Artist and mom Nina Levy has taken leaving notes in school lunches to another level. In addition to pedaling her sons to school by cargo bike in New York City, she packs their lunches with napkin drawings. The vivid ink drawings feature their favorite cartoon, comic, and video game heroes (often holding fruit instead of weapons).
“I guess what makes me happiest in the long run is that the napkins give me an additional way to stay in touch with my kids,” she tells us. “I am not always interested in whatever tv show, book or video game character that they are obsessing over on a given day, but discussing it with them and coming up with an idea for a drawing encourages me to think about it and find something that is a little compelling for me as well.”
Inspired by our post on the sandwich bag dad, Nina reached out to us to tell us about this creative series. Though she started drawing on napkins for her kids way back in 2007, she only started photographing them and sharing them online since 2011. So while there’s 600 or so on her blog, she has a few thousand in storage. These are our favorites. (Love how all the characters are wishing one of her sons a good lunch.)
During spring break this year, Levy started drawing napkins depicting a day of her life. Hopefully the series will show how she finds the time to create these wonderful surprises for her kids.