sketches of my kids..

Illustrating my book has been greatly neglected of late. Not without good excuse, I've been rather occupied with gestating and then recovering from the birth of my newest little darling boy Liam. The latest sketching started when Lucy fell asleep a while ago on the couch, and looked so stinking cute it inspired me to draw her. Whenever I draw my kids, I always wonder why on earth I don't do it more often. It doesn't take much time, and I LOVE the results (I mean as much as I love anything I do that I can still totally pick apart, because its not perfect). It is however nice to have NOT done them on scrap paper at church, like half of the drawings I do of my kids.

Then of course Max wanted a picture of himself, and so he willingly posed, which I then took full advantage of.

Sohvi was the best at holding still, and I really like this picture of her. Though none of them are fantastic representations...

Liam, even sleeping wouldn't hold still for anything, so its not very good at all, but oh well. (and my scanner sometimes sucks and leaves gross dark borders on the sides..)

Darwin is laughing at us

We openly defy the law of natural selection as a species. Put any one of us in the wild for a few years, and other than Bear Grylls we'd all be dead, most of us in the first day or two. If we don't get eaten by wild animals, tumbled off a cliff or poisoned by snakes or berries, we'd starve or freeze to death. We hunt for a Big Mac in our climate controlled speeding vehicles moving over smooth roads of tiny rocks cemented in tar. Or if we are feeling really ambitious, one can hunt for frozen plucked, skinned and de-boned chicken in your freezer. Our shelters are so crazy elaborate they take an army to build, and half a lifetime to pay for. Gathering happens at the grocery store where food is in bottles and boxes and cans and filled with sugar and preservatives. And then we eat too much of it so we do pointless work of running in place that accomplishes nothing but that we can eat more without getting fat.

And what do we do in our climate controlled houses with machines to work for us and prepared food is a phone call or a fridge walk away? We are bored, and so sit in front of reflective boxes powered by millions of tiny electrons flowing in a controlled current to manipulate 1's and 0's to entertain us. That my friend is what we've come up with with our big impressive brains. Does that mean that we've eradicated cruelty unlike the big bad wild world surrounding us? Of course not!

Despite these observations I'm not all out advocating we go build bomb shelters and stock up for post-apocalyptic survival or am somehow dissing the very technology I'm using. I'm just saying its interesting, ironic and sometimes we take our own culture for granted. I think its good to be able to step outside of it and see its idiosyncrasies that we may appreciate it for its good qualities and learn what we can from it. I am glad we defy nature. I for one would probably be dead without it.

However if one day I need to fend for my own survival, I'll get one of my expert chicken snatching offspring to catch dinner for me.Hopefully, there will be an abundance of wild free-range chickens running around.