Budding school artist brings books to life

Reynaldo Santiago draws pretty much everything, but it’s a mural he’s painting that has students and staff at Queen Creek Elementary School enthralled.

A 15-year-old freshman at Queen Creek High School, Reynaldo has logged about 55 hours after school and during fall break making characters from books come to life on the walls of the Queen Creek Elementary School library.

He’s painted “Pippi Longstocking,” “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and “Horton Hears a Who!” and is currently working on a dragon from the cover of the book “Eldest,” part of the “Eragon” trilogy.

Holding the book in one hand, Reynaldo drew the dragon free hand with the other. He is now nearly done painting the dragon, and then he will finish painting the cover of “Charlotte’s Web.”

He started drawing when he was 12 and painting when he was 14.

“It’s a future,” said Reynaldo, who hopes to keep painting and someday become an animator for movies like “Shrek,” or a tattoo artist.

Reynaldo is shy about discussing his artwork, but the elementary school’s principal gushes about it.

“I love what it’s brought to the library,” principal Sheri Horton said. “It’s brought it to life for the kids. It’s making it a place where they want to come and they want to read.”

Horton said Reynaldo has been an inspiration for younger students. When the kindergartners and first-graders walk down the hall, they veer off as they stare into the dragon’s eyes through the library window.

“Every day, they come in (and) just gawk at it,” librarian Amy Pritts said. “They stand at the window when he’s here — they’re really amazed by it.”

When Reynaldo’s father, Cirino Santiago, visited the school recently to see his paintings, his eyes welled up with tears and he hugged his son, Horton said.

“At that moment, he discovered his son’s potential,” Horton said.

Horton, who was an administrator at Queen Creek Middle School where Reynaldo attended last year, said she saw drawings on his notebook and encouraged him to paint.

“I’m just really proud of him,” she said. “For the first time, he has said he’s proud of himself.”

When Reynaldo is done with the book characters, he will paint historical figures such as César Chavez, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Anne Frank and Albert Einstein in the library’s reference section.

And when that’s done, he’ll have no shortage of projects. Teachers at the school want him to paint murals in their children’s rooms, and another school employee wants to hire him to paint ex-NFL star John Elway in the garage.