my sister, who keeps me in constant supply of cool comics, recently sent me a “drawn and quarterly showcase” in the mail. you see the drawing above? it is by a french-canadian girl, geneviève elverum/castrée. her pages in the book made me want to fall over and curl up into a ball. in a good way. there are pages completely covered in intricate ferns. and there is an elephant. and sadness and wistfulness.

sigh.

i used to draw. i even used to want to draw a comic, but i think that time has passed. a combination of extreme laziness and the thought hanging over my head that i couldn’t do it: self-defeating blah.

these days i lie on the floor with scraps of paper, blunt pencils and the kid, and i draw dogs and cats and lions and cows. tigers, ducks, monkeys, frogs, elephants. i tried to draw a rabbit the other morning, but it turned out to be a totoro.

gripped by a short and uncharacteristic burst of motivation over xmas, i drew this:

because who doesn’t like that light and fruity taste of baby yoghurt? i find myself licking the spoon, just short of nicking mouthfuls myself, when i dish out the kid’s breakfast in the morning. you can buy it on a bib for that grubby baby in your life… or maybe even for yourself! we all spill brown and red down our fronts from time to time, no?