Up until college, my 'training' in art was as informal as it gets. While I took a few art classes here and there, the majority of my learning came through practice in the margins of my notebooks when I should've been paying attention in class, or at home trying to copy the styles of shōjo manga like Tokyo Mew-Mew or Sailor Moon. Despite any real structure, my constant doodling helped me build a strong foundation and find comfort in pencil and paper.
Once I discovered deviantart and began learning how to digitize my images, I picked up my pencil less and less. By my freshman year in college I was placed in my first serious art class, printmaking, and produced the acetates for most of my silkscreens on my laptop without the need to sketch them on paper first.
With the inception of this blog I started to get more excited about making and creating. I wanted to produce more, and I wanted to create outside of the classroom. After uploading my works from the past year, I stopped by the art supply store and picked up the most basic of materials: a couple pencils, an eraser and some blending sticks.
My process starts with a couple old magazines. Even the abstracted face in my "Looking Up" piece took inspiration from an old Mango ad featuring Miranda Kerr. I usually take points of reference from multiple images from the magazine, and begin sketching from the eyes outward. From there, the image develops organically. I'll sketch from a photo until I've exhausted its use, then flip until something else catches my eye. After all the sketching and blending and molding is done, I'll dot a few highlights around the eyes, nose and lips with my white Posca pen to finish the piece.
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