Girl spends lockdown drawing messages of hope on her home wall: 'She draws to make people happy'

Children are so full of energy that rarely do they want to sit indoors. The last year has been hard on families and especially children, considering they had to remain cooped up indoors because of the Coronavirus pandemic. Five-year-old Eilidh may not have seen her friends for a while but she used the lockdown to make an art project surrounding hope. She uses chalk to draw colorful messages of hope on her family’s garage door and they're going viral on the internet. Eilidh loves drawing on their black glossy garage door and has drawn something twice a week since April 2020 when the pandemic first became a full-blown crisis in many parts of the world, including Scotland, where she hails from. Eilidh has drawn various things ranging from mermaids to dolphins to Spiderman, and even dinosaurs, according to Good News Network. Hope is a constant theme in her work.

Christine Hilditch, Eilidh's mom, who's an artist herself, encourages the five-year-old to express herself. Eilidh used a small stool so she can reach the upper part of the garage door. Hilditch sometimes lends a helping hand if her daughter can't reach high up the door. Those in the neighborhood often stop to ask if the art is her work. The garage door is visible to those doing their daily walk and Eilidh constantly updates the wall with fresh artwork. “We live on a busy road and could see people doing their daily walk, and we thought we would give them something different to look at," said Christine, reported The Scotsman. “Everything was Eilidh’s idea. One day it was butterflies and bees, and the next it was dragons and sunflowers. It gave her confidence. She’s always had an interest in drawing and, like everyone else, she’d done a drawing of a rainbow and enjoyed doing that," said Christine. She has many fans in the neighborhood with a few even leaving chocolates outside their doorstep in Larbert, Falkirk, as encouragement. “She is just drawing outside to make people happy,” said her mother.

The five-year-old does whatever she fancies on the day. “Whatever comes into her head she does… It could be quite random, one week we had a fairytale as she had been learning about them at school so there was a fairy godmother and it began ‘Once upon a time’ and ended ‘Happily ever after,’ said her mother, Christine. She added that the five-year-old also likes to pick on what's happening around her. “She did poppies for Remembrance Day, and one for Valentines’ Day," added Christine. 

As Eilidh continued with her project, they ran out of chalk but instead of ordering more of it online, Christine started making them by herself. She used plaster of Paris, food coloring, poster paint, and flour to make chalk. They often scrub out old art to make way for new images. Christine said she has already worn out one broom by scrubbing down the garage. The artwork is usually washed away when it rains, but it becomes a new blank canvas for the five-year-old to start her next art work. 

During the lockdown, she broke her elbow in August, after flying off a roundabout in a playpark. She couldn't draw using her right arm but she started drawing with her left and turned ambidextrous. Christine said: “She was learning how to draw with her left hand, she just wanted to keep going. She was going into P1 [first grade] so she was really anxious about not being able to do stuff. Now she can write with her left hand as well as her right.” With vaccination helping ease the hold of the pandemic in the UK, Eilidh is now back in Larbert Village Primary School and loving it.