Drawing Dinosaurs

My brother's family is in the process of moving and as we all know, that process sucks. It sucks even more when you have two young children who need to be seen to while all the packing is happening. My SIL asked me to come over because my nephew needed help with some art. Basically, I went over because she needed someone to watch the kids while she packed. I had no problem with this. I like hanging with the kids from time to time.

When I draw, I tend to draw people . . . usually people from my imagination because a lot of people are living in my brain. I spend a lot of time on costume design and how clothing looks. When I used to doodle a lot, I would work on spirals and random shape combinations. Sometimes, I would draw flowers, though I was never really good at that. My nephew, on the other hand, has a huge interest in animals, so I found myself drawing a shark, a hippo, and a dinosaur.

As I showed him how to do them, I told him to look for central lines, then about proportion and shapes. I think he understood that, though the idea of light and shadow kind of went over his head. There were a lot of things that I shaded that confused him. He felt like there needed to be more lines. We went through how to cartoon something. He liked that a lot.

Finally, I told him to trace things. When he suggested that didn't count, I talked to him about muscle memory. He may have believed this was a bit of art voodoo, but I told him to just try it for a while and see if it made a difference. Beyond that, I told him to practice as much as he could. That is, after all, the biggest key to learning to draw.

By the time I left, he had a picture of a dinosaur, several sharks, and one hippo with its mouth open.  The hippo had some funky teeth, but I like adding funky teeth to things. He thought it was funny. We named all the creatures and then I drew butterflies with my niece. She named hers Sharla. My butterfly was named Bootibog. I have no idea why.

It just felt like the best name for the butterfly.