Cartoon-Style Portrait in Wood

We wanted something from our daughter's sketchbook that she could still recognise years from now. Her drawing was a rabbit in a long coat, with one button roughly twice the size of the others. I mentioned it so it wouldn't get tidied up. When she opened the package she laughed at that button first. We put the carving on a shelf next to the original sketch, and I like seeing both there. The drawing is still playful, while the wood gives all that empty space around the rabbit a little weight.

I sent a sketch of a fish with boots. The question back was whether the pencil marks around the boots were part of it. They absolutely were. I appreciated being asked, and the carving kept the drawing's scruffy charm.

It still looks like our boy’s drawing, right down to the enormous feet.

My niece drew an olive branch as a little character, with two leaves for arms and a smile squeezed into the stem. I wasn't sure the joke would survive once the pencil lines were carved into wood. The sketch they sent kept the smile just where she'd drawn it, and the crooked leaf on the left stayed crooked. In person the fine cuts give the drawing more presence than I expected. We hung it low enough for her to point out which leaf is supposed to be waving.

This started as a drawing my son made of the two of us as birds. He was worried they'd change the long legs. The carving kept them exactly as he drew them and left lots of room around the figures.

The point was to keep our niece's dinosaur a little ridiculous. They did. The tail still sticks straight up and the smile is too big for its head. The grown-up frame makes the whole thing funnier, in a good way.

The wonky crown from her drawing made it into the finished piece.

My daughter draws our cat with enormous eyes and a single bent whisker. I asked them to keep both. The carving does that and still feels beautifully understated. She recognised her drawing from across the room.

My son's original rocket was on the back of an envelope. I love that they left its crooked fins and mismatched windows alone. He picked it out as his drawing straight away when he came home.

My daughter recognised her little fox before I had the frame unwrapped.

Even the wobbly pine branches from his drawing made it through.