We did this for years. I am really surprised my parents never bought us a copy, but to their credit, they remembered this and bought my daughter a copy when she was about 5 years old.
Ed Emberley teaches that if you can draw a few basic shapes (circle, square, triangle, lines, dots, and a few numbers and letters), you can draw anything that you can imagine. From building a heart shape from two circles and a triangle to more complicated things like castles, dragons, and even the Canadian flag, Ed shows how easy it really is.
But it's not "just a drawing book"...it's a whole lot more. It's a child's first technical how-to manual. It sets them on the right path for acquiring the skills needed to self-educate.
Image by Austin Kleon via Flickr
It's really good for teaching kids how to follow step-by-step instructions, especially ones that contain no text...a skill that will come in handy later in life if they have to build IKEA furniture.
It also teaches a valuable life skill by changing how you look at the world. It teaches that anything in life that seems too complicated and hard to do, is made much easier when you analyze it and break it down into much simpler parts. The earlier in life a child learns this, the more doors will be open to them, and the list of possibilities greatly increased.
It's not enough to tell a child that they can accomplish anything in life that they set their mind to. They need to be taught how, and this book is a great place to start.
Purchasing this book through my Amazon affiliate link will not increase your price and is a great way to show your appreciation to me for introducing you to this book.
Now the other website I found is that of a sculptor named Gil Russell, who carved the bedroom scene in wood, adding the figures of Vincent Van Gogh and his painter buddy, Paul Gaugin, just to make it that much more interesting. It all sits atop a wooden box painted to resemble "Starry Night".
I got an attack of creativity earlier today and this little character was the result.
I made a couple of posts on the DonationCoder forum that were from the same site. Normally, I would include a screenshot of the web page in case mouser wants to blog it.
The problem was, if he decided to blog both, the pages were similar enough that they could be mistaken as being the same image. It wouldn't look right on the blog.
One of them linked to an article about a throttled proxy for the purpose of web designers being able to see what the experience of visiting their site would be for dialup users, at various speeds.
Something about the content of that article hit close to home and made me think of all the time I was stuck on dialup with the old P1.
So I opened up Paintshop Pro and started playing around.
I took a photo of the monitor from my old P1 computer and a screenshot of Firefox from this computer, combined it with some text and drew the snail's body with my mouse.
Like magic, this little guy appeared on my screen. I think he is cute and has a lot of personality. My daughter named him Laggy.
Laggy moves at a blazing dialup speed of 33.6k. He doesn't talk, verbally. Every idea and feeling he wants to express, appears on his monitor. Read his screen and you basically read his mind.
I plan to continuing working on this idea and improving it as much as I can, although I don't think it will get much better than it is right now.
I wish I was as good of a digital artist as nudone. Maybe I will throw this idea in his direction and see if he wants to take the idea and expand on it. I think it could become something great in the hands of someone with real talent and skill. Laggy could be the perfect compliment to Cody...a sort of side kick or friend.
