Once Upon A Time I Used To Draw...

When I was in high school (2006-2011), I was known as the artist kid. I used to spend every minute of everyday doodling on any pieces of paper I could find. I loved art classes and it was the one thing I felt good at, and it made me feel good in return. In my art classes, I felt free and left to express myself in anyway I could possibly think of. I was lucky to have a teacher who understood where I was coming from, and let me explore my artistic side with the tools needed.

I would spend hours creating these little doodles; using mainly black fine liner, drawing lines and circles to cover a whole page. I could spend hours doing these little patterns with my headphones in, and I would occasionally look up and find several people staring at me. It felt good to feel good at something, I would have handfuls of people ask me to draw something for them which was a huge compliment ^.^

I had to create a project in my art class using layers, so I decided to create a simple drawing using a complex method of 'colouring it in'. Me and my mom came up with punching holes from magazines in different colours and layering them one by one to 'colour in' the drawing. I used triangle shaped blue card for the background (which was A LOT easier than the small holes!). It took me roughly 2 weeks to complete and I would spend 1-3 hours per day working on it, getting stressed and annoyed with it along the way. But once it was complete, I felt incredibly proud of myself and it still today is one of my favourite pieces.

I chose to take BTEC Art & Design, and in my final year of high school I had to complete another project which I was given the freedom to choose what I did and how I completed it. I decided to create a big version of the doodles I did throughout school as that was what I was most comfortable doing, and in the project brief, it had to take us over 10 hours to complete. I took 4 pieces of A3 paper and doodled on them individually, and created an overall piece using all 4 pieces:

It's a lot bigger than it seems, this was taken on my phone when it was completed. It took me about 20 hours to complete.

When I was preparing to leave high school and go to college, everyone thought I'd go to art college and go on to become an illustrator of some sorts.. Even I thought about it, but I had bigger ambitions. At the time I wanted to become either a radio presenter or film editor, but I still wasn't completely sure on which courses to take in college. 

I decided to do fine art, health and social care, and applied science in college; but fine art ended up being a disaster and was the reason why I no longer draw. I first had a wonderful, laid back art tutor who motivated and inspired me to be creative. Then when I changed another course, I had to swap art tutors and ended up with someone who was the complete opposite. She was HORRIBLE!!! She thought anything she didn't like wasn't art, if you had a different style to her, she would criticize everything you said and did... and that happened to be me. I started to hate art and dreaded going to the art department, in the end I stopped going and dropped the course completely before finishing the first year.

This was one of the pieces I did in college, I was interested in it but I had no inspiration or motivation, and the tutor completely ruined the experience for me.

I decided to change colleges and start a new course, as I had found a better course suited for me who wanted to become a paramedic. It was in the college next door to my previous college, and the course was a Public Services course. It's a BTEC course but is worth 3 A-Levels and is 2 years overall. I'm currently in my last year of this course and I love it! Since leaving my first college, I haven't drawn since and I don't have any desire too. But I'm a much happier person than I have ever been!

So that's my artistic story and what happened. I'd love to hear if anyone has had any similar experiences!