Randomly, MY FEELINGS.

I actually get fairly uncomfortable when people liken me to a real artist— I don’t feel like an artist. Even my sister acknowledges this. I am very comfortable with the term “hobbyist.” I draw once in a blue moon because I like it, and then sometimes I’ll work on something actually nice but very rarely.

In high school, I was pretty content with thinking of myself as a hobbyist until I met my sister’s art teacher. Ty was working on some painting after class and I was waiting for her for some reason, and she mentioned to the teacher that I can draw. The teacher came over and asked me to doodle something, and I scrawled out a nude figure. She said, “Good, take art. You’re an artist.”

Her blunt reply took me by surprise and I was extremely flustered and told her that I wasn’t an artist. The art teacher then made a bargain with me: she’ll let me skip the almost all of the prerequisites (a year and a half of art classes) to go directly into advanced art for one semester instead of a year, and if I complete that she’ll let me take AP.

Being very focused on college, the word AP worked on me, haha! What? Credits? Credits that will boost my GPA and decrease the number of classes I need to take in college so I can focus on science? Okay!

That Spring, I took my first art class in my entire life and the atmosphere was really weird for me. I met a lot of people who were intensely into an artistic identity and it actually alienated me. I’m sure that they were just awkward high schoolers trying on identities, but it was still uncomfortable for me to see a group of gals with one of them wearing berets and another holding a smoke discussing the intricacies of the clouds and the negative space of the sky. I didn’t fit in with them. As an aside, they were the AP art students who used the art space the same time as the advanced students, so they were sort of our upperclassmen that sometimes came around to help. Seeing people like that kind of further drove me away from the “I’m an artist” mentality because I thought, “Well, I’m not like that, so I don’t have the ‘artist’ perspective?”

One morning I came in early and started using the sliced tennis balls to practice drawing eyes when the three girls bumbled in. I was using charcoal on my own for once, and I guess I looked troubled because I was floundering a lot with it. All three of them came around behind me and I remember one of them said something like, “Oh well let’s see what us senior classmen can do for you!” then she picked up my drawing. After looking at it, she actually looked a little annoyed/embarrassed and said, “Huh, that’s nice. Okay.” They gave me back my drawing and left. I think the only explanation for that was that she felt weird not offering critique after setting out to do so.

As the semester drew on, I lagged behind everyone in anything that involved technique. I had never used paint, I couldn’t sharpen my pencil properly, my lines were static, and the texture of charcoal continued to make me cringe. Just thinking about how charcoal feels in my hands makes me shiver— ugh. The only thing that I did do well on was figure drawing and drawing faces. It was a stark contrast to a quiet girl who was notoriously, uhh, bitter towards people who had a lot of classical art training. She was an immigrant from China who had grudges against Americans and Taiwanese— she actually sat in front of me in my Premed class. One day she suddenly turned around and said, “What’s your problem? What do you have against us Chinese people? You should know not to bite the hand that feeds you.” She calmed down when she found out that I’m not descended from Taiwanese blood, but mainlander bloode. Awkward, though. Found out later that she did the same to a number of other Taiwanese people.

Anyway, her artistic technique was flawless, but her people faces didn’t look like faces? It was weird. She dropped the class eventually because she was so frustrated from drawing faces. I thought about how if only we were one person, haha! COMPLETE. She did the smoothest spheres with wonderful touches of lighting! I didn’t grow very much though— the class sessions were too short so you couldn’t even get warmed up before you started tackling your paintings, but when we received our big project of the year we had all the time we needed. My art teacher placed a bunch of artist name’s in a hat and said we were to emulate a style. I drew Stan Lee, and then I drew Roy Lichtenstein, haha! My art teacher and my friends in the class all knew that I liked comics, and one of them said, “It’s fate!” My art teacher said, “That won’t do,” and threw the names back in, and I drew Stan Lee again. She ended up fishing out an artist she felt that would challenge me.

