I have always had a passion for drawing as long as I can remember. I remember my first attempt to draw as hobby was when I was in grade 1. The previous day my mother had taken me and my sister to see a puppet show, and I found my self retelling the story the best way I know how:drawing.
I can still remember the excitement when my parents bought me my first pack of 12 colored pencils, the disappointment whenever my sister was better than me, and how good I felt when my classmates admired my drawings of fashion models or the my horrible attempt to draw a portrait. My drawings were never excellent, but they were good enough for me.
During my late childhood and beginning of teenage years I spent endless time drawing, to me drawing was my entertainment. In a few years I had made numerous comics, many of whose story lines were influenced by what I saw on South American, Philippines and Tanzanian soap operas. As my interest in Hollywood movies grew and overshadow the soap operas, my comics started drawing from the American high school movies I had seen.
My last comic book took 7 years and counting, until this day I have not been able to complete it, partly because I don't have a clear story for it, there are always new flowing ideas on how it should progress, It is like a story that is still written. However, the major reason was the 6 years of toiling through middle and high school. The little time that I had to indulge in my hobbies. I remember during my IB2 year I realized that I had not drawn in more than a year and a half. My skills were getting poorer than they were before. Like most teenagers who were interested in arts, I was always told my future is not in arts rather in the natural sciences. For the longest time I abandoned my passion to face "reality".
After joining Duke university in the fall of 2014, I was completely unaware of the possible opportunity to reconnect with my artistic side. At the end of the semester I made a decision of enrolling in drawing 199. This was the best decision I have ever made for my arts interest.
Drawing 199 is not a walk in a park as everyone thinks, just like any other course it required commitment and I was willing to commit.
I spent numerous hours on my assignments and sketbook. In this class I learnt a lot of techniques that I did not posses before because I had never taken an arts class before. My favorite one was shading and value, before this class I was intrigued with drawings that involved shading but I had no Idea on how I could utilize the technique in my own artwork.
I still don't have an idea on how I might be able to use arts in the future or how I can make a career out of it. Growing up I went through a lot of possible careers like architecture, comic designing, fashion designing but I cowered from all of them because I knew I was not good enough. But now I can feel a spark of hope, and I believe I can try to make a career out of one of them as long as I keep on drawing.
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