This Dad Taught His 10-Year-Old Son How To Use Photoshop By Adding Lifeboats To Famous Paintings

"There was never any reason to do this, and yet here we are."

After a 10-year-old boy asked his dad to teach him Photoshop, they came up with a unique project: adding lifeboats and other search and rescue vehicles into iconic paintings.

Last week, Andy Doe's son Henry, a young artist and sailor, asked his dad to teach him to use the program. Their efforts resulted in a whole collection of famous paintings edited to show help on the way — and the internet loved it.

Over the weekend, Doe posted some of the images in a Twitter thread that has since gone viral, amassing thousands of retweets and more than 50,000 likes.

This week, my firstborn asked me to teach him photoshop, which means we now have a lot of famous paintings with search and rescue vehicles added to them.

There was never any reason to do this, and yet here we are.

Doe, a volunteer crew member at the Royal National Lifeboat Institution's Hastings Lifeboat Station in southern England, told BuzzFeed News he and Henry decided to add lifeboats to paintings because of his background in search and rescue and "because there are so many famous paintings representing people in peril at sea."

"It started as a bit of a joke, and I only put them on Twitter so a few of my friends on the Lifeboat crew could see," Doe said in an email. "I thought it was pretty niche content, but it quickly became clear there are lots of Lifeboat fans out there."

Pretty soon, Doe said, they started to get requests from friends and strangers around the world to add vessels, vehicles, and aircraft to different works of art.

A request from @mcelhearn. This is clearly a hazardous situation. A hatch cover with a sail is no substitute for a properly equipped and regularly serviced liferaft.

@bushtick @Hastings_CRT @Heimi_Henderson @mcelhearn @mirabilia7 @zenlan @dougscripts @andreasheierroe @TenbyRNLI A lot of requests for Christina's World, too. I don't think a lifeboat is going to be much help here. Seems more like a job for @airambulancekss.

"I’m always a bit nervous putting anything to do with my kids online, but the response has been overwhelmingly positive, with the exception of a few of my clients, who want to know why I can’t make content this popular for them," said Doe, a university lecturer and digital marketing consultant. In his work, he uses Photoshop to edit album covers for classical records.

"This has been a really great project to do together, and it has been fun to combine our hobbies," Doe said.

A request from @bushtick and @Hastings_CRT. Volunteer coastguard teams undertake cliff and shore rescues. Their truck will need a bit of work to get through its next MOT though.

Henry told BuzzFeed News his favorite image was probably J. M. W. Turner's "Wreck Off Hastings," the first painting they edited, because it shows an area where his dad and the other volunteer crew members do rescues in real life.

Furthermore, @rnliEastbourne are way outside their normal area of operations here.

"There’s a print of this in our bathroom, but I might have to swap it with my version and see if Mummy notices," Henry said an email.

Now, the 10-year-old has a new hobby and is thinking about relocating some famous buildings in his next Photoshop series.

"It’s been a good chance to learn how to use some new tools and methods, and I think this will keep me busy until I’m old enough to join the [Lifeboat] crew myself," he said.

But if the sea is really just a sea of fog, there’s still help on its way.

@bushtick @Hastings_CRT @Heimi_Henderson @mcelhearn @mirabilia7 @zenlan A request from @dougscripts, Washington Crossing the Delaware represents an exceptionally hazardous journey. Cold water kills, and every one of these people should be in drysuits and PFDs, but failing that, their best chance is air cover from the US Coastguard.

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