The other day, I was drawing a little doodle of Patsy from Monty Python’s Holy Grail, and thought it’d be funny to add a bunch of strange and silly things to the pack on his back.  And then I had an even better idea:  what if I asked everyone in Instagram what I should draw?

So I did.  I asked everyone to give me their APPROPRIATE ideas (I didn’t want people trying to make me draw a bunch of butts or other inappropriate things), and this is what they suggested:

A black cat, goose, tungsten carbide drill bit, rabbit smoking a cigar, Myla, some swallows (both European and African) carrying a coconut, plenty of shrubbery, a severed arm, the Holy Grail, the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, a small horse, hamster, elderberries, a whoopie cushion, dollhouse, spatula, a Dream Creeper, ladies undies, a rotary phone, a foot, bubble gun, sunflower, stamps, dead parrot in a cage, small llama, Camelot (it’s only a model) a waiter with a tray, flamenco dancers, and a rat that Myla drew. And, if you please, on the llama’s nose, a waffer-thin mint.

Then I painted it to clean it up a bit, and now Patsy  looked like this…

Myla saw what I was drawing, and asked me what I was doing.  I told her about how I let other people give me ideas, and she was fascinated, and asked if she could do it too.  “It means you’d have to draw whatever people say,” I said.  “I know,” she said seriously.  “…Even if it’s something weird, you have to try and fit it in really tiny,”  I said.  “I know I can do it.”  she said.  So I asked Instagram again.

This time, the list included a quiddich ball, goblet, owl wearing earmuffs and Harry Potter’s glasses, eating hot Cheetos and wearing a time turner, buckbeak, bunny, niffler with gems, ferret holding cheese, motorcycle, quill, mice, Dobby with a sock, hermione’s cat Crookshanks wearing Luna’s glasses, Stonehenge, bowtruckle, birthday cake, gold, watch, oven mitt, lightening bolt, Voldemort, a crown of flowers, Harry, Ron, and Hermione, butterflies, spider, bird with babies in a nest, screaming mandrake, lollipop, a melty chocolate frog, his umbrella wand, a slug, baby Norbert hatched dragon blowing fire, Fang and Fluffy, magic wand, potion bottles, a magic wand, the monster guide book, keys, a golden snitch, dog bone treats, and Hogwarts.

And she was amazing–she drew EVERYTHING on the list.  She had me look up references for the things she wasn’t familiar with, and made sure I crossed off every one of their suggestions.  Near the end, there were a couple of really obscure things that I had considered just leaving off or drawing myself, but she looked at the list and pushed me on:  “I want to get ALL of them, mom.”  So I looked up the last obscure things, and she finished them up.

And here’s how her awesome Hagrid looked when he was done…

A few days later, I drew Gandalf, and thought it would be another fun opportunity to let people give me suggestions again.  Myla doesn’t know Lord of the Rings.  She did ask to do a few of the things, but mostly I did it solo.

I filled Gandalf’s beard with his pipe, Gollum with a flower hat, Saruman, popcorn, Lego bricks, Bruce Lee DVD set, a Hobbit (Frodo) as a bee next to a hive, an Easter basket, rusty old key ring, record player, loaf of bread, marble pouch, pencils, a tandem bike, horse and carriage, chocolate cake, a mockingbird, cat, jack o’lantern, Shadowfax, fireworks, Jean-Luc Picard, dragonfly, his moth friend, a dwarf, eagle, Radagast with his rabbit sleigh, dragon Smaug, a comb, an elven-hewn locket with a portrait of Galadriel, a lawn gnome, ent Treebeard, cave troll, po-tay-to, Orc, cards, spider, a pint of ale, hobbit hole, Gandalf the White’s brooch, a hedgehog, seashells, starfish, mousetrap, Malala, and Gumby, Legolas’ arrows, and the Hobbit book.

And here’s Gandalf, complete…

It’s really intimidating giving your artwork over to everybody, and letting them have control of what you draw.  There’s this sort of nervous excitement when all these suggestions start coming in, and you wonder how you’re going to possibly do it, and what if it wasn’t such a good idea after all…

But it’s a good exercise in letting go and seeing what it turns into.  In a way, it’s sort of the same lesson I learned when giving my sketchbook to Myla when she was 4 years old…sometimes it’s okay to give up that control.   Sometimes when you are able do that, fun things can happen. 

(I put these up as prints in my Society6 shop, if you’re interested:  Patsy , Hagrid, Gandalf .)