In which I showcase and scream about my art. I've been the art kid since I could hold hold a pencil, so be prepared for lots of ramblings and the occasional journal entry/essay thing that doesn't even include a picture about my artistic journey thus...
You've likely gotten the impression by now that I'm very passionate about art. And you know, I was once, but I lost just about all of my artistic drive and motivation. This occurred mostly during my senior year of high school.
Why did this happen? ...I let other people take my passion away from me, and for that I may never forgive myself. Art, after all, is just about the only thing I've ever been good at. To not be an artist is to be a generally useless person for me.
I may have already explained a bit, but I attended the same very small Christian school my entire life. I could have gone to public school, but I have social anxiety and don't think I could have handled that environment. So I chose to stay. However, my parents got divorced, and my mother is disabled. This left us just about broke. She worked off my tuition as best she could for many years, but it broke her down physically.
My Mother
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The school and I reached an agreement. I could work off my tuition alone, and I could do it by being the school's personal artist, both graphic and traditional. I also held the expectations of my studio art club, who wanted a clean sweep in that year's tournaments to secure more funding for the department. Our poor art teacher had such a low budget that we used the same stack of styrofoam plates as paint palettes the entire year.
I agreed to this arrangement, and so my artistic enslavement began!
At first it was mostly posters and signs. It escalated to theater backdrops. My mother and I would sit alone in the empty cafeteria until well past midnight painting jungles and townhouses. I stayed after school to paint props, mostly animal faces. I designed and drew posters for every single dance and event, and did a few random paintings for a fundraising auction.
Then, homecoming. It was the first time our school had been allowed to have one, and my mother and I were the entirety of the decorating committee. Hours of cutting out stars and making banners and posters and using a ladder, and just after I found out that my knees are all kinds of messed up. That one took an all-nighter, and I didn't even go to the dance.
The science class's baby project arrived, and I already dreaded it. I had fun doing mine, but every time the project came around everyone would approach me to ask me to draw faces on their 'babies'. It was slightly easier this year because the class had switched to flour sacks as opposed to the eggs my class had to use. But it still meant I had to draw cute faces on about thirty sacks of flour, and each one had to be different.
My Egg Child (Francis)
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