First I absolutely ***love*** the 2019 Sherlolly Calendar. You can count me in for any future calendars you do. Now Question: how much formal art training (if any) have you had? How much time do you spend per week working on your art?
Well, I might have to start thinking up my 2020 calendar! I am open to suggestions at the moment but I am thinking of a full Victorian calendar…
I don’t have a whole lot of “formal” training as such. I had a very zealous but over-worked art teacher in high school that taught me as much as possible, including traditional drawing, ceramics, sewing, knitting, embossing, quilting, printmaking, sculpture (clay and wire for which I won my high school talent show), paper mache, fabric dying, glass inlay, watercolor, pastels, charcoal, beading, and basic gallery layout. I was with her for 4 years and I took two elective art classes senior year.
In college I took photography, life drawing, and oil painting courses as many semesters as possible. I have a true love for oil painting but haven’t been able to do it in years. I had some further instruction in galleries as well. None of these classes were part of my major, just additional stress-relief classes to offset my heavy class schedule (I was indecisive in my major as I liked too many things and I ended up with like a million credits because I was in so many classes, even though my wallet suffered terribly).
From there, I taught myself digital art, and some basic (and terrible) animation, but also calligraphy and brush art through books at the library when I was a kid. I spend a lot of time thankful for folks on deviantart that put together tutorials (before the days of YouTube) and live journals that taught me photoshop skills since I spent a long time trying to make graphic art with screen caps etc. before going back to traditional media.
I draw everyday if I can, even if it’s just practice with circles and lines on post-its. Practicing the boring shapeless stuff is important. I am extremely busy with real life nowadays and that doesn’t leave me with a lot of energy to push my art further than it’s come in the last few years, but I’m actually ok with that. I am not looking to make a living with it or to be famous; I just want to have fun and it’s fun to share with you all. :)
