Daddy Daughter Time

The Raynor family loves going to Walt Disney World. My wife has family in Florida so we visit them each year and we always carve a few days out for a Disney trip. I have a son and a daughter and last December Amelia and I found ourselves walking into the “Draw a Disney Character” portion of Disney Studios.

We sat down at quasi animation tables as we watched the last group shuffle through the opposite exit doors. Amelia is quite accomplished artistically as a 9-year-old and I attribute that to the fact she lives full-time with an artist/art professor Daddy. I spend many days teaching students to draw and much of our family time is “art time”.

Frozen

Frozen is becoming quite a phenomenon in the animation spectrum and I wasn’t surprised that we were going to draw Olaf. Our instructor was enthusiastic for a mid-afternoon crowd and he broke apart the snowman figure into manageable pieces. We all started to see our characters evolve on the paper. He echoed many of the things that I say in my drawing classes…”loosen up your arms”, “start with the simple and work to the details” etc.

At the end of the session we were asked to hold our drawings up and I received some attention. It was a bit embarrassing actually but I received some kind words from the instructor telling me that I should pursue art or an art related field.

As a father I wanted for them to look at my daughter’s drawing instead of mine. I think she did a great job for a nine-year old. She was starting to see the form and she was drawing through the shapes. I was very proud of her.

Debriefing

Motivation is one of those things we are always talking about at the ITATs headquarters. When I asked my daughter about the experience she communicated to me that she “wanted to make a good drawing that looked like Olaf”. I responded with the suggestion that she wanted to impress our instructor and she immediately responded with “I wanted to make you proud Daddy”.

Cue the lump in the throat for her old man.

It is easy to forget that we project expectations on children…some good and some bad. In further conversation she told me that she wanted to be an art professor and that she would like for me to hang her drawing in my office so that my students could see it. I asked her why she wanted my students to see it she responded with “so they can see that I am trying really hard…it’s important to try hard even if you aren’t an expert…“.

It’s nice to get some wisdom out of the mouths of babes.

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