• Newsfeed
  • Art

An Artist Turned His Childhood Drawings Into This Beautiful, Surrealist Series

1 minute read

When Dutch artist Telmo Pieper came across a big box of his childhood drawings that his parents had put in storage, he was taken aback by his linear representations of snails and hawks, cars and sharks.

“I was fascinated by how strange and great the line drawings were from when I was little,” Pieper says. “Surrealistic feel with a realistic subject — impossible to copy the style but possible to work it out further. So I did.”

Pieper, who is now part of a street art duo called TELMO MIEL, decided to revisit this early series almost 20 years later in “Kiddie Arts,” which juxtaposes Pieper’s artwork as a 4-year-old with more advanced reinterpretations.

“Since the beginning I never stopped creating and drawing,” Pieper says. “The biggest difference is that I started with pencils and crayons and now my main technique is the spray can or the Wacom tablet.”

Whale
WhaleTelmo Pieper from the TELMO MIEL duo
Grizzly Bear
Grizzly BearTelmo Pieper from the TELMO MIEL duo
Car
CarTelmo Pieper from the TELMO MIEL duo
Eagle
EagleTelmo Pieper from the TELMO MIEL duo
Euro Mast
Euro MastTelmo Pieper from the TELMO MIEL duo
Fly
FlyTelmo Pieper from the TELMO MIEL duo

More Must-Reads from TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com