collaborate with your kids

by mari

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I have got to try this with Birdie ASAP! This brilliant illustration project is a collaboration between illustrator Mica Angela Hendricks and her 4 year old daughter. (Gee, my daughter is 4 years old too, serendipity!) Mom would first draw a very detailed head, then her daughter would finish the drawings with bodies and background. At the end, Hendricks would go back into the drawing and pull the top and bottom half together stylistically. Aren’t these amazing?

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I also recognize the same problems I’ve had when it comes to letting Birdie be creative in her own way. Along with her mom’s brilliant conclusions. See what Mica says:

Sometimes I would give her suggestions, like “maybe she could have a dragon body!” but usually she would ignore theses suggestions if it didn’t fit in with what she already had in mind. But since I am a grownup and a little bit (okay a lot) of a perfectionist, I sometimes would have a specific idea in mind as I doodled my heads. Maybe she could make this into a bug! I’d think happily to myself as I sketched, imagining the possibilities of what it could look like. So later, when she’d doodle some crazy shape that seemed to go in some surrealistic direction, or put a large circle around the creature and filled the WHOLE THING in with marker, part of my brain would think, What is she DOING?!? She’s just scribbling it all up! But I should know that in most instances, kids’ imaginations way outweigh a grownup’s, and it always ALWAYS looked better that what I had imagined. ALWAYS.

…Most importantly, I learned that if you have a preconceived notion of how something should be, YOU WILL ALWAYS BE DISAPPOINTED.  Instead, just go with it, just ACCEPT it, because usually something even more wonderful will come out of it.

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Thanks to This Is Colossal for the find.

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

1 Gaby September 10, 2013 at 12:26 pm

Cool! I was going to email this link to you when I found it :)

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