Developing My Passion for Art by Clara Blevins (Homeschool Teen)

Before the last 2 years my interest in art has been random and usually only came on a long road trip or a holiday. But last year changed that. I was writing (and I am till working on) a story about Ninjas, but at the time I was having trouble figuring out where to start and what order I wanted the few scenes I already had in my head to be in. My dad suggested drawing a story board similar to the ones they do for making movies.

At first I was just drawing to work out the story and develop certain scenes. Then I started to draw not just during school hours and I began to draw other things. Each of my drawings has a story behind it and often enough a song that I was listening to while drawing that captured the emotions of the character or thing I was drawing.

After some time passed, my dad got an app called ArtRage Studio and an electronic drawing pad called a Bamboo Tablet which connects to my computer. He also got me a drawing book called The Idiot’s Guide: Drawing by David Williams so that I could improve my technique. The name of the book was a bit off-putting, but it was our favorite of the ones we found at the bookstore.

After he showed me how to use the Bamboo, I started digitalizing my drawings. Every time I learned something new and improved my technics until I surprised my parents with the results. Here are a few examples.

“Stronger Than You Think” is a song by a Christian band called Fireflight, which is one of my favorite bands. The song is about (at least my interpretation) how the singer is strong because of her firm belief in God and how the one who “loves destruction” will never control her. This is a drawing of my personal favorite of my different story characters, who goes by the code name of Nighthawk, during a battle to save her home planet from destruction.

“Firepower” started as a random drawing with dry erase markers my mom’s dry erase board. Then I decide I wanted to complete it in a way that I couldn’t really do with the markers. This was I think my first full scale redo, and as you may have noticed I changed it a lot. The image is once again of Nighthawk, however I’m pretty sure she is just showing off and not dealing with a world-wide catastrophe.

The “Reach” is one of my dad’s favorites of my digitalized drawings. In this picture I was able to make the marks on the hand glow and make more realistic looking dauphins than I could draw by hand. I really like how it turned out and it only took me a few hours, which is one of the shortest times I’ve spent on a digital redo. I believe all the pictures and drawings I am putting in this post are of Nighthawk mostly because she is the one I draw the most and her digitalized version are the best of the bunch.

In the case of this picture, I was drawing an idea I had for the cover of the book I am writing about Nighthawk and I don’t remember there being a story behind the drawing… At least I haven’t made one up yet. 🙂

“A Night on Patrol” is a drawing of Nighthawk as the title implies on patrol at night in her home city. In the case of the digital redo I changed the buildings behind her to look better and keep them within my ability to make things look semi-realistic on the computer. I had fun playing with different textures and brushes to make the effect of the fog and street lamp which you can see in the digital version.

“A Night on Patrol” was digitalized a few months ago and until yesterday I hadn’t done any new ones. Then I decided to digitalize my most recent picture of Nighthawk in one of my favorite outfits I have invented for her so far.

This is by far the best digitalized drawing I have made so far. My mom helped me make a ‘live trace’ in Adobe Illustrator so that the process of digitally coloring it in was a piece of cake. I love how it turned out and can’t wait to show my dad when he gets home!

There are many more drawings in my notebook than on my computer, but like I was telling my siblings yesterday, sometimes I just draw when I am bored and nothing really comes out of it. Other times I am just doodling aimlessly to pass time. But there are times where I have something in mind when I start drawing and when finished it looks very close to the image I started with in my head.

I really love to draw, and with apps like ArtRage and Photoshop, my parent’s help and guidance, my drawing pad and pencil, the Bamboo Tablet, and my imagination I am developing my passion for art and I hope to go far. Maybe I’ll even be a movie animator or something like that someday, who knows.