Not Cute

I love picture books. I love drawing with my kids. I want to illustrate the stories I write for them, and make kid-friendly art for their walls. But… well… I have a problem. I really struggle to make things that are kid-friendly.

First off, I don’t really do Cute. I’m just not a cute person. That’s not to say I don’t like cute things when they’re done well, but it’s just not my thing in general. Maybe it’s lack of practice, but my attempts at cute are embarrassing. Also, I personally tend to prefer darker, creepier things, and though I (usually) don’t aim to make art for kids that is dark and creepy, it kind of just comes out that way.

Case in point: When my daughter was learning to write, I decided on a whim one day to paint a letter chart on a big canvas and prop it up behind her desk. So far so good. I wanted it to dry quickly, so grabbed the acrylics and picked primary colors to make it simple and bold (also, I couldn’t find the green and the acrylics I have make a mucky green when mixed. Have I mentioned how much I hate acrylics?). I painted the letters, everything still going well enough (other than some spacing issues, but that’s what I get for free-handing) — but it was too boring. I know, I thought: I’ll add some texture, some designs.

And that’s where it started to go wrong. I decided to stick to one design per color. Twisting curly-swirlies vining out from the blues. Sketchy angular lines echoing out from the reds. Bubbling dots pulsing out of the yellows.

Only… um… not so much. The yellow dots look like pustules (O is for Oozing!). The slashes of red look like a mad scientist’s dissections (K is for Kill!). The blue squiggles look like unsavory body hair (P is for … er, never mind). So my cute little educational art project is diseased, violent, and anatomical. See for yourself:

I tried adding sparkles — glitter helps everything, right? Yeah, maybe not.

Perhaps I’ll stick to creepy stuff.