Becoming an artist

To begin with, God gave me an innate ability to design, an eye for color and composition, skills that have been honed through the years by practice, trial and error, and instruction from teachers, professors, and my mother.  Besides God, my mother gets the most credit.  She is an artist herself, though not by trade.  Art was her minor in college, elementary education her major.  Fortunately, when she was in school, I was a little girl, my brother a little boy, not two years older.  Mom would practice her lesson plans and object lessons on me and Jeremy.  She would also let us try the various drawing exercises that she did in school.  During the school year, she would bring her supplies home and let brother and me draw eith them.  I remember a particular evening she taught us how to do a blind contour drawing with charcoal pencils.  I don't even remember what we drew, probably a coffee cup or a flower arrangement or something.  But I remember thinking, Wow!  What a cool thing to do!

During the summers, Mom would keep another little girl and boy, both about the same age as my brother and me.  They would come over each weekday morning and we'd play until lunch time.  Oh, the things we did!  Hid and seek, war (boys vs. girls, of course), build forts, carve out trails, explore the uncharted land of a vast and wild jungle, swing from trees, make pea shooters as weapons, travel all over the United States in a stationary orange truck.  Such creativity!  Such adventure!  After lunch, Mom required we have quiet time, alone time in which we could read or write or do art.  We would make collages out of construction paper, record out adventures of the day and illustrate them with crayons and watercolors.  Those summers are when I really fell in love with creativity, with adventure, with imagination, with art!