An Introduction

Those of you that know me know that I’m a fan of art and creativity in all forms and those of you that don’t will soon find out.  Whether it’s a painting, music, a sketch, a movie, or mixed media, art is my one true passion in life.  After contemplating several career choices that would undoubtedly make me way more money in my lifetime I decided I would never truly be happy unless I followed my heart.

 

In the midst of trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life I visited a friend of mine who was enrolled in the fashion design program at the Art Institute of Dallas.  While she was taking me on a tour of the school, we happened upon the graphic design wing.  I was in awe of the quality and craftsmanship of the artwork they produced.  I said, “I would love to have the creativity to do something like that!”  The advisor that was walking with us told me that it wasn’t actually as hard as it looked.  She said with the right instruction and tools anyone could do it.  I thought to myself ‘yeah, right!’ and continued on like nothing happened.  I knew she was just trying to sell me on a school I couldn’t afford in my wildest dreams.

A few years later I had a lot of down time.  Myspace and Facebook were just becoming popular and I wanted to have the best, most creative Myspace page out of anyone I knew.  I started taking pictures and manipulating them in a free program called GIMP (since there was NO WAY I could afford Photoshop).  I found myself CONSUMED with creating and manipulating images.  Eventually I began learning CSS to change the layout of my profile.  I think I probably had a new design every week.  When it came time again to consider a career path for school I finally knew what I wanted to do.  I could showcase my artistic ability but also be paid well for it.

I began studying Graphic Design at Lake Washington Technical College in Kirkland, WA.  I loved my classes!  My first semester I took a lot of beginning art classes like Drawing and Color Theory.  I had never really drawn much in the past but I actually found a deep love for charcoal sketching.  My other favorites during my time there were Adobe Flash and Photography, although there wasn’t really any class I didn’t like.  The main focus of my classwork was on print design, so I took several classes in Photoshop and Illustrator.

After earning a Certificate of Completion in Illustrator/ Photoshop Specialty in 2009 I decided to move back to Texas to be closer to my family.  Little did I know that the school I had put so much time, energy, and money into wasn’t even accredited and none of my credits would transfer to a Texas institute.  I guess it was a blessing in disguise because I would have been really mad if I earned a whole degree there and found out it wasn’t worth anything.  Needless to say I had to start completely over in Texas.  I completed my Associate of Arts degree (with the exception of one PE credit) at Tarrant County Community College and am now pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design at Texas Woman’s University.

Which brings us to today.  I started this blog as a way for me to document my progress as I go through all of my art courses again.  I think it’s important for me to be able to share my work with people other than my class mates.  I also just want to document the struggles that I’m having so that maybe the solutions I come up with can help other artists with their work.  As of this moment I am halfway through my first semester at TWU.  I have most of my general requirement classes taken care of and will now have mainly art classes from here until I graduate.  I’ll post every week (time permitting) the assignments I’ve been given, my original ideas and sketches, and then my finished pieces.