I draw with my kid. Have done from the start. Before him, many years ago, I drew with my baby brother (now a fully grown man, an animator no less). Thanks to his advice, my hitherto downright bizarre Mickey is slowly taking shape - can't seem to get the mouth/teeth/nose to not super-impose yet, as you can see:
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My most recent Mickey & bunny ... late Dec 2010
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Do bear in mind, I draw in a hurry to accommodate a toddler's attention span, and my art equipment is limited to whatever I am prepared to wipe up/mop up/scrub off the carpet once baby has a go.
Not just Mickey Mouse, of course. Thomas and Friends, Elmer, and some sort of random cat form my basic repertoire.
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A previous Mickey, some standard shapes and a Thomas/Percy ... you decide
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Oh, I do dodgy squares, circles and star shapes too! No compasses or rulers were abused (or consulted) in the 2 years I've been doing my good work though.
All I'm really trying to convey to the little one is the idea that no matter what the end result looks like, we can have a jolly good time drawing Mickey, even if it ends up looking EVIL like Iain's last effort (admittedly done in a rush with Jaan tugging at it at the crucial evil-making moment).
Having the self confidence to give it a go is what its all about.
Unless you draw cartoons for a living. Then I'd expect a bit more ... (Spongebob notwithstanding, it's a funny show, but really, the drawings .... I've seen better).
I have to say, observing Jaan and his mates, they really respond to decent animation, decent storytelling through animation. Jaan certainly uses the words and actions from the films/cartoons when they play [Disney, anything by Pixar specially, and most things with a penguin or a train in it spring to mind]. His mates ask me to re-tell them (with bad accents and comedy effects) about some of the cartoons in the same way they demand more traditional rhymes and stories. I encourage re-enactments by the whole bunch of us in both situations, cartoon-story-retellings, or the more traditional sing-a-longs or story times. At times I've described a cartoon in detail to one of the toddlers when it has not been possible for them to see it themselves, and done my best to cross-reference with books, songs and other shows I know they HAVE seen (gently, or they lose interest).
Most recently the ranks of Jaan's top stuff have been swelled by the Toy Story characters, most prominently Buzz, and Jaan's own more generic toys - a big teddy, my old birthing ball, his new table/chairs set. The games he plays, the things he does, the ideas he describes or throws in to conversation are enchanting, of course, but also informed by a large number of aspects that make up his life -
1st and most noticable - his observations of adult behaviour and normal life [games with conversations and affection in them, mimicing, and feeding/sleeping games] - ok, it makes it pretty clear to us that I don't do a lot for him to mimic, and Iain doesn't really mix-it-up between 5:30-7:00 pm when he's having Daddy time - it's mostly food and bedtime then.
However, Jaan chooses things from other parts of this list, it seems, and the love and caring we build our parenting around, doggedly and conscientiously like a couple of bores, shines through most gratifyingly.
He is 2. He knows he is loved, knows how to love, to show love, to explain caring behaviour to us and others, and he knows how to joke about life and love. So far so good. He uses words and references from Toy Story and Mickey Mouse cartoons as aides here. If we did other stuff - woodland play each week for example, or each day, no doubt his references would be different, perhaps less wordy, but hey, so far so good.
2nd of all - roleplaying. He mixes it up. Roles within the home, within his fantasies that are totally his own, roles from his many books - he is an avid 'reader', and also snippets from roles Mickey Mouse took on in his classic cartoons. Buzz, Thomas, Baby Einstein all add colour, but he really seems to have taken in a lot of concepts from Mickey and Kipper the dog. Not sure how, must be something about the way it's presented, or they just resonated for him just so perhaps.
The obstacles that his toy trains have to overcome or charge through with great power, the paths his flying planes or Buzz Lightyear take as they go about their adventures, the cheerful 'cup of tea' he brings me from time to time (mismatched tea set parts with a stone in the cup so I get a nice surprise), and the way he sometimes wants us to join in, sometimes wants to see it pan out his own way, just himself and his imagination, it all bodes well in my book.
3rdly - He has had to be adaptable. I've had post natal depression since his early months and crushing, desperate depression claims me far too often. Jaan has to live with it in the daytime sometimes, with Buzz, Woody, Thomas, Percy and Mickey helping to keep him and me in some sort of safe place. I am lucky, so lucky that my depression does not cause me to reject Jaan - the opposite in fact, every one else is outside the bubble, I can only do for Jaan (fail, but do). I can't hurt him, do less for him. He gets changed, is clean and fed, and as rested as I can manage on my bad days - not going out is hard.
He also has to deal with living out here in the lovely village with a mum who can't drive alone (no licence yet) so we rely on lifts - friends, my mum, Iain ... and often have to upset the routine, such as it is, or stay too long with someone at theirs while we wait for our ride. He has more upheaval than I'd like, physically and emotionally. He doesn't always cope with grace, but he's learning, slowly.
Finally, and 4thly - The main basic, foundation level stuff he's meant to be building up in his mind at this age is definitely being built up. We see it in other things not just TV-character-inspired activities.
What I can say here though is that he recognises Mickey Mouse and Elmer, and the different trains from our cack-handed drawings, and the details we manage to focus on are informed as much by the things he focuses on as anything. For me, certainly, none of Jaan's top characters held any particular meaning before. And yet, a few penstrokes, a misuse of whatever colours I have to hand, and he recognises Elmer. A strong jaw and a Buzz-like stance, he knows Buzz is in the picture somewhere (not the shapeless blob we have actually drawn).
Even when we draw in the bath, with foam, or our shiny new bath-time crayons, and the drawings are even more blobby and runnier than usual, he knows.
Communication, speech, classifying, naming, exploring, splitting things into interchangeable categories .... all that goes on with the drawings quite demonstrably. If we drew and chatted and sang less, I guess the TV shows would be less useful, perhaps as damaging as I often hear they are (and often believe must be).
When Jaan and I draw, he requests, he classifies, he even sometimes asks for a drawing of the thing's Mummy or friend or something. Again, this is communication, collaboration, trust, creativity, a slow building of his own confidence and independence - at some stage he will do most of the drawing, not me. To some extent, we are still one, although I know a great deal of detachment has taken place by now, he possibly only notices where we are still attached.
He knows his colours and can count to 10 properly, so now he can tell us how many to draw, what colours, what textures etc he wants to try. I suppose he uses us as his drawing tools, bad as we are at it all in terms of professionals, we can do a whole lot more than Jaan just yet!
What encourages and amazes me is that he can tell me what he sees when he has scribbled on some paper, and he often asks me to make it into such and such. I try, and he is always appreciative of my efforts. The collaborative effort, and being understood and trusted are the best bits for both of us it seems. For example, he was enjoying making big strokes on a white piece of A3 today, on his easel. After a while, as he got more and more pleased with himself, he said, it's Harold (the helicopter off of Thomas, posh thing). I misunderstood and drew my own Harold-cum-shark-hybrid above his drawing on the same page and proudly said, look, Harold. Jaan patiently explained to me that he had a rudimentary Harold shape already (it was without a proper outline which is why I didn't spot it at first). When his chubby fingers pointed out the shape he had made, it all came clear.
Of course, I drew on the outline for him and all was well, no tears - but our collaborative Harold was also, of course, just a slightly bigger Harold-cum-shark-hybrid.
Watch this space. What will the Mickeys we draw look like next year?
