Tom, the “dad” who turns children’s drawings into fun works of art and is all the rage on Instagram

Tom Curtis converted his children To the Y Sun in artists without their knowledge. On your Instagram account Things I drew (Things I drew), the “dad” shows the virtuous reversals he makes of the drawings of his children and other children around the world. The result is amusing works of art that show, in Tom’s imagination, what the creations of the little ones would be like “in the real world”.

In his works there are birds with giant fangs, deformed cats, reptiles with human teeth, dolphins with arms and smiles. Many animals, objects, and even humans can coexist in a single creature.

Before telling how Tom originated the world of Things I drew and what is your creative process, let’s look at some of his latest designs in the account.

Strange creatures

Tom’s latest drawing to date is My Little Pony, Skinny and Bony. The title describes it perfectly. This creation condenses the concept of things that I have drawn.

“This little one, a Shetland pony foal, was photographed at the Whipsnade Zoo, close to where we live in England. And the wonderful drawing was made by little Facundo, sent by @linaleluz. I love her slim legs, “Tom wrote next to the picture.

Another drawing shows a “happy dog ​​with gorilla lips and human teeth”. “Surely those lips have collagen padding. (Not really, they’re from a gorilla.) Sometimes children’s drawings are so weird that I have to look elsewhere in the animal kingdom to create some of the features, and that’s exactly what happened here. “

In one made by a girl named India you can see the “real” version of a strange lion. This artwork belongs to a campaign with the children’s charity @raysofsunshinecc.

Tom’s hobby, which started out inspired by Al and Dom’s scribbles, resulted in a completely heterogeneous body of work. The artist has made drawings of famous fans of the idea of ​​him, such as Zachary Levi (Shazam actor!), Publications in collaboration with museums and even masks inspired by children’s drawings.

The first artistic piece of the story, the one that started the adventure, is of the family cat. It was originally designed by Dom e is Tom’s favorite creation.

Tom’s world

“This is Al and Dom’s Insta, with a little help from their dad named Tom,” read the Things I Have Drawn account description.

The project started in 2015, when Al and Dom were 3 and 5 years old. As the children got older and started drawing better, Tom drew inspiration from the drawings of other young people.

When Curtis decided to make Things I Have Drawn a serious project, he started talking a lot more with his children about the drawings they made. I wanted to understand them better so that I could restore them well. Of course: if the scribbles were very complex, the “dad” didn’t do them.

“From time to time I have to ask them what the various parts of their drawings should be. However, I’m sure I mistake my nose for my mouth and even my tail for my ears when I’m not around asking, ”Curtis says in a note with Pop Goes The Page.

According to the artist, he and his children came to visit zoos with notebooks for the children to draw the animals they wanted. When Dom and Al were starting to create, Tom photographed the designs from various angles. When you get home, then started his process with Photoshop.

The “real” versions consist of a combination of photographs taken by Tom and the specific ones he finds on the Internet. “It is much more satisfying to use my photos and the final results, I think, are usually better, because I will have taken more photos to work with and the realism is easier to achieve,” explains the creative.

Curtis sometimes uses the body of one animal to create the body of another: “For example, for a giraffe, it would take too long to adapt every single piece of its fur to the pattern drawn by a child, so in more than one. occasion I used the body of a white horse and then I added the models later.

At first his children wanted their father’s jobs to be fun, but as they grew up they started to worry more about having a lot of “likes” on the networks.

While it may seem like that, drawings aren’t the first thing in Curtis’ professional life. In fact, most of the time it hurts them. Tom is Executive Creative Director of a media agency in London called MediaCom. His main source of income comes from there.

The world of Tom, Dom and Al, as we said, has become more and more popular, so much so that in 2017 Curtis published the book “Things I Have Drawn: At the Zoo”, which collects several of his works, and he too came to working for Gucci sitting in the front row of a Milan fashion show.