These are starting to flow like water — the kids now completely get the game. They throw great source material at me, and I’ve stopped angst-ing about the art and just go after it like a graphic designer, i.e. I no longer bother myself with the idea of drawings purely from my imagination (who the hell knows what a Giant Japanese Salamander looks like anyway???). I charge straight for the internet image cache and search til I find exactly the right two or three images to steal from, and off I go. Straight to the heart of the matter.
As ever, these three over-achievers give me lots to work with.
The lovely Rhiannon is still singing. And miming — the root beer can is from a drama team mime about an alien who arrives on Earth for the first time — a pop can being one of its many surprising discoveries. She also lettered in cross-country. And it was her first prom this year. She chose a midnight blue dress, just like the sheen of the raven, who is her totem at 15.
Lars’s wit, at 12, as a brow-tined elk, is no less wonderful than all those years as a frog or salamander or other cold-blooded fascination. I can attest to his obsession with Battlefield 4 — it was hard work getting him away from it to help me with his parents’ 25th wedding anniversary gift this summer. He’s especially into the re-con sniper. And I swear, the irony of the image did not even hit me until it was drawn — I was just doing what he asked.
I love that Echo, at 12, returns to some of my favorite images for her. She has been a Pegasus more than once — which is one of my favorite images from mythology as well. Almost every year, there is some image from Chinese dance, this year from a beautiful photo her mom shared of her doing a fan dance…but rather than the traditional red, this one opens into the cover of her favorite CD, Taylor Swift’s 1989.
The rest of the series can be found here.
2014 La Loteria Familia
