If you’ve follow this blog for awhile, you may already be familiar with the collaborations Myla and I did when she was four…

Back then, lots of people asked if we’d do custom collaborations–where maybe they could send photos for me to draw from, and have Myla draw the bodies.  LOTS. of. people.  I mean, TONS of people.  I mean, so many that it was overwhelming.

I always said no.  I wasn’t trying to be rude or elitist, but the most important thing to me was that our daughter have FUN drawing.  I didn’t want it to be a JOB at age four.   I was so overwhelmed with requests that it would’ve been impossible to have her do them at age four and still make it fun…especially since people asked for specifics:  a bird, a donkey, a bear.  Can you imagine making a 4 year old sit down and do custom orders?  While it sounds like it would’ve been nice, I assure you, it would’ve been impossible.  And exhausting.  And most importantly, it wouldn’t have been fun.

But now Myla is six, and wants to “be a grownup.”  Despite my convincing her to stay a kid forever (because being a grownup stinks big time), she still wants to do big-kid things.  One of those things, surprisingly, has involved the desire to do custom drawings.

When we ran the Kickstarter to print a book of our collected work (which you can get here, by the way) I offered as one reward level a hand drawn portrait (by me) onto a pre-printed drawing of Myla’s, which was my alternative solution, aside from trying to make her do them all by hand, and still allowed me to give people a portrait that would make them smile.

So she asked me the other day why I never let her do custom pieces…and I told her all of the above.  She’s seen me do custom portraits for people, and didn’t realize I had never allowed it when she was younger.

“But I’m older now,” she said.  “And I know I could do it.”

“The thing about custom work is that you have to draw what people WANT you to draw.  And I always just wanted you to draw whatever made you happy.”

“But now I can do that.  I can draw what people ask.”

“They might say they like turtles, and you might feel like drawing robots.”

“But I know I can do it.  Now I want to make OTHER people happy.”  (Which is funny, because that’s my favorite part of custom portraits, as well.)  “So maybe if that happens, I could do a robot-turtle” (which sounds awesome, actually).

So there it is.  That’s where we are.

I told her we’d try it.  So here we go:  I’m only starting with five, in my Etsy shop, so please have a look!   For the first time ever!  And not for very long.   Once you purchase a portrait, you can send me reference photos for a single face, and maybe tell me something that person is into…and I’ll do my best to steer the kiddo in that direction for her part.

So If you’re up for an interesting portrait and you’ve got wiggle room for a 6-year old’s creativity, combined with my illustrations, we’d love to make you happy!  🙂

UPDATE:  WOW those five sold out in the first ten minutes!  I added five more, but that’s probably all I’ll add for now, until I see how she handles these.  Maybe if she has fun with them, we’ll offer a few more.  Thank you so much for all your support.  🙂

UPDATE UPDATE:  Sold out!  Sorry…  If she enjoys doing these, we may offer them again sometime!  Thanks!

Blast from the past:  So cute!!  Wonderful reader Laurie reminded me of one of the VERY few portraits we did when Myla was four, as a prize for a creative contest we ran on the blog ages ago.  Here are the bluebirds Myla turned her and her daughter into: