Sophomore Artist Z and a College Freshman Sends a Smile

Zoner and Mercy with PauPau

Today I would like to feature one of our youngest department members. His name? For our purposes, we will call him "Zoner" because we are posting his photo. (He and his classmates know who he is, and the rest of the universe just needs to know he is awesome.) I asked him to tell us a little bit about where he is as an artist during this, his sophomore year of high school. This is what he had to say.

"Me as an artist? Gah. I can't even think of how to really answer that one, unfortunately. What I typically tend to draw (I say draw because I am an illustrator/artist rather than a designer) is humans. I draw people that are based on characters that I have written about. I used to only write about the characters, but now I tend to want to illustrate them as well.

I usually just do pencil work as that is where I have improved the most. I used to be terribly heavy-handed, and I just recently became confident enough to draw good strong lines. My improvement has been rapid with drawing as I have only been doing it since the 8th grade. Last year I began to learn to paint, and I began to enjoy watercolour as well.

I really began to do art because I envied how nice it looked when other people did it. I tried my hand it at and began to have a passion for it over time. I recently began digital media and started to love working in such a manner. I only recently began to want a career that involves art, but I still struggle with that idea. I want to get better so that I can work in art, but I don't feel that I am good enough yet. Every day I try to do something to get better at it. I'm branching into new media and constantly working on changing my style. I just want to find out who I am as an artist."

Thanks for the insight Z. We think you have landed at the right place to continue to explore your creativity and find those answers. On another note, he was one of only five students in the history of DJCC to be moved up from a beginning to an advanced class at the 9 week period, and he also was named to Artist of the Month at Marcus HS last month. Another DJCC student from Marcus was named for the same honor this month, Mr. David Venable. Good going guys from Marcus!

You know, sometimes as a teacher it is easy to get wrapped up in all the goings on around the classroom, and we forget that we have a large number of former students out in the world going on with their lives. Recently I have gotten so many e-mails from alumni, and I love hearing them tell me what they are doing and what life is like for them in the business world or in school. We have students in exciting places and doing a lot with their lives.

Sometimes though, I have a student just send me a smile... that happened to me yesterday. My e-mail was titled "Just to make sure you smile today..." and it had this picture of an '09 graduate of our program who is now a student of design at UNT, Mercy Lomelin. Mercy knows my strange yet undeniable love of the panda, and she sent this photo with her e-mail and a nice greeting. Just goes to show that you should never be afraid to send a smile to a friend. Never underestimate the power of a positive thought.

To wrap up for today, let me just have a few parting words. I had a short day in the studio- leaving around 4:30 (with Mallory Strong being the last person there with me, working hard on her new vector illustration project for SkillsUSA) - and I left to do some mundane grocery shopping before dinnertime. Life exists outside the studio too, and Sprouts got some of my time and some of my money this evening.

I left knowing that some really cool things had happened to me during the day though, and I left with anticipation about what might happen tomorrow. It was a really satisfying day for me, and I hope that all of you had a good one too.