The Story of My Daughter's Drawing for Dana and Lawrence

Good morning friends!I know I’ve been hitting you all with a lot of heavy material, so I thought I’d press the pause button and share one of those heartwarming stories about my family I know you all enjoy.When this dystopian nightmare ends, this is the type of thing I’ll write every day, so you have that to look forward to which is nice!The thing about my daughter is that she likes to draw. Actually, that goes back to the very beginning. I like to draw too. One of the first things I did when my kids were old enough to hold a crayon was to sit them down next to the wall.“You can draw pictures on this wall,” I said.Some people get mad at kids for drawing pictures on a wall with crayons. I’ve never been that type of dad. In fact, I sat down and drew pictures on the walls with them. I draw a lot of dragons.I think she’s wearing mommy’s shoes in that picture. You can see my dragon on the right.One of the staples for any gift giving season in our house has always been art supplies. When it comes time to wrap presents, you can be sure some crayons or colored pencils or watercolors or brushes or pastels or ink pens or notebooks are going to be part of the celebration.This house is FULL of art supplies. That allows me to sit down and draw with them.Fast forward fifteen years, and one of my daughter’s comfort activities is to sketch in her notebooks. She has boxes and boxes full of notebooks. She creates characters and composes illustrated novels. She does this while I read to her at night. Her nose is always buried on the page, and the pencil is always dancing beneath her deft and delicate touch.So, the other day I happened to turn on the Daily Whatever with Dana and Lawrence, and it occurred to me that they needed some sort of logo. Also, they have such distinctive looks, Dana with her beautiful red hair, and Lawrence with his smiling eyes! I thought my daughter would appreciate the challenge, so I sent her this screen shot:And I wrote:These two folks have a podcast. I thought they might like to have a cartoon drawing of themselves to promote it. Would you be willing to make drawings of them?You can do Dana and Lawrence separately and I can put them together in photoshop. She’s got a distinctive look with her wingtip glasses and red hair. And Lawrence is easy, but you have to capture his eye smile.let me know if you want to try and draw this, I think they’d love it!There I go again calling things “easy” and then adding, “capture his eye smile.” Haha, I admit that even as I wrote it I didn’t know how to do that, but my daughter did:I got the chance to jump on the Daily Whatever and talk about this on Friday, and I just love the idea of the “eye smile.” An eye smile is impossible to fake, and I think there’s hardly a better compliment you could make about somebody. It’s only when you’re a genuinely kind person that you can eye smile!I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit though.My daughter did the drawings when she came home from school. “I saw your email dad!” She said. “I like them! They both look nice. The man looks like Santa.”Then she sat down and did the drawings in about 10 minutes. I’m telling you, she does nothing but draw all the time.So, here’s where this story gets even more fun. I took the drawings and touched them up a bit in Photoshop. The whole time I did it, I felt all delighted and tingly because I knew it was going to make Dana and Lawrence’s day.I finished the images and sent them off. Then I got to feel all delighted and tingly as I awaited their replies. Then I got their replies and felt all delighted and tingly again:See how nice this is? The good feeling just kept going and going, and it didn’t stop there! Soon, Dana shared the pictures and the comments started popping up with praise for my daughter (which left me feeling all delighted and tingly).Then they talked about it here, and with me here.See how this goes? You do something nice and it keeps rolling along and you feel all delighted and tingly again and again. So, the final part, for now, is that this morning I was making pancakes for my kids and I grabbed my phone and I showed the clips of Lawrence and Dana raving about the cartoons to my daughter. There’s a look on her face that she gets when she’s really happy, and she had that look, so that made me feel all delighted and tingly all over again.But this is the kind of stuff that I really love because it just shows how easy it is to make each other happy and support each other. In writing this, I’ve been able to tell you all so much about Dana and Lawrence and my daughter, and I think that’s the loveliest way to promote and uplift and support each other. Also, it just keeps rolling along like a happiness snowball!Please, don’t hesitate to do something like this if you’re an artist. I’ve also been sending voice recordings of each chapter of Ellie Leonard’s book, and it just makes me happy to make those for her. I think if we use our creativity to support the creative works of others, we end up with a whole greater than the sum of its parts!I’ll probably ask my daughter to do some more drawings. She loves doing it and I love looking at her artwork! I’ll also have to share some of the various stories I’ve written about us drawing together. They are some of my happiest stories.I just want to leave you all with some encouragement to share your work! Share your creativity! Surprise people with delightful, adorable drawings. That’s always a wonderful thing to see when you open up your inbox. With all the hardships of the world, we could all use a little more joy.The thing about happiness is that it keeps building on itself. I’ll be able to read this story 20 years from now and feel all delighted and tingly all over again! Stay sparkly everyone! You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI’m so happy you’re here, and I’m looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe