My Raccoon Looks Like Batboy, or "I'm gonna live blog this alphabet." (Life With Unicorns)

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It's 11:37 a.m. as I start this.  Mr Bunches likes to write the alphabet and have me draw a picture to go with it; he names the picture.  So here's today's, with selected comments.

A is For Astronaut

Note that he is old-fashioned (astronauts are old-fashioned!) in that he is attached to his spaceship by a cord. Newfangled astronauts use jetpacks, and probably don't get that close to Saturn.

B Is For Ball.

Me: "What kind of ball."

Mr Bunches: "A soccer ball."

Me: "Okay.

Him: "It has hexagons."

Me: *realizes he is drawing pentagons.*

C is For Cookie:

There's a blog I liked called "Fastest Possible Drawings Of Everything," which had just what that sounded like: pictures like this, quick sketches of something. One thing I liked about it was that they'd talk about what has to be in a picture of something to make it that picture.  Like chocolate chips in a cookie picture.  There are a million kinds of cookies, most of which could be drawn as a circle. Putting chips into it makes it a cookie, as opposed to a pie or moon or egg or something. 

D Is For Dog:

E Is For Elephant:

As I draw about 6 or 7 or 8 alphabets a week, I am trying to develop my own style. So my animals almost always have a smile, and almost always that smile is on one side of their face.  I have also started drawing all my animals with very short legs, because I like the way that looks. 

If you are going to do a smiley face on an animal, you have to think carefully about where you place that smile; put it in the wrong spot and it looks weird.

F Is For Fish:

Originally mistaken for a number "7", the fin was given striations that show this fish is not numbered.

G Is For Grapes

I Is For Insect

"Can you draw a spider, Daddy? Can the insect be a spider?" Nobody tell Neil DeGrasse Tyson, please.

I was requested to make him smile AFTER the eyes and fangs. Hence: "Look,he's mean and happy."

J Is For Jacket

K Is For Kite

There is enough wind to keep the string taut, but not enough to really ruffle the tail.

L Is For Lobster

I have lived 45 years, 3 months, 3 days, and about 8 hours, 14 minutes, and I have just drawn my first lobster in all that time.

M Is For Moose

By way of comparison, I've probably drawn 20, 25 moose in my lifetime.

N Is For Noodles:

"The noodles go in the esophagus."

This has been your biology minute.

O Is For Ostriches

You can tell they are not flamingos because they're not standing on one leg.  

P is For Pants.

Nailed it.

Q Is For Quilt

At this point, by the way, Mr Bunches is aware that I'm blogging this.  He likes watching me take the picture and then seeing it appear in the draft of the post.

Drawing Tips From The Pros:  Just as Disney animators sometimes used the same scene over, simply drawing over the characters, a quilt is a map that has an added thickness, while a map is simply a quilt with continents on it.

R Is For Raccoon.

"Wow, Daddy, that's cool." -- ACTUAL QUOTE.

This job is not without its hazards, which include not knowing how to draw a raccoon that doesn't look like a turtle, and also not being 100% sure whether there are 1 or 2 c's in raccoon but having to make the call when Mr Bunches writes it. Turns out that's how it's spelled.

S Is For Soap

I wrote "soap" on the bar to make clear that this wasn't just any old bar of something that was exploding.  THOSE ARE SUDS.  

T Is For Turtle:

Here is how that went, verbatim: 

Mr Bunches: Can you draw a turtle, Daddy? Can you make him sad? Look, he's sad. Oh, you drew a fat turtle. He's sad.

Me: Is he sad because he's fat?

Mr Bunches: Yeah.

Seven years old and he''s fat-shaming a turtle.  I blame society.

Also, I'm not sure turtles CAN be fat. Can they? I've never seen a fat turtle. And yet they never exercise. I think I'm on to something here.

U Is For Umbrella:

V Is For Vegetable:

There are three vegetables! The blobby one is lettuce. I should've put a smiley face on it.

W Is For Whale:

Mr Bunches: He is a mommy whale.

Me: *draws false eyelashes on the whale* SHE is a mommy whale.

Mr Bunches: They live in the deep ocean.

I just naturally assumed that Mommy Whales would want to look their nicest before going out for a night of eating krill and perhaps some dancing.

X Is For Xylophone

Here is a true story about X: Mr Bunches, who loves the alphabet almost as much as he loves jets or parts of the body, has a bunch of alphabet books. One of them has these really elaborate pictures in which each picture has like 200+ things starting with that letter in them.  There's no list or names or anything; you just have to try to guess at what the things are that begin with that letter.

I was reading this book one night with Mr F, and we got to X, and Mr Bunches came over to see what we were doing.  As Mr F and I were pointing to the X things like "X-ray" or "Xylophone," Mr Bunches pointed at the swordfish and said:

Xiphias.

I said: What?

He said Xiphias.

I said: Swordfish (not even sure why it was in "X".)

He insisted it was Xiphias.

I later looked it up and it turns out the scientific name for a swordfish is xiphias gladius.

Y Is For Yogurt

One night I got out the last yogurt from the refrigerator and ate it for dessert after dinner.

Mr Bunches came over and said "Are you eating yogurt?" I said I was, and in fact I had just finished it.

"Can I have some yogurt?" he asked.

I need to point out that he eats yogurt about three times a year, and that this particular yogurt had been in the refrigerator for about 2 weeks untouched, but neither of those true facts in anyway alleviates the stabbing pang of guilt I get every single time the word "yogurt" is uttered, and that is why I no longer eat the last of anything in our house.

Z Is For Zebra:

Here's another thing you never think about, or at least I never think about: What kinds of tails do animals have? I think I got the zebra tail right but I went back and looked at moose and I'm pretty sure that one's wrong, as they are the same tail.  And before you congratulate yourself on knowing what kinds of tails a moose or zebra has, answer this: What kind of tail does a yak have?

Time is 12:31 p.m.  Whew.