Dad uses his paintbrush and the Mona Lisa to teach daughter life lessons

The Mona Lisa painting by Laurence Cheatham.
(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/Good Morning America)

When Laurence Cheatham's 9-year-old daughter told him she wanted to draw the Mona Lisa but was afraid it would be too hard, it sparked his creativity.

"I wanted to show her that with time, patience, and practice, she can do anything she sets her mind to," he told Good Morning America. "I wanted to tell her when I finished, 'If Daddy can do it then you can too, because you're even greater than me.'" Over the next three months, when Cheatham came home at night from his full-time job as a security guard, he worked on a painting of his daughter as the Mona Lisa, keeping it hidden in a closet so she wouldn't see it until it was ready.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.