On Valentine’s Day morning we went to a new little coffee shop in our neighborhood called Steeplechase. Located on the outskirts of Kensington just before Brooklyn spreads out with Greenwood Cemetery on one side and fast food chains and auto body shops on the other, they have great coffee and pastries and it’s not too crowded. The barista was a pleasantly slackerish fellow. Apparently Brooklyn is so hipster-saturated that now they even live and work the Kensington hinterlands. Remarkable. Julie and I got caffienated. Milo got hopped up on blueberry muffins. Then we hunkered down and set to work, to the sounds of tastefully generic indie-pop, on this collaborative valentine:

This was a collaborative Mother’s Day card by me & Julie. Julie in red, me in black.

Not a typical Mom’s Day card, but she’s not a typical mom! Note Milo with balls spelling “Mother’s” and Frank in his Prius.

I am in the primitive stages of learning After Effects. Julie suggested that a good way to dive in would be to take one of our collaborative drawings and make it move, so that’s what I did. Here is the first in what will hopefully be a series of one-minute improvs.

Sometimes Milo actually sits still long enough for me to draw him. Not often, but sometimes. He was lost in thought after eating a big plate of roasted sweet potatoes. Then I let him have a turn…

Another one where Milo went first.

In the previous entries of this series, Milo added to my drawings. In this one, I let him go first.

There is a crabapple tree not too far from the house. Milo likes to walk there and pick the apples. They’re ugly, but they actually taste pretty good.