I have been drawing pictures for Ennio, my four-year-old nephew, for more than half his life. Now that I’m way past half my life, I think I need these sketching gigs more than he does. Last night, he burst into my room once again and pulled out sheets from my paper rack. He had his crayons, pencils, and ballpens ready. He began to draw another one of his tree-and-house combos. As usual, he grabbed my hand away from my busy tapping on the laptop and pulled me to the canvas he had spread on my bed. “Color that one,” he said, like a master artist gently but firmly ordering one of his draftsmen.
I’m familiar with this drill. It started as my way of compromising. A few days ago, he got overwhelmed by the bulging curly canopy he had outlined to serve as treetop for a sturdy brown trunk. Holding out his green crayon, he asked me to color in all that treetop space. I mock-protested: “But you’re the boy!” That’s my shorthand for: “But you’re the one who started it. You’re the one who needs to learn to do things on your own and leave grown-ups like me to our busy, boring tasks. It’s your work, why don’t you finish it?” Then he begged: “Please, please. Color it. Please.” And how could I resist all that cute desperation, his stubborn plea for attention? But first I had to devise some meet-you-halfway deal. Here was my chance to push for so-called self-reliance or at least (that good ol’ Sesame Street battlecry) “cooperation!” So “okay,” I told him. “I’ll draw a line down the middle of the treetop. I’ll color this side. You color the other.” He smiled and said, “Okay,” as if it were the most refreshingly fair agreement ever struck in the name of collaborative art.
The partnership, of course, wasn’t forged overnight. What would you expect from a toddler ill-equipped with the motor skills required to hold crayons or maneuver pencils? So initially I was the prime mover, though most of the orders would come from him. “Sha!” he would say. Yeah, shark. And his wish would be my command — to draw yet another sleek shark with sharp teeth. It was my pleasure to watch him watch my hand glide or fumble on blank space and, with the magic of line and shape, bring squiggly, blurry life to the page. Our first doodles were born on little notepads or scraps of paper. But in 2009 I began buying large sketch pads (each with 50 sheets, spiral-bound) for my two-year-old master. To keep him (and me) preoccupied, I continued to draw whatever I thought he’d find worth looking at.
Over the years, I’ve filled four or five sketch pads with my amateurish renditions of dinosaurs, chickens, cats, whales, trains, airplanes, and helicopters. But it all started with cows. “Cow” was Ennio’s first word. We had been reading to him a book about farm animals with photographs of real cows. Then one morning in September 2009, he finally spoke: Cow! So the next few weeks, I fulfilled my sole artistic mandate: i.e., to draw as many versions of fat happy cows as I could. Who knew I could be the Kandinsky of Cows? That’s one great thing about drawing. It’s like writing (or blogging): most of the time I have no idea what I’m going to do — or what I can do — until I do it. These days I flip through the sketch pads and savor flashbacks from my glorious “cow period” and think: What a privilege to draw for a child. I recall the scene in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince where the prince asks the pilot to “draw me a sheep.” The man gets exasperated, not knowing how to satisfy the precise requirements of his little client — until the pilot draws a box with the sheep in it. Essentially, the animal becomes invisible to the jaded viewer but not to the child’s heart. So that’s how you make the little prince happy, whether he’s four years old or middle-aged.
I don’t draw cows anymore for Ennio. Turning five soon, he has gained enough confidence to make his own pictures using various media — crayons, pencils, ballpens, watercolors on paper, and even my laptop and mouse to manipulate shapes and click colors and shadings on Microsoft Paint. He and I have graduated from farm animals and basic transport modes to more complicated tableaus. We’re now into seascapes à la Finding Nemo and skies studded with pointy stars and fluffy clouds. And, of course, trees. The treetop with one vertical line in the middle to indicate the equal distribution of labor — left side mine, right half his. Who says life isn’t fair?
To keep expanding his horizons, I recently told Ennio: “Ooh, I really love this tree! It’s getting taller like you. But, hmm … What if we put apples and oranges on top?” His eyes lit up, his smile brighter than the yellow sun shining on his latest landscape. He said, “Yes! I want to put mangoes!” And I thought about our last visit to my brother’s house. We had gazed up at a huge tree looming over the neighbor’s backyard. That one had fat little green mangoes hanging from the branches. “Look! Mangoes!” I pointed out to Ennio. Perhaps that’s what he had in mind when he got excited about fruit-bearing trees. Or perhaps not. I often wonder: Where does he get these ideas? Surely from what he hears or sees at home and outside. But I’d like to think there’s a lot coming from within as well. Instinct? Mimicry? Awe? The boy pays attention, remembers details, then creates his own stuff regardless of what others say or see. Hmm . . . can’t his middle-aged uncle learn from him more often?
These days, Ennio uses separate sheets of paper that I later compile in “clear books,” those folders with transparent page-holders. (I’ve been promoted from humble secretary to efficient archivist.) Piled temporarily on my table is the drawing he made in my room last night. This one (see photo above) has a healthy-looking tree with a roundish crown laden with seven fruits hanging like Christmas balls. The first perhaps is a purple grape; the next one must be an orange. Then come the red apple, something brown, and three more fruits — yellow, blue, and black. Varying shades of ripeness, promise, shadow? What a privilege to see a child’s world of possibilities. What a joy to draw for — or with — him.
And what a thrill to listen to him blurt out his titles. Yes, we do that, too. When I began collecting his drawings, he noticed me jotting down letters and numbers on the lower righthand corner of each page. I told him, “That’s the title of the drawing. And this one’s the date.” He hasn’t grasped the concept of date or time, but he knows what a title is for. Now I no longer label his pictures using my words. Before filing away each work, I ask him: “So what’s the title of this one?” And from his mouth tumbles out a wonderland of word-strings. Phrases he hears at preschool or those he has known from fairy tales, alphabet books, YouTube videos, iPad games, Barney, Pocoyo, Thomas the Train, Elmo’s World, and, uh-oh, my three sisters’ horror DVDs (True Blood, The Walking Dead, you name it). Words he connects with pictures. He dictates the title; I gladly write down every syllable. Oh, we’re so beyond cow now.
In one folder, for example, I have Ennio’s drawings last year with titles that are often both accurate and imaginative. “This Is an Elephant.” “Astronaut.” “King Kong.” “Big Zombie with the Big Teeth.” “This Is You When You’re Going to School.” “Mommy Getting a Flower.” “Aladar, the Dinosaur, with Mr. Sun, So Bright, His Friend.” “Mommy Spider and Baby Spider.”
And now I have this drawing from last night, the one he calls “The Tree, the Love, the Clouds Want to Be a Circle.” I’d like to think that some of that “love” comes from half the treetop I colored for him.
