Rat Art
This post was inspired by Brenda.
Jack has been working on drawing rats for the last few days (he is studying the Bubonic plague in school) and we have been thinking a lot about them. He doesn't want them to be cute so we have been thinking about what makes things cute. He doesn't want them to be mistaken for mice so we have been thinking about the differences between mice and rats.
Here's some new stuff we've learned:
Rats have longish, lozenge shaped heads. Their ears are small, like little cupped leaves, and are set back on their skulls. Their eyes should be drawn smallish and are best when smoldering with coal-like intensity as if lit by some inner demonic desire to spread the plague. They are sort of hunch-backed with wringing little claw-hands and long naked tails.
There are so many issues with rats and we have worked through many of them in the past few days.
My friend Dan used to always say that his son Shane was his favorite artist and he would send me drawings Shane had made of spaceships and laser guns and weird robots locked in conflict. For a while, I didn’t get it. My own kid was still a baby and I didn't understand the power of watching a child make anything but filled diapers at the time. Then, when my own little artist-in-residence was able to use crayons, I started to experience that magic of this little person who you thought you made suddenly being able to make and see things that were so amazing. Perhaps the element of love makes Jack's art all the more incredible to me but I think anyone would see that they are cool.
Watching him bent over his drawing book has often prompted me to draw as well, to loosen up my stroke, to experiment, to be as cavalier with my finished works as he is. Nonetheless, we have gathered every drawing and doodle he has done in to a bookshelf of binders, each labeled "The Art of Jack Tea Gregory". We have filled many big fat volumes and he has filled another few dozen sketchbooks.
A record of my exploration into all aspects of drawing, illustrated journaling, creativity, and the inspiring aspects of art. By the author of "Everyday Matters," "The Creative License", and "An Illustrated Life" and other books.
Comments
THEY ARE INDEED COOL drawings ... and the rats look FEROCIOUS! EWWWWWWW!!
Posted by: Lin | January 15, 2006 10:12 AM
.. so right, that's why I like to "work" with kids accompanying them, writing and illustrating their own pictre books!
It's such a wish for clear deepness and beauty you can see.
Thank you, Danny, for posting this. You reminded me of publishing my "old" pictures of my courses I gave ... more will follow. See some here:
http://www.flickr.com/
photos/peter_pen/86953047/
Posted by: Thorsten | January 15, 2006 01:49 PM
Hi there, just wanted to stop in and say hi! I've been lurking for a few months now, and thoroughly enjoying your posts. This one about drawing with your son particularly interested me, because it's been something I'm thinking about too (my son is 4). We just started a drawing/thinking journal together, and I'm hoping we'll keep it up. I'm amazed that you've kept all of Jack's drawings, I wanted to do that but thought I was going overboard. Now I know at least one other person who does!
Posted by: Amanda | January 15, 2006 06:01 PM
I think it's so wonderful that you honour Jack's art in that way. My stepdaughter is always making art with me, and giving it to her mother, and coming back very hurt because her mom doesn't appreciate or respect it at all ("She leaves it on the FLOOR! Or PUTS IT IN THE TRASH!").
Posted by: Hashi Meltzer | January 15, 2006 11:44 PM
Happy to have found your site today completely by accident. Loved your book Everyday Counts.
My second son spent HOURs drawing and drawing and drawing, growing into an amazing cartoonist. We fed him everyone's cartoons, from the New Yorker to Calvin and Hobbes.
Imagine how disturbed we all were when in high school his "art" teacher told him cartoons weren't art!
Fortunately he is such an independent sort he just let it go. I'm as pleased about his independence as his amazing gift.
Thanks for your site. I am just beginning to explore it. Looking forward to it!
Posted by: Lynn Allen | January 24, 2006 08:00 PM
Danny, Jack's art is incredible, not just because you love him!
Has he read the book "Rats" about NYC rats? The author is Robert Sullivan. I loved this book, though it made me look at dumpsters differently. And I understand a bit more what Dottie found interesting in the alleys behind the restaurants in Stadium Village (which is near the U of MN).
There's another book I read long ago about rats and plague. I think it's called something like "Plague, Rats, and Men," but I couldn't find my copy and don't know who wrote it. If Jack is interested in the Plague though I remember it being an interesting read.
Roz
Posted by: Roz | January 26, 2006 10:20 PM
These rats look like they could leap off the page alive...what a great job...dont you just love kids artwork...have reams of my middle son who drew endlessly...and made a quilt out of the youngest ones drawings...they are so charming...maggie in rainy sc
Posted by: Margaret McCarthy Hunt | February 4, 2006 09:18 AM