There are moments my daughter draws or paints something, and I totally get what she was going for. She’s still pretty young, so I’m not expecting photo-realism, but it looks like a thing and I can tell what that thing is. Fortunately (you’ll see why) there are times I just have to ask her what the thing is, because she didn’t exactly nail it. Some of those times are a treat, because my kids art can be just hilarious.
Take for example my daughters interpretation of a flying unicorn. This unicorn apparently looks a lot like a rather ample breasted chicken who smokes. I died laughing when I found this gem. Honestly I’m still not sure what she was going for with the little dangly nubby thing between it’s legs, but it sure doesn’t look appropriate.
I’ve spent more time looking at this than I care to admit, and struggle to see the unicorn, but I guess that’s why it’s so great. It’s a little naughty, but it’s totally innocent. It’s a freaking flying unicorn (she clearly doesn’t know the difference between a Pegasus and a unicorn, need to school her on that) for goodness sake.
Pac-Man Ghost art on purpose?
There’s an occasion where pop culture slips into her art, and I may find my kids art hilarious because she knows what a thing is. Or at least I think in the moment that she does. In some cases she doesn’t actually know the thing, it just totally looks like she does. Take for example these Pac-Man ghosts:
It looks like little Pac-Man ghosts that maybe Pac-Man (he’s blue in this example) has already eaten. It turns out, the blue Pac-Man is our minivan. All the little ghosts are us. This is in her mind a rendition of our family of 5 sitting in the minivan. It’s actually not bad from that perspective. Also not really funny. It does show however, how perspective can be so different between parent and child.
As I navigate the adventure of parenthood, I try to use this as an example. I don’t always get what my kids want or need. In fact as they are screaming at me for waffles or whatever, and I want to blow my top, I remind myself that they are little people with their own thoughts and opinions. What looks like a big old chicken with boobs to me, is in fact a sweet little unicorn to them. Why it needs to be smoking is a whole different question.