My twelve year old son Ben began an ambitious painting project three years ago in a school art class; when the teacher gave him a choice of several pictures to copy, Ben picked a portrait of George Washington, which he copied in black and white. This is the result- pretty accomplished for a nine year old, even if it’s not quite an accurate likeness.
When he took the same class a year later he naturally chose to paint the second President, John Adams, and a few months after that he decided to attempt a complete series of Presidential portraits, all in black and white like the first one. It’s been slow going, since Ben holds down a demanding schedule of school, basketball and Sun classes on top of his work on a very ambitious series of video games he’s been doing in the freeware application Scratch (the first of which, “Grounded” is up on the Scratch website here). So far Ben is up to the 19th president, Rutherford B. Hayes. As you can see, he’s gained a lot of proficiency since George Washington.
l have the entire series up on my page on Comics Lifestyle. My own favorites are Franklin Pierce and Ulysses S. Grant.
The apple doesn’t fall far fom the tree- l have also mounted a drawing of the Presidents done when I was nine years old. There were fewer Presidents then, so the series ends with Lyndon B. Johnson:
