Hello! Thanks so much for taking a look at what I do. Chances are that if you’re looking at this page you know me pretty doggone well, but I’ll include a full-ish bio here just for pretend.
A biography, of sorts:
Here are the usual dry geographic details: I grew up in Santa Ana, California; went to college at Stanford University, where I studied biology, art, and education; and currently live with my boyfriend Tyler in Tacoma, Washington, where Tyler attends the University of Puget Sound. At present, I work as a tutor and am soon to start a job at the local zoo.
What do I do for fun? I draw, clearly, although it’s equal parts fun and frustration. Lately, I’ve been obsessively learning how to create a website. I like to walk around Tacoma when the sun’s out (which is at least twice a year) and admire the architecture. I sometimes write for fun. In addition, I read. A lot. It’s a problem. Lately I’ve been on a graphic novel kick, and if you read the captions on many of the images, you’ll see that I read audiobooks while I draw. I’ve included that seemingly unnecessary information because when I look at the pictures, I am often reminded of the audiobook I was listening to while I drew it, whether or not they were in any way related.
The questions that people* most commonly ask about what I do:
* by people I primarily mean my mother
Q. Why colored pencils? Why not paint or drawing pencils or charcoal?
I was given the set of Prismacolor colored pencils I still use by my aunts Karla and Adriana while I was in high school. Somehow, those pencils just felt right. For one thing, they give me a lot of fine control. The fine tip allows for fine detail. For another, they’re not nearly as messy or finicky as paint. They don’t require solvents; they’re portable; they don’t need to be rinsed off in the sink; and they’re relatively inexpensive. With colored pencils, you never face the challenge of having to re-mix a color you’ve used up, and unlike with paint, you don’t have to worry about the medium changing color when it dries. Unlike with drawing pencils and charcoal, you aren’t forced to reduce a colored world to grayscale, which I struggle with. Besides, colored pencils smell good.
Q. Where do you get your inspiration?
It’s difficult for me to explain the source of my inspiration, because I really don’t know where the pictures come from. There’s not usually much of a process. I tend to pick a topic first, I think; for example, animals in an urban environment. Then I think of a possible example: say, a coyote. Somehow, the combination of the two ideas often produces a fully-formed image, like a coyote howling at a streetlight. I think it’s a bit like how dreaming works: my family, friends, and experiences mash together in a way that I don’t consciously control. Does that sound artsy-fartsy? I’m sorry if it does.
Then again, sometimes I just draw pictures or objects that call to me. That was how the drawing of my sister Emily came about: the picture just wanted to be drawn. Once, I sat down and drew a strawberry because it was particularly beautiful. I don’t often draw things just because they’re pretty, though. I don’t entirely see the point.
Q. What’s your process?
For a conceptual piece, once I know what I want to draw, I look for physical images that match the image in my head. This primarily involves using Google image search and collaging the pictures I need through Photoshop or with good-old-fashioned scissors. Sometimes I’ll even set up a scene with real objects. I reference additional pictures if my primary pictures don’t contain sufficient detail. For the cow-and-sloth image in the gallery, for instance, I referenced many pictures: a couple of sloths, a cow, several cow faces, a cow’s tail, a cow’s udder, a tree, an epiphyte, a pasture, and some hills.
I draw from there, using pencil marks on a rectangle of paper to help me measure while I draw. (I learned this from Mr. McElfresh, my wonderful high school art teacher.) I draw dots at important places in the picture (the corner of an eye, for instance, or the three points that make of the triangle of a beak) and carefully connect the dots. I don’t usually sketch the whole picture out before I start coloring because I’m impatient. So I draw, then color, then draw, then color, until I’ve covered the page.
I often draw eyes first because my picture’s more interesting when it’s looking at me. I often draw backgrounds last because I find them incredibly boring.
Q. How long does it take you to draw a picture?
The length of time a picture takes depends on the size and complexity of the image. I average about 10 minutes per square inch and 15 hours (coyote) to 40 hours (cow and sloth) for an entire drawing, including research.
When I’m good, I’ll draw for three or four hours a day. If I had the time, I’d probably choose to draw for at least six, which is about the point where my hand starts to give out.
