Senior Capstone Project 2024-2025

Essay

Throughout my entire life I have been drawing. My dad went to art school and was the first person to show me how impressive art can be. He was able to draw anything he wanted to and I wanted to be able to do that too so I would try to draw every monster or fictional character I thought of. After years of drawing consistently, I can now draw almost anything I think of. I have had help from my dad in making art, like a mural that I made that is now displayed in a teachers classroom at my high school. I have learned to be able to create my own unique style without using reference and I have been able to adapt to situations I have never experienced before in art and make something that inspires people. Art has influenced me in many ways including being able to be flexible, patient and creative.

My dad was always willing to help me with art projects or any other activity that could add to my experience with art. The largest project I did with my dads help was a mural for a class in middle school. My idea was to create a mural about the unknown myths of the world with spray paint. Me and my dad added a bunch of creatures like Bigfoot and a UFO. I would stay up late working on this mural because even though my dad was helping me, I was responsible for finishing it and making it the way I envisioned it (L3). Once it was finished and I presented it to the class, my teacher asked to keep the mural so she could display it to other classes. Now, she tells her class about my project and has the mural in the front of her classroom for the school's community to see anytime they enter her classroom (L1). It was inspiring to see how someone enjoyed my art enough to want to display it. I was told many times to continue to study art because I would go far in life if I master the skill.

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I took it upon myself to put time into mastering my skills in order to create quality work (S2). I learned all of the drawing techniques and fundamentals from Youtube, but one content creator named Marc Brunet helped me the most with my art studies. He was my first inspiration for making a career out of drawing and now my goal is to become a digital artist professionally. I practiced anatomy by looking at references of well defined body builders and I would practice gesture drawing models in abstract poses for hours on end because I knew that I was improving, even if it was small amounts of improvement (S3). After years of watching Marc Brunet's videos, I felt like I went so far with my art and the knowledge of anatomy, gesture, color theory etc. I realized how much I developed as an artist from teaching myself these skills because I drew a character without using a reference and the end result looked better than anything I had ever made before. Seeing how I was able to improve my skills in art on my own gave me faith in being able to control how far I go in life with my art.

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Art is about exploring and creating new things in different ways. I wanted to give myself a challenge after staying in my comfort zone for a while, but I needed to do something different that would make me have to use skills and my knowledge in different ways. I had never painted a portrait before and painting has never been easy for me so I wanted to test myself. I created a painting with simple colors and simple poses, but this simplicity in technique made the complexity of the painting's message that much more powerful. The painting was purely revolved around contrasting the two figures in it and the color of the background. I brought the painting home and eventually my dad saw it. One evening, my dad sat me down and told me he wanted to talk to me. I thought I did something wrong until he showed me a picture of the painting I drew. He then began telling me about all of the details he noticed as well as his opinion on the painting's meaning and I listened to him intently because I was fascinated at how interested he was in the painting that I made (V1). We continued to talk about it and talk about ways that I could change the painting and things that were very important in making the painting so powerful both through visuals and meaning (V3). Hearing my dad talk about my own painting with such interest made me both surprised and inspired to continue trying new forms of art or new techniques in future pieces. I felt praised for creating something that people enjoyed.

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Being good at making art has always been a goal for me, so now that I can look back at all of the accomplishments I have made from the past years, I can only think about what to make next. I have been inspired by seeing my teacher put my art in their classroom and listening to my dad talking about my painting. The rush from creating something that others enjoy and others get inspired from makes me want to make art for a living. Being a senior in high school, I have had a lot of time to think about what I want to do for a career and after all of the positive experiences out of simply making art, I could never have any kind of future where I would not be creating art. There are other careers that interest me but becoming a professional artist is my goal that I will pursue even if making art is not my main job. I hope that I will be able to influence others with art similarly to how art influenced me.