They supply the magic.

September 9, 2009 2:03 AM

Chicken Nugget Lemon Tooty is a blog featuring selected drawings by Isaac age 10; Grace, 9; and Lily, who is 6. They participate in Illustration Friday, and even do book reviews. Recently, to celebrate the 3rd year anniversary of the blog, their father asked readers to submit some 'fan art' using past CNLT drawings as inspiration. Here are the submitted art works, accompanied by the original drawings that inspired them.

The blog and the kids' drawings are posted by their father, illustrator Aaron Zenz, who isn't so bad himself. (via; also)

posted by thread_makimaki (38 comments total)

(checking kottke) . . .

yes, this is what metafilter is for. Carry on.
posted by Palamedes at 2:50 AM on September 9

The last kid/art thing posted here resulted in me getting all snarky... this, however, with the fan submitted drawings, is excellent fodder to digest with my morning coffee! nice find!
posted by HuronBob at 3:10 AM on September 9

This is a delightful post to wake up to - thanks, thread_makimaki.
posted by madamjujujive at 3:28 AM on September 9

These kids have the creativity thing down. Now their father needs to place them in front of nature for some hard-nosed life drawing.
posted by Faze at 3:31 AM on September 9

Those are wonderful. Especially wonderful is that in a few cases, the children's art is as good and engaging as some of what it inspired in adults.
posted by jacquilynne at 3:32 AM on September 9

Fantastic. Thanks.
posted by milquetoast at 4:03 AM on September 9

Terrific.
posted by Scoo at 4:34 AM on September 9

Delightful all the way around; the wonderful children's art, their dad's appreciation and making the site, the artists being inspired by the children's visions and their beautiful interpretations and enjoyment. So much fun!
posted by nickyskye at 5:03 AM on September 9

This is great, really fun. I love what the kids draw as much as the re-interpretations. That hippo clinging for dear life with the bats was especially great.
posted by genefinder at 6:19 AM on September 9

the children's art is as good and engaging as some of what it inspired in adults.

In the case of the Shark Man (can't link to it directly, but it's the fourth set of interpreted drawings) I think the adults both missed the really interesting part. The boots. In the kid's picture the boots are huge, bigger than the whole rest of the shark. In both of the adult interpretation the boots are still big, but the artists can't help but make the boots more boot sized. The kid doesn't have that restriction.

Nice stuff!
posted by dirtdirt at 6:25 AM on September 9

Totally made my morning. Thanks.
posted by sleevener at 6:29 AM on September 9

This guy is better.
posted by MrMoonPie at 6:38 AM on September 9

Awesome stuff. Thanks for posting!
posted by brand-gnu at 7:12 AM on September 9

"Robots love balloons." So, so true. (I love the last link btw)
posted by Monster_Zero at 8:11 AM on September 9

Very cool. Bookmarked for future use. My daughter still eats crayons more often than she makes marks with them.
posted by diogenes at 8:58 AM on September 9

This is lovely post - it totally re-invigorated me after a morning of bill-paying and unemployment hand-wringing.

These kids are going to be amazing as adults and we're all going to benefit from their work.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 9:01 AM on September 9

Love it, thanks for posting. The youngsters have such open imaginations - pigeon wearing a rhino mask - and the adults add the technical skills to realise the image fully.
posted by communicator at 9:20 AM on September 9

Makes me think of the hundreds of millions of creative kids around the world who aren't lucky enough to be upper-middle-class Americans with dads who are well-connected and web-savvy professional artists.

This is sweet and cute and all but this just reeks of class privilege too.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 9:20 AM on September 9

This is sweet and cute and all but this just reeks of class privilege too.