Q. How do you decide what size you’ll make your drawing?
My mother asked me this question and I’d never thought about it before. I’m sure I should be worried about practical things like the common sizes of frames. Instead, however, I do it by impulse. I think it’s primarily decided by the amount of detail I wish to convey and the size of the tip of a finely-sharpened pencil. I don’t want to make my picture so large that I need two strokes for one mountain-lion hair, for instance; nor do I want to make my picture so small that my pencil to is too fat for one.
Q. Why do you draw?
I draw because I have to; it keeps me somewhere near sane. In college, I always alternated science and art classes, and doing so made my brain feel balanced. If I got sick of one, I could always turn to the other. Sometimes I draw because I want to see what the pictures will look like when they’re outside of my head. I’m a bit of an introvert, so the solitude of drawing helps me relax. I draw because I like to, yes, but I don’t always find drawing pleasant. I draw because I feel compelled to, and that’s the most honest answer I can give.
On the scale of an individual drawing, I find that my motivation often goes through two phases. At first, I’m really excited to be starting a new image, so I get the beginning few scrawls down. After that, I’m frustrated by how ugly my drawing looks, and that desire to make the ugliness or unfinishedness go away drives me through the rest of the process.
Q. Were you an artistic child?
No. Nor do I consider myself an artistic adult. Without my photographic crutches, my stick people look just like everyone else’s stick people.
Although I drew a little for fun through junior high and high school, I didn’t take an art class until I was in eleventh grade. This is when I learned that I loved colored pencils. In college, I took a variety of art classes (painting, photography, papermaking, metal working, clay figure modeling, installation art, performance art, and documentary video), but drawing teachers always wanted me to do things like draw paper bags using charcoal or pencils, and that didn’t interest me much. As a result, this is the first time I’ve really devoted myself to drawing with colored pencils since high school, and I’m really enjoying it.
Q. What are you going to draw next?
I’m not really sure. I’ve taken a little while off my real drawings to write, do the Zombies and Rockstar Cars stuff, and create this website. I’m still waiting for the drawing bug to bite me again. I’m probably mostly done with the environmental images and now might get a little morose: the seasons as represented by the dead bugs I find on my windowsill, or a picture of a field of flowers that says, “See? Graves can be pretty, too.” I’ve been advised that I should draw things that are marketable. I can’t help it; I have to draw what comes. Landscapes somehow just aren’t my thing.
Many thanks:
To my mommy, who’s come a long way from hiding my college drawings of figure drawings because they were naked to insisting on entering my drawings in the Orange County Fair.
To my daddy, who’s come a long way from asking why I bothered going to Stanford if I just wanted to study art to saving my images as his computer desktop.
To Katie and Emily, my sisters, for just being generally awesome.
To Tyler, my boyfriend, for providing me with the space, time, and encouragement to draw; for forgiving my long disappearances to the land of colored pencils and html; for taking care of practical things like washing dishes; for tracing my drawings with his fingers when I finish and telling me his favorite parts.
To AJ, for providing me with feedback, advice, and inspiration; the html and css with which I began this site; and my first drawing job.
To Corie, Mary, Emily, and Marlene, for making me feel comfortable sending you my drawings when I’m through, and for providing me with detailed analyses.
To all my friends and family, for your support, for your feedback, and for humoring me when I pretend to be an artist.
And to everyone who visits this page, although you probably fall into one or more of the above categories, for taking a look at what I do. I really appreciate you.
Kurt Vonnegut, my favorite author, on art:
From
Timequake:
Many years earlier, so long ago that I was a student at the University of Chicago, I had a conversation with my thesis advisor about the arts in general. At that time, I had no idea that I personally would go into any sort of art.
He said, “You know what artists are?”
I didn’t.
“Artists,” he said, “are people who say, ‘I can’t fix my country or my state or my city, or even my marriage. But by golly, I can make this square of canvas, or this eight-and-a-half-by-eleven piece of paper, or this lump of clay, or these twelve bars of music, exactly what they
ought to be!’”
About five years after that, he did what Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda and his wife and their kids did at the end of World War Two. He swallowed potassium cyanide.
From
Man Without a Country:
If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practising an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
