Artist Statement

My back ground in art started at a young age mainly inspired and supported by my uncle Ed who was an artist/musician. He always encouraged me to draw, paint, and trace, anything that involved the use of my hands to create, this lead to a few local art shows but nothing more and I soon lost interest for a while but as I grew older I would have cravings to create and it was in 2006 that I started to get back into art for pleasure. I would like to consider myself a jack of all trades but master of none when it comes to the different art mediums available today. I still enjoy a watercolor painting or pencil sketch but I like to branch out and explore many different types of ART or at least what I consider to be art. Some of the not so common forms I have experimented with are auto painting through use of a HVLP spray gun, airbrushing, pin stripping, powder coating and spray painting or (tagging) all of which I have enjoyed extensively. I soon realized that I would like to get back to the smaller projects ones that were not so time consuming so I jumped into art mediums that I had never used before such as oil & acrylic paints, charcoals, artists quality markers, pastels (soft & hard) and pastel pencils just to name a few. I have really taken a liking to the pastels and find that I currently reach for those more than any other medium. As you can see my art background is kind of all over the place but I like it like that, I feel I have a well-rounded knowledge of many art forms and techniques and have used those skills to build upon the next and the next.

However digital art is where I lack the skills and that is why I’m taking this course and ones like it in order to get a solid foundation of what these programs have to offer and to see if they can somehow benefit me. Having only worked with Photoshop CS5 for the first time last semester I did find it useful but more geared toward photo editing and enhancing a good tool to have in your tool box but not really my cup of tea. My expectations for Illustrator are higher having heard great things about it and what it has to offer and after watching the posted videos and many more on you-tube and the internet I’m excited to get started with this software and find ways to adapt it into my other interest.