This weekend, at a collective birthday party for my wifebot(tm), her father in law, and his grandson, I was once again handed drawing duty to [attempt to] entertain the now precocious 4 year old boy. While previous iterations of this exercise involved his shrill, stuttering demands for different variations on the theme of power tools using power tools, this time around it was focused on animals, as he had recently toured a farm. In order to buy myself some time (to eat dinner) I made a deal… for every drawing he did for ME< I’d do one for him… after dinner. So, he promptly scribbled out four glyphs and then began demanding his from me. Mine were, as expected, more complicated. From him, I requested anything involving robots. I got three chicken scratch doodles of abstract impressionism, and this:

I asked what is was and he said it was me. I was nonplussed, until i gleamed it was, in fact, a prescient, cautionary tale about the risks of helmetless, brakeless, middle-laning urban cycling methods, as witnessed by the unreasonable double amputation.

:::

For my task, I was given a rapid-fire list of demands that generally amounted to animals on top of other animals, indicating the boy’s impressive cognitive comprehension of vertical hierarchies.

I called this piece ‘Strange Tales’, a pun lost on my young client, who was eating a fork at the time, and bouncing his foot against the table in a repetitive jackhammer action.

:::

Please note the fine crescent moon man motif in the header. I was under the impression this was to be a dreamscape when provided my first set of unrealistic co-occupations of horzontal space. However, no further data was provided.

This was the primary illustration, which I mistakenly inferred was the focus of the composition. it involves a pet bird, a foul-smelling fowl, an equine and a prehistoric creature. My skills at reproducing the likeness of several of these creatures was diminished and obviously so.

This was my personal favorite, in so much as a horse riding a kangaroo CAN be.

Her we have a robot chewing bubble gum. I noted I was, as usual, forced to illustrate my OWN desired creations, in the guise of Work for Others. The client was not impressed with the mandibular extension.

The final piece was an abject failure, specifically due to my inability to render a bunny on short notice. My second attempt only served to further confuse the scene.

I have no doubt I will have the opportunity to improve upon this work at the next gathering.

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