Early Artists, Embellished

Kids' drawings never live up to what they're supposed to be. While those little hangs grasp Crayola markers and crayons, their attempts to recreate their modern family, favorite pet, or dream car usually look like little more than stick figures and a scribble-filled mess.

Or are they?

Maybe young minds are incredibly visual, and their hands are simply unable to keep up.

Artist Dave DeVries explores this possibility through a collection of images that are fantastic and fantastical. He took pre-schoolers' pictures, and used them as a foundation for full-fledged paintings. Personally, I think the extrapolated and embellished former stick figures are quite striking.

Like many of the off-the-wall-and-very-cool art-related things I blog about, this collection can be found on Flavorwire.


Here's what Flavorpill's Tom Hawking had to say:

"If you actually stop and look at them, children's drawings are really fascinating. You can spend hours thinking about the way kids' brains transfer the world they see onto paper, emphasizing certain characteristics of their subjects in a way that's more conceptual than literal, or the fact that children everywhere — no mater what their socioeconomic or cultural context — seem to draw in broadly the same way. Jersey artist Dave DeVries takes the idea of analyzing children's work one step further, by rendering their creations as fully-fledged, realistic (if somewhat cartoon-esque) paintings. His project The Monster Engine has been exploring this idea for a decade, and the results are both beautiful and fascinating."

I included two of my favorites in this post, but there are more to see, enjoy, and ponder. Check out the others by reading the original post on Flavorwire, and/or DeVries' website.