Drawing has always been a simple pleasure of mine. I think the reason I never gave it up as a kid was because it gave me a way to express myself or visualize ideas much more completely than most people are able to. I never really thought of myself as an “artist” when I was younger, though my mom often called me one. I wasn’t necessarily interested in art (at least not the type you would find in art museums); I just felt like a person who likes to draw. I was probably in high school before I started to consider myself to really be an artist (and still, I don’t think I was completely there yet).
Though I definitely enjoy drawing as art now and using it in my graphic design work, I still love drawing just to imagine. I don’t know if I would consider any of my drawings that I do for fun “art” at all, especially since mythical creatures, often the subject of my drawings, are looked upon as being camp, but the title of “art” doesn’t really matter to me in this sense. I also don’t really like to call it a talent, either; I believe that anyone who can observe things around them and learn from them can acquire the ability to draw. (Although, I won’t lie, I occasionally find happiness in showing off now and then.) But the real joy in having the ability to draw is that I can see things in my head more clearly when I illustrate them, and I really can’t imagine myself not having that ability. It’s so much a part of me; I’m sure that if I wasn’t fascinated with drawing, I would be a very different person today.
