Artful Daughter

What might happen if you were to hand a piece of fine art to a 4-year-old …

who is armed with markers?

Magic, that’s what.

Illustrator Mica Angela Hendricks confirmed this in a positively picturesque blog post earlier this year.

Eager to try out a special new sketchbook she’d ordered for herself, Mica attempted to sit down for a bit of “mommy time” drawing when her 4-year-old daughter snapped to attention.

“OOOH! Is that a NEW sketchbook? Can I draw in that too, mama?”

Reluctant to relinquish her project …

(“I’m all about kids’ crafts, but when it comes to my own art projects, I don’t like to share.”)

She told her daughter that she had been planning to add a body to the woman’s face she’d just drawn.

“Well, I will do it,” her daughter declared resolutely, and she grabbed the pen.

One page, Mica resigned … I can sacrifice one page.

She didn’t anticipate the absolute wonder of what came next.

“I had drawn a woman’s face, and she had turned her into a dinosaur-woman. It was beautiful, it was carefree, and I LOVED what she had created,” Mica admitted. “Flipping through my sketchbook, I found another doodle of a face I had not yet finished. She drew a body on it, too, and I was enthralled. It was such a beautiful combination of my style and hers. And she loved being a part of it. She never hesitated in her intent. She wasn’t tentative. She was insistent and confident that she would, of course, improve any illustration I might have done. And the thing is, she DID.”

Image courtesy of Mica Angela Hendricks via Busymockingbird.com

Take a look at some of the magnificent illustrations that resulted from this mother-daughter collaboration and read more about what Mica learned from letting go of her artistic reins in her original post.