Artist | Hobbyist | Varied

United States

There is a lot about me to tell, as there is with everyone else in the world.

One, I am a person, obviously, both normal and weird, just like everyone else in the world.

And just like everyone else in the world there is at least one thing I excel at, for me this is art.

There has always been in me an interest in art, and a personal challenge to make myself better at it, in as many forms possible. A kind of ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ person, with the added doublet of ‘Though often times better than master of one’

As much as I’ve done, Pottery, Poetry, Painting, Sculpting, Singing, Music, Dancing, Acting, Jewelry making, and much more, I’ve only scratched the surface of art. There are many forms of art, and each form branches out in many ways. There is no true mastery of any art; there is only the level of progression you’ve attained. Everyone can become better at art, and there is no exception but to those who give up.

As much as I’d like explore art in its’ many forms I find I’m too often limited to paper, pencil and pen. I don’t write often and when inspiration douse hit me, it often leaves all too quickly to write a story. I can be crafty with poems and riddles, but written stories I struggle with; music is even further out of my grasp. My art usually come though visually, in hand drawings.

With as little as the forms of art that I’ve scratched, hand drawing is the one thing alone I have plunged deep into, little to the reason that it was the one form of art freely available to me. Even when I was very little I had the heart and hope to become an artist, thanks mainly to Bob Ross and his ‘Happy little trees’. His paintings of landscapes were always so real and so beautiful that I was always awed at what he could do with his hands, and so easily too.

The love of art had been planted in me when I was young; from then on it only grew, never withering. I looked at all the land around me as God’s masterpiece, an art that would always be both terrible and beautiful, and ever changing, from the Azure sky, the Emerald grass, the Golden autumn, and the Ghostly White of winter.

Afterword, my love of art took a growth spurt when I changed schools and went to Park Hill Elementary, the most beautiful building I’d ever seen when I was young. It was an old building, nearly a century old when I went there, and it also had the best art program of any of the elementary schools at the time aside one. There my skills grew by leaps and bounds as I was learning about shading, the color wheel, forms and figure, and many more of the basics, but also on the side the art teachers would experiment with the classes, and even collaborate with the teachers of other classes. Science, History, Music, Math, they did a little bit of everything there, it was by far the best art class that I recall (aside reaching High school)

My love for art had reached a new level beyond landscapes thanks to Park Hill, Music and Acting had taken hold of me as well, then later dancing, My music teacher taught me to sing wonderfully, and I was favored for my voice back then (sadly I can’t sing as well as I once did) and Ms. Pumpkin, showed me the joy of acting on stage, though I never really was that good at it. The love of Dancing then came as my music teacher and Ms. Pumpkin collaborated to do a show. It’s one of my fondest memories of the school.

My middle school art class wasn’t much, I only repeated what I’d already learned in elementary, and there was no artistic collaboration or freedom there, the only teacher that did allow me artistic collaboration and freedom was actually my geology teacher Ms. Corsentino, she would let me paint and draw for extra credit, some of the thing we made were mounted in the schools garden. She was the only Teacher in the school that thought well of my future. I owe much to her because she still is a large impact in my life. I took music in Middle school as well, and I learned to play the Clarinet, though looking back I would have much rather learned to play either the Violin or the Piano if given the choice. There isn’t much to note here because I was never really good at reading notes.

High School was a dramatic change in my artistic talents, where as my Art teacher Ms. Skoda, would give everyone an assignment like normal, I would see more of the same from every student there, so I started to challenge myself to think outside the box, but to stay within the rules of each assignment.

The first example I have were hand drawings, each student would trace their hands on paper a dozen times, and draw something in and around them. There would always be someone trying to do something different, but regardless, what I saw was that each line of traced hand came from and led back to, the edge of the paper. So my first attempt at doing something different than the norm was to draw a dozen hands clasping each other, their source, where they came from, was kept hidden by another pair of hands, and of the entire group of hand one pair of hand was reaching around them all, and holding them together. The same train of thought followed with every coming project, ‘Day of the dead’, ‘opposition’, and many other projects. This may not seem impressive or even much to you, but it was a lot for me.

The following year, Ms. Skoda knew that there wasn’t anything in her curriculum that would help me learn more about art, so she then gave all the artistic freedom I desired, and worked to encourage me to do much more. I was given ‘Special projects’ for credit and was even entered into Contests, and my art even displayed in Galleries. I’ve had a few other teachers in High school who helped me learn what I could do in Graphics art and even in making Jewelry.

Now that High school is done and over with, without the free materials and tools that I could use there, I’ve fallen back to simple Paper, pencil and pen, but with everything that I have learned, these three simple tools can do so much, and since I now have a Scanner and Gimp and my side, I can do many other things as well.

Until I return to school, I’m afraid learning of the other methods and forms of art will be rather limited, but I will still work to learn as much as I can, and for as long as my life lasts I know that I’ll always be learning something new about art.

With all this said, I’d like to say one last thing.

All students of art work to become masters, but those masters of art should still consider themselves students.