Meet the 10-year-old artist whose family dubbed "Little Picasso"
A northwest suburban 10-year-old girl has had a pen in her hand since she was a baby. Her artwork has progressed over the years.
With her talent came the nickname Little Picasso from her mother.
Adriana de Jesus, 10, might not have much to say, but her work speaks volumes.
"I like bringing people alive and I like making people," she said.
She began dabbling with art as a baby.
"I've been painting since I was five, but before that I really liked drawing."
When you walk into Eileen De Jesus and Victor Iniguez's home, from the living room to the kitchen to the dining room, her parents' bedroom and the basement, you'll find Adriana's artwork.
"Look at the details. So that's why at the beginning I misunderstood," De Jesus said.
She says she gave her daughter a pen when she was just one to help her deal with symptoms from a concussion. She says that's when she knew her daughter was unique.
"It was like she was doing art in all of my notebooks, in all of ... every paper she would find. So I have a huge amount of her early artwork and it was just so much I knew at that point it was something different and unique."
Iniguez says he realized his daughter had something special when she started drawing on a table.
"I remember specifically by saying, 'Don't paint on the table. Why are you painting on the table?' One day I came down, that table was completely filled with sketches and doodles, art ... just things she would basically kind of do. That table was just completely drawn with art," he said.
Adriana's parents say schools don't offer gifted programs for art as they do for STEM.
"Schools are able to identify somebody who is very good at math or science and there's programs that get those kids into a place where they can be challenged and continue to grow, but for art, that's just not the case," Ingiguez said.
So they took it into their own hands and found a professor to mentor Adriana.
She can finish some artwork in minutes that may take some weeks to complete.
