subway. 

Optimal Pet Rat

We still remain petless despite our younger son’s sincere and persistent requests for a dog.

As I am sure I have already mentioned, I suggested to the kids that a rat would be a smaller, easier, pet...and maybe something that would not aggravate their father’s allergies.

Unsurprisingly, no one wants a pet rat.

Maybe we see too many of the non pet variety on the subway....and in our yard and garbage cans.

During one of our pet rat conversations, our younger son said, “we can get a pet rat, as long as it is larger than my brother and can teach me Kung Fu!”

Then there was some bickering about whether the hypothetical rat should be named Splinter or Ratatouille. 

If only there were a giant rat that could cook and provide educational exercise for the kids...

More likely the large rodent would be sitting on the couch eating cookies and watching YouTube just like the kids.

Mask in Blue and Gold

Mask in Blue and Gold:

The camp project was a clay face mask:

While other kids made cute animal faces, our son’s mask featured gold rimmed eyes crying blue streams.

I am resisting even attempting an interpretation of his imagery. 

But I did make a lessor napkin version.