Art evolution

I read an interesting article in the NY Times last month, examining single-sex classrooms. The story mentioned how girls and boys draw differently. Boys tend to depict action with minimal use of color, while girls draw more still lifes, but with lots of colors.

This has definitely been true with Lucas. I have tons of pictures like this. Basically, two stick figures fighting it out with their light sabers. The light sabers are usually the only colorful items on the picture (Darth is on the left, and Obi Wan is on the right, note the beard).

But this week Lucas has ventured out of his comfort zone. When I saw this, I first looked to make sure I had taken it from the right file, and not some other kid's. It's quite a departure from his battle scenes.When I asked him who he played with at school that day, he named two of the girls in his class. Perhaps he was influenced by the subject of their drawings and their use of color.

Lucas has been writing his own stories to go with his pictures for a while now. They started with his depictions of the Pixar movie, Cars, and have since evolved into the eternal battles between good and evil (Jedis and the Dark Side). So again, I was surprised by this. Kevin and Lucas have been playing Go, an ancient Chinese board game, and he's really into it.The caption at the bottom can be translated as, "This is a Go board. White lost by 12 points, black won by 12 points."

Frankly, I'm excited to see him branch out. There are only so many Star Wars light saber fights we need on our fridge.