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  • Drawing Obama, Part 4


    Thanks for all of the amazing Obama drawings you've been submitting for our Drawing Obama series. We're still on the prowl for more, so if you haven't yet, go scour the fridges and playrooms of homes with kids and send us whatever wonderful Obama portraits you turn up.

    We now have the grisly counterpart to our princess-ified Obama: Monster Obama. Five-year-old Wyatt "makes everything he draws into a monster," writes his mother, Jayne Hayden. "To Wyatt, monsters can be good or bad—the thing that he seems to like about them is that they're powerful. So this is a portrait of power." For those who can't read Wyatt speak, Jayne provides this translation of the text on the drawing: "monst/ r brocobom/ u."

    Are those the hands of Wyatt's monsters reaching for the jack-o-lantern Obama pictured below? Exposed light bulbs? Prickly boom mics? Only the artist, 7-year-old Nathan, knows for sure. This one was submitted by his mom, Janice Malloy.




    And this Fairey-inspired piece comes to us from Eric Gollihar, whose 6-year-old daughter, Anna, works in dry-erase marker on whiteboard.

  • Drawing Obama, Part 3


    For today's installment of Drawing Obama, we'll start with a terrific companion piece to Dahlia's son's "Dead John McCain." Deanna Newsom swears that she "did not indoctrinate" her 5-year-old son, Jonas. Still, he "came home from kindergarten one day with 'John McCain Falls into a Black Hole.' It was accompanied by another one entitled 'John McCain with Mold Growing on his Face.'"

    Breaking into the double-digits for our artists, here's a drawing by 6th-grader Amber Adams-Holecek, submitted by her art teacher, Lindsay Davis. The assignment was to "make a tribute drawing to Shepard Fairey's famous red, white and blue print."


    Jonah Goldman got into the game of drawing Obama early—and it paid off. A week before Obama announced his candidacy for president, then 13-year-old Jonah by chance shared a flight to Chicago with the then-Senator, and got him to sign the portrait below.

     Keep sending us Obama drawings from the kids in your life.

  • Drawing Obama, Part 2


    More from our feature on kids' drawings of the commander-in-chief:

    XX Factor reader Jaclyn Young sent in this Inauguration Day card of President Obama drawn by her 7-year-old nephew, Shane. She called Shane to thank him for his card, with "President Obama in what looks like a pink bathing suit on the cover." His response: "Oh yeah, the pink bikini. I had that idea first. If anyone else says they had the idea first, they are lying."

     

    Another reader, Mardi Pinkney, submitted this work by her godson, Dominic Williams-Dzirasa, age 7. When Dominic learned of Obama's victory, he said, "You mean there has NEVER been a brown President...EVER?  That's just strange!" He drew this to celebrate the occasion.

     

    And this one came from a friend of mine, Ilana Lorge, who teaches third grade in Singapore. It's by one of her students, Alex Soikkeli.


     

    Want to brag about your own presidential portrait artist to be? Keep the submissions coming!

  • Drawing Obama


    It's Obama's 100th day in office (did you hear?). John Dickerson says on Slate today that the hundredth-day hoopla is a "fake moment, a journalistic trope of premature measurement that the administration is compelled to go along with because we're insisting." We're insisting, by rolling out our assessment of the president through the eyes of young artists. Here are three Obama drawings by youngsters that show different sides of the man, the president. The princess side. The neck side. The killing side.

    From Dahlia's three-year-old Sopher, a piece showing a triumphant Obama and a dead John McCain. Dahlia's description of the artist at work:

    It was slightly awkward because he drew it in synagogue and was just putting the final flourishes on it when the rabbi walked by and asked sweetly what it was."Dead John McCain" elicited a very unrabinnical silence.

    From Pearl, 5-year-old daughter of Slate design director Vivian Selbo, entitled "BrokoObama":

    And from Angelica, an 8-year-old who lives next door to my parents and is prone to drawing Obama—and all people—as a princess, we have Obama With Basketball. Angelica's dad, George Bonanno, says his favorite part is "the long eye lashes—I guess thats her way of saying 'attractive.'"

    If your kid or grandkid or neighbor or niece or student has a great Obama drawing, please send it to us. We'll be featuring more throughout the week.

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