Thursday Salute to Originals: Loosening Creative Grip for Creative Gain

As designers, we can all become quite attached to our creations; our ideas become pseudo-beings that we try to nurture and grow into actualization. And while we do our best to accept the inevitable constructive criticism along the way, sometimes it can be difficult to relinquish those creative bonds and allow another perspective to alter your view.

Now, it’s tough enough when the person pulling the reins on your creative prowess is a respected equal – another designer, colleague, professor, etc. – who also has an eye for design, solid a point of view, and an appreciation for artistic expression. But it’s quite a different story when the person collaborating on your design has a little less formal training, and whose professional artistic opinion is influenced primarily by the puppets on Sesame Street.

Four Year Old Artist Mother Sketches

This is the exact situation artist Mica Angela Hendricks found herself in. With her 4-year-old daughter, Myla, constantly begging to contribute to her mother’s lifelike and detailed portraits, Mica finally gave in, allowing young Myla to express her own vision in the drawings.

Mica Hendricks Art Drawings Daughter

Now you might think, initially, that this is a recipe for disaster. A 4-year-old with barely enough hand-eye coordination to wield a pencil would surely ruin the sketches her mother worked so hard on, right? Totally wrong! The imagination, creative spirit, and quirkiness Myla brings to these otherwise serious and somber portraits infuses an interesting dichotomy of technical styling, catapulting these separately ordinary sketches into whimsical works of art.

Hendricks Mother Daughter Art Collaboration Drawing

With such fantastical and imaginative perspective exuded by a child, it reminds us that good, inventive ideas don’t need to come from formal training, and they certainly don’t have to follow the rules. The best ideas should merely provoke thought, add an interesting spin, and inspire a new way of interpreting. Mica and Myla remind us that much can be gained by loosening our grip.

Image sources: Busy Mockingbird, Distractify