Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/30/artist-paints-their-5-year-old.html
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My favorite tattoo by far. Drawn by my then-five year old son and applied by his highly skilled aunt.
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On the one hand cool… on the other hand I can see a 5 year old me thinking “JFC, Dad we know you’re better at art than I am, can’t you just let me have my sea monster? Why must you take everything from me?”
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I see absolutely no difference between the two…
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Not to judge your parenting abilities, but I didn’t let my son have a tattoo until he was six.
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I remember thinking a similar thing about a story like this that cropped up a while ago. Not to be contrarian-cool, but I prefer the kids drawing…kids lines are so wild and expressive in a way that normally requires a lot of ego-stripping drugs to achieve for adults. When I was teaching elementary school, I used to linger outside the 12-1-1 special ed class after they’d gone on field trips, their art was always so fucking good.
I would much prefer to see 5yos’ renditions of famous works of art…
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Yah, my wife wants to get a tattoo of her then-5-year-old daughter’s mermaid sketch.
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Puts me in mind of the kids’ book “I love you to the moon and back.” Where a hyper-competitive dad obsessively outdoes his child in the “I love you more” game. Spoiler: he cheats by waiting until the child falls asleep to have the last word. Bastard.
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Fair enough, but I for one am planning on harvesting my daughter’s creativity to its fullest as soon as she starts becoming more objective in her art. She’s already doing some amazing abstract paintings (if I do say so myself) at 21 months old. When she starts drawing monsters and other critters, her imaginative powers shall replenish my own creatively bankrupt art.
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I came here to say exactly what’s already been said. I like it here, you’re a good bunch to hang out with. Let kids enjoy the wonder of their own creativity!
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Hit the nail right on the head @theodore604.
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I’ve sometimes thought about a tattoo of my daughter’s drawing of me from when she was about 10.
Until I do, I’ll just keep using it as my BBS icon.
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Right! There’s a nice scene in Six Degrees of Separation that captures something similar:
A BRIGHT WHITE LIGHT shines on FLAN who turns to see
A TEACHER, in her forties, very pure and happy, hanging
beautiful and brilliantly colored children's drawings in the
air. FLAN'S VOICE echoes in this vast space.
FLAN
Why are all your students geniuses in the second
grade? Look at the first grade. Blotches of
green and black. Look at third grade.
Camouflage. But the second grade --your grade.
Matisses everyone. You've made my child a
Matisse. Let me study with you. Let me into
the second grade! What is your secret?
THE TEACHER
Secret? I don't have any secret. I just know
when to take their drawings away from them.
THE TEACHER hangs pink shapes like paper versions of PAUL'S
button down shirt on a clothes line stretching to the end of
the hangar.
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I echo what others have said. There’s no mention of what the child thinks about this. He might like it, he might not. It’s pertinent. We should be told.
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Ha ha, That hit home. I’ve talked to my 4yo about the dangers of “overworking” a drawing. she’ll put a hole through three sheets of paper coloring something in with markers, and will make something subtle a perfect, then layer over and over and over with darker and darker details until it’s mush
She’s gotten into a routine where first thing in the morning she sits at our counter in the kitchen, has her morning milk and draws a drawing on this post-it pad. I have almost a year’s worth of them in a chronological stack, it’s a pretty incredible progression.
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I always feel like the kid must be disappointed when adults do this, because the result is probably not what the kid had in their head. The child isn’t developed enough to do a good rendering of what they imagined, so they create a very loose approximation. The parent then goes in and creates a hyper realistic rendition of that approximation, but it’s not what what the kid imagined in the first place. It’s an accuracy problem that the adult is treating as a precision problem.
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i love doing stuff like that:
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You draw on my drawing, I hate you.
YMMV.
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The sun in the kids drawing reminds me of the angry sun in SMB3.
I prefer it that way.
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I hear what you’re saying… I think similar things like this have shown up before and it’s an almost “valley of the dolls” sort of weird sometimes to see the “adult version” or like something an AI would create.
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