My Beginning

I have loved to draw and paint since I was a little kid. It was always my favorite thing to do and a pencil and paper would keep me occupied for hours. I loved art class in elementary school because I was so enthusiastic about learning how to create new things. I started taking private art lessons at the age of 13, so I could flourish in my artistic abilities. I first learned how to draw with charcoal and use the charcoal to shade in my drawings to show shadows. The shading brought a 3-D look to the drawing by giving it a sense of light and dark. Then I moved onto pastels and learned how to give my drawing the same realistic look but using color instead of the black and white charcoal. Once I learned how to use color to give my drawings the idea of lights and darks, my teacher began to teach me how to oil paint. There was less color variety in the set of paints than there was in the pastels. This meant that I had to learn to mix the colors I was given to make the color I needed for my painting. My teacher taught me ways to make a color a shade darker or a shade lighter without having to use black or white. I have always found it fascinating that I was able to make any color for my painting when I was only given 9 different colored paints to work with. Black was not one of the 9 colors I was given because black can be made by mixing dark blue and brown. My art lessons made me love and appreciate art even more than I had before.