I ended up drawing the name of a local artist who did red and black paintings that had a lot of white sparkles drawn on them and Mexican motifs. I forget her name now, but I was actually a bit frustrated because her paintings were too stylized for me— abstract human-like shapes with giant, weeping eyes with bleeding hearts and fat gooey blobs of paint dripping down the length of the painting. Good artist, but actually out of my comfort zone! I really wanted Stan Lee, haha! I looked up Chinese legends though and did a painting called “Tiger Prince,” which was uhhh okay. I failed to express my thesis in it, because everyone who looked at it thought he was bleeding all over himself but I was trying to show how he slayed the tiger. If I ever repaint it I have much better ideas for it now, haha!

For the “just because” project at the end of the year, each one of us was given a brick. I cut out the shape of a rabbit and then sculpted it with fabric hardener, then filled it with stuffing that but didn’t stitch the bottom back up. All of that was glued to the brick, so it was just a fabric 3D rabbit emerging from a brick with stuffing. It was weird but cute.

When the time came, the art teacher asked if I still wanted to commit to a year of AP art where I’d be mostly on my own and needed to produce dozens of pieces, including many Concentration pieces. She reminded me that many students fail to produce enough quality art to finish the class, which wastes a year of credit. I told her I’d like to try, and she said, “Okay, I’ll put you in graphic design.” I was actually crushed when she said that. Her response was, “It’ll be easier for you to pass if you’re in graphic design because they’ll be more accepting of your… style. Besides, you know how to use Photoshop and I can teach you Illustrator.” I insisted on the spot that I wanted to be put in Painting, even though I knew I was hardly a competent painter. She reminded me that Painting was one of the hardest sections to pass— with Ceramics being close behind. Was it worth the gambling of college credit? After all, if I was only taking the class for college credit then I should do AP Graphic Design.

My ego was at stake though— after being in class with other artists, I had seen what other students were producing. Sure, we weren’t an art-based high school— but prior to that, I wasn’t aware of how people around my age were performing in art classes. While I was years behind when it came to technique, I wanted to try to take art seriously. I knew that even the other students didn’t always think of me as a serious artist, because I was always cartooning in their eyes. As a result, I decided that if I submit an AP portfolio for painting then I would be judged as an artist by the graders who did not know that I was possible some kind of poser. I wanted to be judged by other artists to see if I could be accepted as one, because then I felt I could know if I was an artist or not.

Throughout the rest of the rest, my art teacher was very worried about me and kept reminding me that I could switch to Graphic Design whenever I wanted. She eventually had an assistant who was an inker from Image comics, who I ended up talking to a lot because he saw some of my drawings of superheroes. He told me about how inking was done and it was very cool, but didn’t encourage me to enter the comic book industry because he himself was leaving it. One day, I finished one of my few CGs and he wanted to see it. I borrowed the class computer— which hooks up to the class TV— and opened up my two recent CGs. My art teacher turned on the TV to show everyone else and said, “You should all look at this. Colleen here has taken barely a single art class and she can do work like this. This is the kind of art you can produce if you make it a habit to draw for fun by yourself!” She then turned to me and said, “See, you should really switch to Graphic Design!”

Ah, 2007. Also seriously man, my art hasn’t changed much in four years— this is largely due to how I managed to not draw at all for two roughly two entire years and have only started drawing again in the past year. Sad.

Anyway, I was pretty crushed by being told to switch to Graphic Design again. Regardless, I kept painting and painting and painting. My pieces got stronger, obviously, as I went on. Here’s one of the earlier pieces:

And the last painting in the series:

Yeah, I had a bottle motif. Halfway through the school year, a student transferred from New York who came from an art high school. She did larger than life portraits in pastel that were photorealistic but with beautiful colors, and her work had been displayed at galleries before. Sometimes when I walked around campus I would see some chalk drawings that she had left behind. There was a beautiful woman done in black and white charcoal once scrawled onto the ground by a Seattle’s Best once that I could tell was done by her. She was different from the upperclassmen who had graduated— she was secure in her identity as an artist, but she didn’t brandish it for all to see. She did art because it gave her peace, and she did it all the time.