Alright then! Morning unmade.
posted by sleevener at 9:30 AM on September 9 [4 favorites has favorites]

Perhaps ethnomethodologist this will encourage people to look with fresh eyes at other kids' drawings?
posted by communicator at 9:32 AM on September 9

This is fantastic. Made my morning!
posted by xedrik at 9:37 AM on September 9

The half-shark half-man picture is pretty sweet, but I think it needs a splash more alligator.
posted by FatherDagon at 10:13 AM on September 9

Isaac is cool.
posted by cmoj at 10:30 AM on September 9

I really love seeing children's drawings reinterpretted by talented adult artists. I've seen a couple projects like that over the years. Kids just have a crazy sort of creativity/disconnection-from-reality that even the weirdest adults can't quite match, but when you have adult artists reinterpret kids drawings, you get the best of both worlds, and end up with some truly crazy-awesome stuff. I enjoyed this.
posted by Caduceus at 11:15 AM on September 9

I hope my kids will be this into drawing...
posted by Spaizy at 11:15 AM on September 9

Makes me think of the hundreds of millions of creative kids around the world who aren't lucky enough to be upper-middle-class Americans with dads who are well-connected and web-savvy professional artists.

Do you think the same about the hundreds of millions of creative ADULTS around the world who aren't lucky enough to be exposed? If so, how would you rectify this?

Now then.

I wish I could find the link -- there was a Korean photographer (I believe he was Korean) who did a photo series which consisted of "real-life" recreations of children's drawings. It was pretty fun.

I'm also really curious where the name "Chicken Nugget Lemon Tooty" came from.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:23 AM on September 9

EmpressCallipygos, is it Yeondoo Jung's Wonderland series?
posted by thread_makimaki at 11:54 AM on September 9 [1 favorite has favorites]

That's it! Thanks!
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:05 PM on September 9

That Wonderland series is pretty cool too!

(At first I thought it somehow answered the question about "Chicken Nugget Lemon Tooty" and I was very confused!)
posted by diogenes at 12:41 PM on September 9

My best guess, not knowing the particulars at all, is that "Chicken Nugget Lemon Tooty" is the kind of name you get for something when you earnestly ask a bunch of kids "what should we name this?" and go with whatever the kids decide on.
posted by idiopath at 2:09 PM on September 9

Comparing these pictures to the ones by that kid who did watercolors with realistic perspective that was on the front page recently, I am struck mainly by how much better this style fits the typical child of that age.

I have wanted for a while to get together a noise band made by 2-4 year old children (they would all get super duper hearing protection, of course). Kids are really good at banging on things, particularly when there are no hard and fast rules and the goal is just to be loud and kind of irritating. And if things go wrong and a couple of kids can't handle it? They start screaming, which fits into the show just fine, just get them a mic.
posted by idiopath at 2:15 PM on September 9 [1 favorite has favorites]

Love this.

The kids are getting to where they won't need help, pretty soon. It made me grin to see that Isaac drew Mrs. Whatsit the centaur from A Wrinkle in Time. I was about his age when I labored over a drawing of the centaur for a book report presentation.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:35 PM on September 9

I commented earlier, but I came back to say that I've returned to look at this page several more times throughout the day. It's just made of all kinds of win, and I'm touched and thrilled and amused by it all over again each time I look at it.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:27 PM on September 9

I liked this a lot more than I thought I was going to. What a lovely way to start the day. Thank you!
posted by pootler at 2:02 AM on September 10

happyhappyjoyjoy, indeed - nice tag, lovely post. Thank you!
posted by EvaDestruction at 7:10 AM on September 10

I love the drawings, especially the kids' drawings.

And the hippopotamus who thought she was a bat enchanted me completely.
posted by Sidhedevil at 9:54 AM on September 10

These are amazing. There's a definite sense of a "story" behind the kids' drawings, which I haven't seen a lot of in other kids' drawings. The penguin with the balloon, for instance, I loved. He just wants to fly! The hippo-bat, too, was fabulous.
So many of these drawings seem to be related to things they've learned or read, and they've definitely picked up cues from illustrators of children's books (the one with the owl dragging his blanket, for instance, seems to be from this.)
posted by amarie at 10:41 AM on September 10

Pretty cool!

I like the lemon with an eggplant on its head; in the reinterpretation, the eggplant has hair, presumably in response to the places where the kid colored outside the lines. I also liked the space-faring bird, whose spacecraft sports a beak. Wonderfully strange...
posted by kaibutsu at 12:44 AM on September 14