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Back to School

So last year at the summer house I did a quick drawing of my seven-year-old nephew interacting with characters from the Pokemon universe. It was done with colored pencils, took about twenty minutes, and got stuck to the fridge and I kind of forgot about it. Then last week his five-year-old brother asked for a drawing featuring him. He asked to be inserted in the Sesame Street universe. That drawing took more like an hour and was done with pencils and watercolors. Then being good cousins they asked when my own two kids would get their drawings. Never mind that they are jaded teens. So my daughter asked for a Glee-themed drawing and my son asked for Harry Potter. I did the Glee drawing (because I love my daughter) and then went a little overboard on the Harry Potter drawing (because I love Harry Potter. And my son.) Here's a detail. I am always surprised when I get a likeness right in a caricature, as I have no good system to achieve that. Here I got a good likeness of Professor Lupin. He is my favorite adult in the series, so maybe that has something to do with it, but mostly when I get a likeness right it's luck.

The Devil is in the Details

The sketch was done on a plane ride on my way to see my family in Iowa. It was photographed with my low-end camera phone and sent to a laptop where I colored it with Photoshop in a hotel room while my kids swam. Then I did the final in scratchboard, scanned and colored it once I got back home. It doesn't make me miss the good old days.

The article itself is fascinating. It is about the power of the mind on appetite. An experiment was conducted where one group was shown a "sinfully indulgent" treat and one group was shown a "low calorie healthy alternative" treat. Both were the same exact milkshake. The "unhealthy" treat elicited greater feelings of hunger than the "healthy" one, and after consuming the shake, those who had the "unhealthy" treat reported feeling more full and satisfied than those who had the "healthy" treat.