The Beginning Part II

Though I started out in cross stitch and beadwork, I switched rather abruptly to other crafts when I entered the 7th grade. I began to paint and draw almost obsessively when I started my first art class in High School. Little did I know then that I would end up taking 5 art classes during High School. I started out simply enough. Some line drawings and outlines. In 7th grade, pencil drawings were the bulk of my creations. I drew flowers and landscapes and inanimate objects. I tried my hand at people a couple times, but failed miserably at creating what was in my mind's eye. The art I produced was by no means good, but it was evident that I was getting better. I continued practicing pencil drawings until my 10th grade year where I discovered charcoal. That entire year I did nothing but charcoal drawings. Sometimes I would combine the two mediums, but I would always end up with a predominately charcoal drawing. My Junior year came and I began experimenting with several mediums including paints, markers, pens, and watercolor. I mostly did basic outlines and stipplings. Stipplings were my favorite things to do that year. I had one project that I worked on the entire year off and on. It was a desert scene with rolling dunes of sand and a lonely broken tree with the skull of some horned beast sticking out of the sand. It was a stippling with markers on a piece of posterboard larger than the ones you would find at Wal Mart, but I do not know the exact dimensions. It took me all year to complete this project, but right before the show at the end of the year, it disappeared and no one has seen it since. This has happened to most of my projects and what I have come to believe is that my art teacher threw away my collection. It never occurred to me that she threw them away until I saw her throw someone else's work away that they had saved to take home. Continuing on, my Senior year yielded my best work, in my opinion. I worked mostly with paints and watercolor and was especially proud of my "Progression of Life of a Man" series that I did in watercolor. I have one painting remaining from my time in High School. It is a purple and white flower and it is unfinished as of yet. Since High School, except what I did in my Drawing I class, I haven't done anything in this area of craft. I did produce several projects that I am proud of in this class and if I can get my hand on a camera, I will post pictures of them later.