A few weeks into that spring semester after her arrival, Orange County decided to hold their annual art festival in Irvine. Every year, they go around to high schools and pick out a few pieces throughout the county to display at the festival, and then three winners would be selected for a grand prize. We were all told to put up our best pieces before we left for class and that the representatives would come by later to place sticky notes on which piece they wanted. Our art teacher actually played a trick on one of my friends and swapped the sticky notes, so at the gallery her art piece had the wrong name on it. I think it was a painting of a seagull eating a fish, but she thought it was her for-fun piece that was a Nightmare in Wonderland theme. Her plague said something like, “Tea Time in Nightmareland!” next to a painting of a seagull busily tearing into an orange fish, haha. I actually do not have photos of the pieces they selected because the one time I photographed my work was the day they were already gone for the show, but I can see why they selected those— they were definitely stronger than the ones that got left behind (pictured above…), haha!

Two of my pieces were selected, and we were required to go. Our art teacher wanted us to take a good look at all the other portfolio pieces to get an idea on how good we need to pump up our pieces in order to pass. We stayed for food, and our art teacher made us stay for the prize drawing. She said that she was sure one of us would win, so we needed to show support to our classmates. All in all, five of us got into the show so it seemed reasonable that maybe one of us would place. We were sure the transfer student would place. When it was time to announce the winners, she got third and we all clapped and cheered wildly! As she walked up to receive her prize I started thinking about leaving and was looking around for the exit until I felt one of my classmates shove me.

“Go up, they called your name.”

I got second place, and when I was shoved onto the stage I couldn’t help but blurt out, “But why?” to the director of the museum who was trying to hand me a certificate. He said, “Why not?” After all the photos were taken and people had started leaving, my art teacher came up to me and gave me a nudge. “See, you are an artist.” The transfer student actually left early because she felt embarrassed that she didn’t get first. She complained to our art teacher about how she felt more deserving to have at least gotten higher than me since I was a newbie with a year of experience but she’s been a regular gallery artist for years, which was the point where I started not liking her as much, haha… oh well.

Later on, I found out that my art teacher did ask why I was selected for second because she also had doubts for me. They told her that it’s because it’s obvious from my pieces that I didn’t use a reference and was drawing completely from my mind— which made it different from the bulk of the other pieces, where you could tell some were from photos (like the transfer student’s work) or were just photo realistic. Having a “cartoon” submitted was refreshing.

When the time came to submit portfolios, my art teacher was still worried that I wouldn’t pass and talked with me for a long time before she finally sent my portfolio in for painting. Then we waited.

My sister was there when I got my portfolio back with my grade on it. I saw the number, and thought, “No, that must be for one of the sections— they average it, right?” Ty had taken AP Art Portfolio too and looked at it for me. “No, Colleen, you got a 5.” Later on I found out I was the only person in my class to receive a 5— which upset me, because a lot of my friends created beautiful work that I felt was more deserving than me to get a 5. The next school year, I heard from an underclassman was used to be in my Premed class that he saw my work, because my art teacher was now using my slides I left behind to show students what 5 work looked like. It felt really weird, considering how she was so worried that I wouldn’t pass at all.

I didn’t feel much satisfaction in the end. My sister was helpful and said, “See, you got what you wanted. Real artists think your work is 5-worthy, and they judged you as an artist and not as a hobbyist.” I thought I would feel some kind of change in how I viewed myself— that I would be like, “Yep, this proves it. I’m an artist!” or “Yep, okay, didn’t pass. Hobbyist.” Instead, I was happy, and then I stashed my portfolio away forever. I should have known, really. Fostering an identity based off of how people perceive you was basically the wrong idea. I won second place in the county and felt more embarrassed than deserving. After I hit college, I made a conscious decision to leave art behind so I could focus on grades. I started weaning myself off art and drew less and less as my homework piled up on me. I got results too, A+’s in science classes! Eventually, I managed to stop that creative faucet and just forgot about drawing for a long time.

Which makes it even easier to think of myself as a hobbyist. Clearly a serious artist would be someone who draws everyday, right? Clearly a serious artist wouldn’t be able to stop drawing for two years! All these excuses. I think I just reject the identity of an artist though I can stand having the label gently draped on me. Regardless, I get very squirmy when I get put on a pedestal as a full artist and then judged as one. I feel like I could only accept a title like that if I actually practiced, or finally learned how to use a pencil correctly, or at least finished coloring something once a year.

I guess this is something I still need to figure out, but for now… hobbyist. That sits well for today.