‘In your imagination you can make your ideas real’

The 40 minutes of art class is just not enough for Sanfordville Elementary School fourth-grader Danyal Hafeez. He also likes to draw at home, and sometimes he brings those drawings into school to show his classmates and his teacher Jamie Harrington.

Danyal enjoys art because he finds it relaxing. He like to draw with pencils because mistakes can easily be erased.

“You get to concentrate and make ideas that aren’t real, but in your imagination you can make them real,” Danyal said. “I like to draw houses, humans, trees, lots of landscapes and animals. Two years ago, I decided I wanted to become an artist. Whenever I was trying to draw a human, it turned out pretty good and I got interested in art.”

Sanfordville art teacher Leah Mednick said that Danyal often shows her work from his sketchbook, where he does detailed drawings from observation. Recently, Danyal showed her a flipbook that displayed his impressive understanding of timing and motion.

Danyal got the idea to do flipbooks from watching Andymation on YouTube. He created one flipbook about a line that turns into a man and jumps onto a car. A second flipbook was about a man that turns into a ball that bounces onto a wall and then turns back into a human.

“Since I’ve known Danyal, he has been such a joy to teach,” Mednick said. “He comes up with creative ways to put his own style into each piece of artwork he does. He is always questioning what works and what doesn’t work in his creative process. The best part about watching Danyal grow into an artist is seeing him find his own style and the things he is most passionate about in art.”

The circular landscape drawing that Danyal is holding in the photograph is one that he did at home. He then brought the drawing to school, and it’s now hanging on a wall in the classroom. Danyal said the drawing took him about two hours to complete.

“That was just for fun,” Danyal said. “I wanted to make the scene not exactly like it looks in the world, but how it would look from space, like a circle.”

In addition to art class, Danyal likes math and writing. Harrington said his contributions to the class go beyond academics.

“Danyal is creative in many ways,” Harrington said. “He is a problem-solver and peace maker in the classroom. Everyone benefits from his calm presence and genuine people skills. Danyal thinks outside the box; coming up with different ways to solve math problems.

“Danyal shares his unique math solving strategies with his classmates, helping them to see math from a different perspective,” his teacher added. He’s very generous that way.”