I’m one of those unfortunate bastards who gave up drawing, just when I was getting good at it as a pre-pimple teen. This means that I still draw as I did when I was 12 – 14 – like. Which sucks. Bigtime. I’ve had plans about doing something about it for years. And I haven’t. Now Jakob does it seems.

Jakob is in a completly crazed drawing mode these days, weeks – months maybe soon. He’s drawing like mad, all day long. Where running out of paper, and today I even had to tell him to PLEASE not draw on the stereo with that permanent felt tip marker. Every day when I pick him up at kindergarten, there’s a new roster of drawings of the day waiting. The grown-ups (that’s what they’re called in kindergartens), tell me that he’s producing twice – maybe three times – as many drawings as the ones I see. Hard to keep track of.

Monsters, robots and creatures with sophisticated technical limbs, big mouths and sneaky symmetri spurt out of the boy. He just sits there, completely taken by his own creations, and works enthusiastic and concentrated for hours. So far it’s just “characters” he’s doing, which I find very inspiring.

All of the sudden I find myself actually using the nice set of drawing pencils I bought years ago. Jakob and I sitting around the table, equally taken by the magic of the pencil or the permanent marker.

I’ve heard other parents rage about this before. I guess all parents that are remotely interested in drawing, painting or any kind of arty activity, will at some point get to experience the effortless, and in a way reckless, approach of their child. An approach mostly lost by most adults. Kids don’t need all the details to be accurate. They’re not really so tied down by right and wrong, and most importantly, I think, they’re experiencing the world – the magic marker – for the first time.

Enviously I try to copy some of Jakob’s drawings, just to capture some of the “I don’t give a hell – attitude” that he seem to pour into most of them. Sometimes I just use some of his patterns as a starting point. Just to see where they take me. Sometimes I hear myself almost yelling at him, like another 5 year old, because he wants to draw on my drawing as well. I mean, really, it’s hard not to get upset, when the boy all of the sudden approaches the best human face I’ve drawn *ever*, with a black permanent marker, while asking: “Can I colour the head, Dad?”

In the morning where going out to get some more paper. Lots of paper. And pens. We need pens, markers, pencils, maybe even an electric eraser. We cannot afford to run out of supplies. We have a lot of learning to do while the fire burns – both Jakob and not least me.