Today’s #MarchMeetTheMaker prompt is “How you started”
I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember, but the story we tell in my family about how I really got started in art is about me and my sister. We both took ceramics and gymnastics classes when we were tiny little girls. It was clear from the very beginning that she was definitely the gymnast and I was the artist in the family. We both started learning both, but then each of us found our love and veered off in our chosen path! She would train, compete and coach gymnastics for decades, and I haven’t stopped making art since!
In high school I got more serious about it and tried every medium I could get my hands on. I had an amazing art teacher who encouraged me and I took as many art classes as possible. I even painted a mural in my high school in the hallway outside the library. Sadly, I don’t have a photo of it.
I drew, painted and printed many of the same subjects that I am still interested in today. Plants, animals, bones, insects and the occasional person. In this post you can see a variety of pieces that I still have (or my family has) that I made in high school. The 3 foot wasp was my very first “real” acrylic painting. You can also see my first watercolor and my first block print. Yep, I did a reduction block print with three color registration for my very first print! I think I was 16 and 17 when I did all of these pieces.
But probably the most significant piece in this post is the girl with the swan. This was the first ink drawing I did where you can very clearly see the beginnings of my current style. Awkward, a bit clunky and totally random – but the combination of figures, animals, leaves, insects and flowers in an ink drawing that fills the page but leaves some negative space… that’s definitely the birth of my current drawing style! It’s fun to look back at all these old pieces and see how much I’ve changed and grown, but to still see a connection to what I’m doing now.
This is getting super long, so I’ll probably do a part two of this prompt on another day with a less wordy prompt.