Jman art: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words (give or take a few)

Jman may be a man of few words, but he sure can say a lot with one of his drawings. Yesterday afternoon when we were together, he stopped what we were doing and began to draw a picture. I looked over and watched him as he finished. I knew exactly what he was drawing, and when I said, "Bacon and eggs?" he enthusiastically repeated, "Bacon and eggs!" The poor boy was hungry, and apparently enjoyed breakfast so much that morning that he wanted some more.

What totally blew me away with his picture, though, was the great detail. Notice he included a bottle of Frank's Red Hot. He LOVES Red Hot, and scrambled eggs just aren't the same if they aren't engulfed in Red Hot. He has a big pile of eggs on one plate at the top, and the bacon on another plate at the bottom, like they are when they come off the stove. There's an empty bowl from when the eggs were scrambled before cooking. He also included a couple knives (one for cutting the bacon in half before we cook it), and a fork and spoon for eating with. In the upper left hand corner is the spatula and in the upper right is the iron skillet. The drawing of the iron skillet I find particularly fascinating because he didn't draw the whole thing. Part of it is off the page. I love that he could think outside the box enough to not have to draw the whole skillet. It kind of points out that the skillet is now out of the picture, so to speak, because the hot food is ready to eat. And the food IS hot, btw--notice the little wavy heat lines over the strip of bacon and the pile of eggs. A meal fit for a Jman!I don't know about yall, but Jman impresses me, not only with his drawings, but with his ability to communicate so clearly through them. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be for him with all these real thoughts in his head and not being able to simply put those thoughts out there into words. I'm so glad that he's moved his drawing up from just copying pictures and words he's seen somewhere else to actually putting them together creatively from nothing to express his own unique thoughts and observations. I never thought about it before, but perhaps it's a visual version of the ideas of teaching kids how to write (as in how to compose the written word) by beginning with copywork. Jman began with self-imposed copywork, which he does still enjoy, but is now clearly moving on and up into creative 'compositions' of his own. I think it's simply amazing. It just goes to show how truly smart and how truly fully human he really is (and others on the spectrum as well for that matter, including the so-called 'nonverbal').