Drawings for Pizza Girl

About once a week, as I am pedaling my bike up a long hill that goes by the local stadium, I will stop and treat myself to a pizza at Au Stade. It’s on my way home. I’ve established myself as a regular. I almost always sit at the same table. I order the same thing (a personal-sized vegetarian pizza and a beer), and then I get out my tablet.

Last month a new employee started bringing her three-year-old daughter to work. Rather than reading news articles or studying French and Malagasy, I asked the mother if I could entertain the girl by drawing pictures on my tablet.

And now this is part of my ritual. She acts happy when I arrive, but she is shy and waits until I invite her over. She understands French better than most Malagasy children I have tried to talk to.

“Chat,” she’ll say softly, requesting that I draw a cat.

Or I will draw something, and ask her what it is. This is how I learned the Malagasy word for dog: Alika.

These are some of the drawings I done for her.

That’s all there is to the story. This makes me happy.

The drawing app I use is Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.