A Bit About Me

I began as early as when I first put a crayon to paper, and for over 8 years have been practicing art almost every day. 

As a self-critical person, I have struggled with being proud of my work. But, as the years progress, I've been able to find peace within completion and have grown to enjoy the experimental, neverending nature of art. Sometimes, it feels like it's too much, and I get an art block. But it rarely happens now as I've learned how to apply my art to many projects, and I don't force myself to draw nearly every day for hours now.

Most of my practice has been with character art and design. Originally, I had no idea that this was an actual category of specialization. As someone who writes as well, I enjoy creating characters for stories and videos and other such things. Since I practiced it so often over the span of many years, it's become my ultimate specialty as an artist. It's also helped a lot when I need to come up with original designs for banners, logos, etc. 

I often experiment with colors, anatomy, and style. I've found that the brushes I use with each art piece have a huge impact on the final version. When I began art traditionally, it was first with pencil, crayons, and markers. I used basic colors from what was given to me, no particular color palette was ever chosen before I started coloring an art piece. To be honest, I never really liked having a set color palette in mind before beginning the coloring process. Coloring is freeing for me, especially now that I work digitally, I can edit things after they're "done" to make them look more appealing. I improvise most of my coloring. Reason being.. planning it out just ruins the whole piece.

It's ironic though, because I myself am a huge planner and very good at organization. You'd think somebody like me would plan their pieces before diving in, but it's all different with art. I'm so used to improvising the final pieces, and I think that's what makes my art mine. I let the art flow through me, I spend minutes, hours, days, creating. It's kind of what I do best, I bring ideas to life.

The reason I wanted to become an artist in the first place is complicated. I don't know if I had one big reason as a little kid. I simply liked it. I liked creating. I liked having my world at my fingertips, it gave me control of something. I could create, and nobody could tell me whether I was doing it wrong or not. 

It also gave me an easy path to connecting with others. I would use my art for birthday cards, presents on holidays, or just because I liked that person. Many of my teachers, friends, and family members can vouch for this. Though I don't generally "like" hanging around people, art was my way of doing that. It easily became a skill, a coping method, and a gift that I developed on my own (I'm self-taught)- one that I could utilize in a plethora of different projects, and one that I continue to use today for a multitude of reasons.