Seeing the world through the drawings of a child brought dad of two, Tom Curtis, a new perspective on the way he see’s the world. After looking closely at his kids’ Dom and Al’s drawings of animals with wonky misshapen features; Tom decided to play around with this concept by using Photoshop. He then started posting the completed images on Instagram which brought the three of them great success, and in 2017 they released their first book ‘Things I Have Drawn: At the Zoo’. Nowadays, the ever growing in popularity Instagram account ‘Things I Have Drawn’, is a home for Dom, Al and other children’s drawings alongside their newly introduced Play-Doh models, all brought to life by Tom.

What first gave you the idea to bring your children’s drawings to life?

I’m sure most parents like seeing their kids being creative. It’s definitely the case for me. When Dom, my older son, was 5, I remember finding one of his drawings of a now-forgotten animal and thinking it was quite funny how its eyes and mouth were on the same side of its head. It occurred to me that most young kids seemed to draw animals like that. Could it be, I thought, that these children had actually seen animals with these strange seemingly misshapen features, and it was just us adults who weren’t paying enough attention to the world around us?

So, I set about on Photoshop reimagining real-life animals and objects exactly how Dom was drawing them. The first picture I did was of a portrait that Dom did of me. It was pretty grotesque really, but he soon moved back to happy animals.

Your work sees the world through a child’s imagination which is really refreshing, what do your children Al and Dom think about the success of their drawings?

We’ve been doing Things I Have Drawn for over 5 years, and Dom and Al are 11 and 9 now, so have grown up with it. Their reactions are quite different these days to what they used to be. When Things I Have Drawn first got popular on Instagram, I think they were slightly bemused by it all – especially when Dom and I gave our first live TV interview. The boys laughed a lot at the creations we made together, but as they’ve grown up, they’re more interested in how many likes the posts get – as if that’s a measure of quality!

Do you come from a design background yourself or is your work more self-taught? It is very unique!

I’m an executive creative director in London at a media agency called MediaCom, so yes – I do design stuff at work. On Photoshop though, I’m pretty much self-taught, having dabbled a bit at university over 20 years ago. I still don’t know what half of it does, but I adopted a process of wanting to do something assuming. Photoshop did it, and then it was about working out how.

This question is for Al and Dom, what is your favourite thing to draw and why?

When I ask Dom and Al what their favourite image is they normally say it’s a very early one we did together, that Dom drew of our cat who has since sadly passed away. She was called Ninja, but in the picture looks more like a furry sausage with stick legs. These days I’d say Dom’s favourite things to draw are machines – he’ll often fill pieces of A4 with elaborate looking factory interiors full of weird robots and engines – all quite cartoony in style, but still pretty intricate. Al, meanwhile, likes drawing dragons. Their drawings are a bit too sophisticated for our Instagram account these days, but luckily I’ve still got loads in the archive of drawings they did when they were younger.

In 2017 you brought out a book called ‘Things I Have Drawn: At the Zoo’, can you tell us a bit more about the book?

We live near a zoo in the UK called Whipsnade Zoo and used to go there a lot with the boys. It offered a lot of inspiration for many of their early drawings. When we got a book deal it was our agent’s idea to base it entirely on a trip to the zoo. It made sense, because animals have always been very popular on our social feeds.
The book is a rhyming story, following the boys (and me) as we venture round the various enclosures, encountering many weird and wonderful creatures. I wrote it so that it would appeal to everyone – both kids and adults - and I think we succeeded in that. There are loads of animals in there that aren’t on our Instagram.

As Al and Dom are growing up, what is next for ‘Things I Have Drawn’?

I’ve considered for a long time that the ‘I’ in Things I Have Drawn, shouldn’t be limited to just Dom and Al. Very early on people started DMing us on Instagram with their own kids’ drawings and now we receive between fifty and a hundred a week, so there’s plenty of material to work from. Although, they do still sometimes contribute. I’ve got a lot of drawings that Al in particular has done in the past 2 or 3 years still to work with, and Dom will occasionally draw me funny eyes and smiley mouths that I can stick on animals’ faces. We’ve also created models out of Play-Doh together, posting with the hashtag #thingsihavemade. Meanwhile there are loads of really interesting things we’re developing, including various partnerships with brands and recently even an art gallery. I don’t think we’ll run out of ideas any time soon. Oh – and there’s still TikTok to launch on as well of course.