As part of my General Education classes at school I had to take an art class. The class is called "Basic Drawing" so in all honesty I thought "How hard could it really be?" I thought drawing would be a fun skill to learn and quite frankly I thought it would be an easy A. I have no drawing experience but I have some, and by some I mean very little, art experience. For example, I took a ceramics class in high school and oil painting classes from my next door neighbor when I was very young.
The first day of my basic drawing class my teacher told the class straight up "If you try really hard and your work is good you will most likely get a B." Just a B!!! This is basic drawing!!! I have had a 4.0 up until now and I was nervous that this art class, of all the classes I will take, was going to threaten that. Our first day of drawing didn't do much to change that feeling of mine. I had no idea what I was doing and I felt so phony having all these professional drawing tools that I got at the fancy art store. I thought that if I at least looked the part I would magically create a masterpiece. I am not going to sugar coat it but I was horrible. These art tools did nothing but clean out my wallet. I would see these amazing drawings by my classmates and I was embarrassed by the way my drawing compared to theirs. I was determined to get an A in this class. I began sitting next to those in class that knew what they were doing. I observed their technique, asked questions, took the constructive criticism and most importantly practiced, practiced, practiced. I can't get carried away and say that my practice made perfect because after all this was only basic drawing. However, I can say that I got an A in the class. As my teacher would say, let the art speak for itself. The first half of the semester was pretty rough but the second part of the semester there was a miraculous improvement.
The first half of the semester is over and I am sweating it reaching for that A. We then learned how to shade and things started to turn around for me.
This piece that I did was chosen to be part of the University's annual art show. Out of 1,000 submissions only 250 were chosen. Either I am better than I thought or there wasn't much talent being submitted.
We had to bring a photo from home to draw. My niece, Kira, told me to draw the unicorn picture my mom had hanging in her bathroom. She loves horses so I wanted to draw something she would be proud to hang up in her room. This is my favorite piece of all that I have done so far. I had it professionally matted and framed and she hung it up herself above her bed.
We had to draw 3 objects that represented us in a symbolic way. I was done with drawing random objects together so I went with 3 wooden angels that I have received as a gifts over the years. The angel on the left represents family, the middle angel represents faith and spirituality and the angel on the right represents courage. My teacher thought those three angels summed me up quite nicely.