My son draws amazing animals and then cuts them out, like paper dolls. He draws them in 2D in such a way, that he then bends and folds them to simulate 3D after he cuts them out.
I have been hounding him - well no, I have been hounding him - wait let me try again, I have been hounding him - OK, I have been hounding him to NOT cut them out, but to set his drawings into backgrounds and create landscapes that support his drawings.
Today, my very artistic son (in an effort to please his father) made an incredible drawing of his "Greek mythology scene" including a crying Griffin, with tears of fire bleeding from his eys, mourning over a fossilised broken skeleton of an ancient, dead Griffin, set in a harsh rock background with a volcano spitting fire into the sky and burning trees in the foreground, but a lake of hope nearby (his ability to draw in proper perspective amazes me).
He then cut the entire thing into a kind of jigsaw puzzle and presented it to me as a gift.
I had to put it back together to find out what his gift was all about.
I know this kid - he is MY kid - and he so intelligent and incredibly sensitive and feeling of the powers of nature and the way to reach into peoples' hearts, that I just have to take deep breaths sometimes to keep from showing him too much emotion, before I can respond to him, most of the time. Hell - damn near all of the time.
His sum is so much more than his parts.
Not sure it was really all that dumb, but right now, I am still amazed in his way of meeting the challenge I put before him.
in my book, a young griffin bleeding tears of fire over a fossilised griffin wins