On March 9th, we received an email message from our daughter’s school telling us that the Madrid Community had decreed that all education institutions—public, private, elementary through university—would have to close on March 11th for two weeks. We had been wondering why we hadn’t heard anything from the school about how they were handling the spread of germs and the safety of our children and their staff and teachers. So for us, despite keeping up with the sad and scary news reports about the effects of coronavirus in China and Italy, we went from silence to “school will be closed for the next two weeks” in a single email.
We got organized, drew up a schedule with our 8-year old daughter so that she could get the work her teachers sent home with her in those two weeks little by little, and figured we needed to keep in mind this was not vacation. It was life, redefined temporarily. I knew it would be okay because we have a kiddo who is super cooperative, however, my selfish side wanted to make sure that I would be able to keep working on my illustrations and the bit of writing I had gone back to doing.
Our first three days were super organized. Our daughter handled the independent learning really well. There were little distractions, and we ended the week well. At around that time, we started hearing about schools in the United States that were announcing closures too. Surprisingly, in my mind this news immediately reduced the 5,000 plus miles between Spain and the US considerably, and the feeling of our world being a relatively small community became very real.
In just a couple of days, I was completely overwhelmed by the amount of resources pouring out from the US to help children and families stay engaged, keep learning, and be entertained. With each passing hour, it seemed like children’s book authors and illustrators, musicians, museums, and others were announcing readings, kitchen concerts, live drawing sessions, ideas for art lessons, virtual visits, and so much more!
This generous attitude of people helping each other, of supporting others who need it, of letting kids and grownups know that we are all in this together, touched me so much, it brought me to tears. It also had me asking myself, “how can I help too?” I was hearing about all these people who were sharing their gifts with the world, what was my gift? It didn’t take too long for me to answer that…drawing! I was considering doing something with our daughter’s grade mates, when I happened to stumble upon an Instagram post by Julie Rowan-Zoch about an initiative called “What Should I Draw?” started by illustrators Ame Dyckman and Charlene Chua on Twitter, in which parents tweet their kiddo’s ideas, tag the prompts with @DrawWhat and #WSID and illustrators draw them.
Ever since my daughter started Pre-Kinder, I have been working on a lunchbox drawing a day project. I figured I wouldn’t be doing those drawings during our time off from school, even though I attempted to do a daily quarantine drawing for her, after three or four days, that fizzled out. But offering other kids to suggest ideas for drawings could be such a wonderful way to spend a portion of my days. I went ahead and wrote emails to the parents of our friends in Seattle, New Jersey, and a few other places. I told them about the idea and asked that if they wanted to participate, I’d be happy to receive their kids’ ideas so I could take a stab at drawing them.
I began to receive some and then some more, and now since March 17, I’ve been trying to keep up with the requests. Once I finish them, I post them and share them on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. I follow that by cleaning up the drawings in Photoshop, turn them into pdf’s and mail the drawing to the child who submitted an idea.
I have been having fun turning the kids’ ideas into images, and it has been a great creative exercise for me.
I will be posting more of my What Should I Draw drawings here on the blog (go here for batch #2)…enjoy! (hover over the image to read the idea behind the drawing)…and please, stay home and stay healthy!
