The first time I hung out with Emily Flake was shortly after I had assumed the role of cartoon editor of The New Yorker, a daunting title, for many reasons—for one, people feel very strongly about the Cartoon Caption Contest and why they aren’t winning it, but also because I was the fourth person to ever hold the title, since 1925, and the first woman. Emily and I drank oh so many drinks, and I, eventually, in my cups, started interrogating her about motherhood—because she is the queen of cartoons about parenting—and even more specifically about bearing and rearing children in our odd-as-hell habitat, Brooklyn. Her incredible book, “Mama Tried,” taught me far more than I was perhaps prepared to know about the logistics of shooting a kid out of your whatsit, and even more about what it means to go from being an “adult” to being a “parent,” for those (I suspect most humans) who don’t feel all that different from their grungy teen selves, despite the passage of time and the development of better partying habits and more comprehensive hygiene.
So when The New Yorker decided to try to make some videos about How to Draw a ____, it seemed natural to call on Emily to describe how to draw a child. It appears to be an easy enough task—if you can draw a person, then can’t you draw a smaller person with equal ease? But, as anyone who has gazed upon Renaissance paintings of a creepy baby Jesus who looks like your great-uncle Carl knows, the answer is: duh, no. For more clarity about how to draw your little so-and-so, Junior, I advise that you watch this video. All apologies to the great-uncle Carls, who going forward will now have far fewer depictions of them up in the Met and in comics, all thanks to this guidance from brilliant Mother Flake.
