Art and creating have always been a passion of mine. Growing up it was cardmaking with rubber stamps an copious amounts of glitter and embossing powder, or staining glass and ceramics. As I got older, I started experimenting with watercolours and acrylic paints. My passion was landscapes and still life. Through my highschool career I foused on these genre’s and maintained that I was no good at portraits. It also didn’t help that my highscool art teacher told me that I had no talent, and that being any good at art wasn’t in the cards for me.
Fast Forward to 2011… My dad got sick and to stay awake longer at night to see if my mom needed help with him during the night, I started drawing again… with graphite pencils… drawing faces… I maintained throughout highschool that I couldn’t draw faces, and during my dad’s illness I found the inspiration and flicked the switch.
This is defintely a story of practice makes ‘almost’ perfect. The more I drew the better they looked. I managed to hone some techniques and I watch many YouTube videos of other artists, and applied their tips and techniques where I could. The biggest lesson I had to learn was patience. I had to learn not to rush throudgh a drawing, and take my time with the details. This helped when I switched from paper and canvas to shoes. The more time I took on a pair of shoes, the better detailed they became and the end result was something I could be proud of.
Below are some of the WIP’s (works in progress) of different portraits I’ve done over the years…
