The Lunch Notes Post

Every day during the school year my lovely wife Wendi would create a very tasty and extremely healthy lunch for our son Jake, a recent kindergarten graduate. So of course I had to keep up with theses standards and do my own creating, which involved sketching a daily lunch note that I tucked into the mesh netting of his Batman lunch box every morning before I dropped him off at school.

The lunch notes were something I had thought of doing well before he started his academic career. I was happy to see that a few of my illustrator friends on Facebook were also drawing notes for their kids on other canvases like sandwich bags and napkins. Fortunately, in spite of my often disorganized brain, I started the lunch notes on day one and kept it going for the entire school year. Some mornings the drawings were easy. Others? Not so much.

I stopped by Jake's school the week before graduation to talk to his class about drawing comics. It was very cool to hear so many of the kids mention how much they liked the lunch notes. His teacher and classroom aides also commented throughout the year on specific notes they had enjoyed. And I appreciated the smile or nod of approval from Wendi when giving her a peek of each note before placing it in the lunch box. Of course the best reactions, comments and reviews came from Jake, which was the whole reason I started the project.

I'm already planning next year's notes - thinking of maybe creating characters and a continuing storyline for certain days. I'm also considering making generic notes to either shop to a publisher or self-publish to sell on my site and this blog. While I'm working on those things, you guys and gals can check out this brief visual recap of the entire collection (captions refer to the pics above):

These are all the notes in one big mess of a pile. Almost all were done with a basic black fine Uni-Ball Vision pen. When I felt especially artsy I used a Pigma Micron 08 black or a 1.0 mm Sakura Pigma Sensei. I haven't told Jake about the Sensei or else he would swipe it, ninja fan that he is. The paper was basic notepad paper. Nothing fancy. Just heavy enough to survive lunch spills.

Many of Jake's lunch notes were literally about lunch. School lunches were available a few days every week, but as I mentioned above, Wendi packed amazingly delicious and very very very healthy lunches for him, so he was a standard lunch box kid. The exception was Wednesday, when he'd enjoy a freshly made mini-sub and a sack of chips from local Subway-type sandwich shop, Mr. Subb. We even had a Simpson's-inspired theme song for Wednesday lunches:

"Call Mr. Subb,

That's my name!

That name again,

is Mr. Subb!"

Holidays always provided some nice lunch note ideas. Christmas, Halloween and Thanksgiving countdowns were always fun to draw. Yes, that's Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas  cut off on the top left, which leads me to...

 ...Characters.
Like most kids, Jake has a number of favorites, and I tried to accommodate them as often as possible without completely relying on them. Can you guess them all? Some may be slightly obscure. And others may not look how they're supposed to look. Feel free to post any character guesses or questions in the comment section.

Jokes and riddles became a big hit toward the end of the school year. I tried to give the riddles a fold down flap so Jake and his friends could try to guess the answer without seeing it. Plenty of Star Wars jokes of course.

When the ideas were few and far between I'd design the lunch note around that particular day of the week. I tried to make each day seem as exciting as possible. Even Mondays. Most popular day for lunch notes: Friday. Least popular: Tuesdays. Not sure why. Any theories?

And when the ideas and/or the energy wasn't there, I'd phone it in. But hey - I got them done. I remember drawing the Cat Ninja one in the school parking lot with Jake still in his car seat. The peanut one featuring a line from The Princess Bride was hugely popular with Jake and his pals.

I certainly had my favorites.

This was the lunch note from Jake's last day of kindergarten, which I tried to make a little extra special. It was a very bittersweet day, as was his graduation ceremony and reception the following day. It was a long year, but so very short. We are so proud of the progress Jake made as a student and as a kiddo, but we're so sad to see him grow up. Hopefully these daily lunch notes put a smile on his face when he read them. They certainly put a smile on mine when I drew them. Especially that ThorsDay one. I love that one.

See you in September...