I’ve been pondering the idea of an art show for my son’s art. Where to do it? What to call it? How to essentially sum it up.
Last night while putting him to bed I said, “When I think of you, I think of a bear… a little brown bear. What animal do you think mama is like?”
He said without hesitation, “I think of a sleek black raven.”
Ha! I thought. Ravens are dark and rather majestic. Feeling like a worn out mama, wearing ill-fitting hospital scrubs as jammies I DID NOT feel feel like a raven.
I was trying to put together our identity.
“The Bear & The Raven”? No.
“The Bear & The Bird”? Nice alliteration, but no.
The next day I awoke feeling refreshed, but still not a sleek raven. I was a bird, but not a scavenger, nor a predator. I was something more common. I was a sparrow.
“The Bear & The Sparrow”? No. I didn’t want to sound like a folk band.
“The Sun & The Sparrow”? Yes. This was better. Judah being my son is also the type of human that bring a lightness and brightness into any room he enters (like his papa). His favorite color is, very appropriately, yellow.
I think of this cooperative art series as him being the superhero and me being his sidekick. It’s his vision that I’m inspired by. As one well versed in marketing, I’m just bird bringing it to the audience.
Mom: “This drawing of Judah’s reminded me of carnivorous plants such as Venus Flytraps.”
Palatte pulled from “Points” by Wassily Kandinsky, 1920
Mom: Judah, mama had a dream about flying keys like in Harry Potter, want to sit down and draw some with me?
Judah: Sure!
I pull out my drawer of miscellaneous keys and dump them on the table. We each pick one and start drawing.
Mama: “What I like about Judah’s complex drawings is detangling the elements and adding the color so they are more layered and visible.”
Judah: “It’s great. I love it!”
Judah: National Geographic ALMANAC 2020 inspired this, in the Science and Technology chapter. Future homes are the theme here. Drones carrying food, robots making our homes comfortable – and our life! It’s all in here.
Mom: I loved the many layers of this scene. The octopus is what helped me choose the inspiration piece. I’d seen the Displate art ad on social media many times recently.
Judah: “I asked my mom “If you could create a Yoshi’s Crafted World boss, what would it be?”, so we came up with this.”
Mom: “Well I’m all into Game of Thrones and really would love to have a dragon, so how about that?”
Judah: When I saw a picture of a gadget, I wanted to draw a robot. This gadget is one of the arms of this robot. My sister, Eloise Hossain came up with the name “Mafushia” and I stuck with it.
Mom: I thought this composition had a lot of energy. It looked like the robot was ready to jump off the page and start blasting away bad guys.
“Heavy Red”, the inspiration piece by Wassily Kandinsky.
Mom: This is a quintessential Judah composition – busy! What I love best about coloring his scenes is untangling all of the action. The more I do them the more I can see the adventure myself. Color palette/inspiration piece is “Yellow Red Blue 1925” by Wassily Kandinsky.
Color palette/inspiration piece is “Yellow Red Blue 1925” by Wassily Kandinsky.
Judah: This is a world I want to build in Minecraft.
Mom: Well I think it looks amazing. Tell me about it… and so he did.
Can you find: A Ship, An English Maze, An Archer Tower, A Floating Island, A Suspension Bridge,
A Swimming Pool with a Fountain, An Extreme Roller Coaster and a A Throne Room
Palette inspired by “Tache Rouge” by Wassily Kandinsky.
Judah: There are two factions of birds battling it out in this scene. The green birds are neutral.
Color palette from “Upward” by Wassily Kandinsky .
More often than not I hear this from my boy Judah in the evening. This time of night where he jumps around his room making crazy sound effects and I suspect he’s looking for sensory input. At this point I’m in bed and tired so my usual response is, “Read a book son.” On this particular night a book wouldn’t do, so I suggested he draw a picture of how he is feeling. I told him don’t worry about subject matter, just make lines and shapes to release the energy you have boiling inside you.
This is what he created, colored….
Palette and inspiration drawn from Wassily Kandinsky’s Jaune Rouge Bleu.
Mom: I picked this one today because we are flying on an airplane to Florida. The sky is like the sun rise we saw this morning.
Judah: I love SparrowShip. The airline we flew was Spirit. It also matches the name because “spirit” is kind of like “alien”. Idea from “The Boy’s Doodle Book”. The aliens just abducted a farm.
Judah: “I asked my mom “If you could create a Yoshi’s Crafted World boss, what would it be?”, so we came up with this.”
Mom: “Well I’m all into Game of Thrones and really would love to have a dragon, so how about that?”
This is a fan piece drawn by 7 year old Judah Hossain who wanted to show what might happen if we let the pigeon drive the bus.
Introducing Judah’s first comic book featuring Dog Corp and The Topbottoms!