March 16, 2004
#39 :: Robot drawings
My 4½-year-old son is completely obsessed with robots. It may have started with the elaborate robot costume I made for his birthday two Halloweens ago, perhaps it's the huge volume of vintage science fiction illustrations I leafed through with him countless times when he was 2 and just getting into looking at pictures. But he wants to watch robots, control robots, build robots, be a robot. He just started putting shapes together as drawings about six months ago, and lately he's been drawing lots and lots of robots. Most are fairly elaborate, with multiple wheels, claw-like arms and oscilloscope faceplates, all jangly energy. These three are about an inch and a half high each, scrawled on scrap paper given to him at school. There's a wonderfully simple primitivism to them. Cave drawings of a digital boy.