From birth, loving parents dote on their children, preserving delicate strands of hair, filming the first awkward steps, recording early words. The child’s drawings also occupy a special place in family archives. Touching and spontaneous – they are a reflection of a whole world of deep and boundless fantasy. Of course, the images are far from ideal and real parameters. But this is what makes them remarkable.
Artist Tom Curtis, the father of two sons, is an ardent admirer of his children’s creativity. But he went beyond the usual parental affection, giving the funny drawings a new life. Photoshop helped the artist with this. Using the program, Curtis transformed the crayon sketches into three-dimensional shapes. This is how a series of pictures appeared on his Instagram called “Things I Drew.”
It all started in 2016, when the artist took a closer look at his sons’ drawings. Of course, Al and Dom tried very hard. But they endowed the animals with fun, quirky traits. For example, the guys placed the eyes and mouth too close to each other, on one half of the face, without thinking about the other at all. And they drew beaks and mouths for the birds.
At that moment, Curtis wondered what the world would look like if adults did not find fault with children’s drawings, and everything drawn became real. Then the artist sat down at the computer and began processing his sons’ pictures. He used realistic textures while maintaining the proportions and shapes the boys drew. It turned out very cute and unusual. The result was a kind of surreal photographs filled with a special strange charm.
Today, the artist’s Instagram account has more than 800 thousand subscribers. The fun series of illustrations continues to grow to include every type of animal in existence.
Smiling dolphins without side fins, a raccoon-like creature with eight legs, strange cows, cats, zebras, elephants, piglets with huge teeth and unusual eyes, a dog-bird hybrid perched on a tree – the drawings amaze with their imagination.
Not long ago, the artist’s most interesting photographs were published in print, becoming part of the book Things I Have Drawn: At the Zoo (translation from English – “Things I Have Drawn: At the Zoo”).
In this post we have collected only some of the works of the talented artist. You can find more fantasy illustrations on Curtis’s Instagram page.
