Happy Mother’s Day! (2017 edition)
See if you can guess which card was made by Alphonse and which one was made by Bridget. Go on, see if you can figure it out!
Full confession: I actually already made this joke back in 2012, but some stuff about that page always bugged me. Specifically, Alphonse’s card just didn’t look “good” enough. I mean, it was enough of an improvement over Bridget’s for the joke to work, but… I dunno, it just needed a little something extra. THIS version of the idea makes the card look more like what passes for photorealism in Far Out There, which I think sells the contrast a lot better than just “hahaha Bridget’s bad at drawing”.
Also, I didn’t include the kids holding the cards this time. A purely artistic decision to place focus on the cards themselves and in NO WAY a consequence of me trying to get this done faster so I could start working on something for my OWN Mom.
(Historical Notes: Nice reader theory here, that Alphonse always wants to make his own cards, and so Bridget feels like she has to do the same. Also, that picture of Tabitha would wind up getting recycled for her profile page, without all the paper textures, obviously.)
This is another example of how often people who are very good at “X” have a distorted perception of what it means to be bad a “X” compared to normal/below-average peoples’ perception of what it means to be bad at that very same thing. People who are artistically talented nearly always do a bad job at trying to draw art badly – I suppose they can’t suppress their natural artistic ability and tendency to do things right. Bridget is actually quite a bit above average, particularly for her age group in both drawing and penmanship. Especially for someone who, unlike her brother, very likely doesn’t spend very much if any of her time actually practicing either of those two things. Bridget’s drawing isn’t lopsided, the proportions are correct (for the FOT universe), features are in the correct locations, it’s not scribbled out and redrawn repeatedly, etc. Bridget’s drawing is just simpler than Alphonse’s, but not at all what someone who is actually bad at drawing would produce. For examples of such – see anything I have ever futilely attempted to draw in my entire life. Everything I ever drew as a child was greeted with “Oh, that’s very nice – what is it?” Anyone can see instantly what Bridget’s drawing represents – if you can do that as a Kindergardener, you’re good. She’s just a Salieri trying to compete with a Mozart. Except Salieri couldn’t beat up monsters. As far as I know.
One year, Bridget will have the idea to create a sculpture for Tabitha crafted entirely by punching something, and it’ll turn out brilliant!