If you didn't know, I also like to draw...

My whole life I have LOVED drawing. Sometimes, while I am cleaning my house, I find old note books that my friend Kelly and I would draw in. We would always do a make over on an "ugly person" we had drawn. Kelly's were always way better than mine, but still I loved to draw. There are a few times over the years where I would be getting ready for bed and suddenly have some urge to draw and would end up staying up a few extra hours working on some drawing that I just had to finish before I went to bed.

This is a drawing I did before I took any classes, it is from a magazine cut out that I copied.

When I got into college I began my first term with my first college art class, painting. It was amazing and gave me a whole new medium to explore. That is when I learned, even if you think you are a terrible artist you can be very pleasantly surprised by your talent. There were so many people in that class that had never painted a day in their life, and by the end of the class they came out with some amazing paintings. It was a really wonderful class and I learned so much about painting, and my true passion for art. I loved it. I would just go to class and paint for hours and by the end feel like I had taken a week long retreat, I was refreshed and ready to conquer the world.

After the painting class I took a short break from art classes and then spring of my sophomore year I took a drawing class. Again, loved it. It is hard to take art classes every term if you are not majoring in art because each class can be anywhere from three hours to eight hours. Eek, that is just hard to fit into a class schedule. Unfortunately, I wasn't very motivated to be in school and decided to drop out. I ended up failing that drawing class because I was unable to drop it from my schedule. However, my failing grade was in no way a reflection of my desire to be in the class or my effort toward it. I learned some good stuff and got one of my favorite pieces of work from that class.

I did this while in my first drawing class. It looks better in person because the light didn't hit the graphite pencil the right way and made some of it glow.

This last year I began taking classes again and during summer term I retook that drawing class, through Chemeketa instead of Western Oregon. The class really helped me master drawing things realistically. However... I hated it! Ugh, it was awful. Every Monday and Wednesday evening I dreaded going to class, sometimes hoping I would be sick just so I didn't have to go. It wasn't the worst class that I have ever taken and I am glad I took it, but I am SO glad that it is over. The previous painting and drawing classes that I had taken were so laid back and relaxing. Unlike the one I just took, which was stressful and really hard tedious work. Uh, so happy it is over.
Anyways, I write this to say that now I have so much more free time! It is amazing. I am starting to feel motivated to have a normal life again. I've started reading books, my home is cleaner, I've had time to spend with friends, andddd I'm getting some projects done (which is very fulfilling for me).

Well here are some of my "masterpieces." They aren't anything too special, but I am pretty proud of them. Also, the picture quality isn't very good because I don't have an amazing camera, so you will just have to imagine that they are sharper images.

This was one of our early drawing. It is a contour drawing, done by picking up the pen from the paper as little as possible. It was done with a very fine point pen that didn't bleed.

This is also a contour drawing, but we were able to pick up our pencil while we did it and was done with line variation. Done in graphite pencils.

Three more drawings done in contour line variation.

This is kind of boring, but we were learning to add value. This as well as the rest were done with soft vine charcoal and compressed charcoal.

More value...

This was done covering the whole page in charcoal and then erasing out the apples and adding darker value with compressed charcoal.

This is a horse skull.

This is on a light blue charcoal paper, and along with black charcoal we used a white compressed charcoal. This is probably my favorite from that class (although I'm not in love with my knife).

And Finally...

This was our final drawing... It was so hard and took forever! I wasn't sure I was going to finish.  I am just happy that my face didn't end up having a pig nose. This was also done on a light blue charcoal paper which you cant see in this picture.

Well... that's all I got. My friend Jamie took this class with me, and she is amazing! I wish I had some pictures of her work. She hasn't ever taken a drawing class and wasn't even a fan of drawing before this class. She turned out to be the best one in the class (in my opinion). Just goes to show that you never know what you are capable of until you try.