Forums » Smalltalk » Ama: Building Contrast

Being the only artist in your family, and the only one with any sense of taste has its ups and downs.

From my freshman year in high school to now, my entire family has bugged me about drawing their characters for their own characters, designing a house's layout (My grandparents wanted me to design their cabin), to drawing a design with a lily for the outer wall of a shed, I've had countless moments where my family and others have decided that my work for them was free. Quite the contrary, unfortunately for them.

I've been asked to give people henna tattoos so they can see if they want an actual tattoo, I've been asked to give people portraits. Each time, I've tried to avoid it, but I'll get bugged until I do it. So I've been asked to give people tattoos, design a house, paint a shed, draw characters, draw people, and just a lot of artistic stuff. It's not a niche hobby, but I figure my experiences differ quite a bit from other artists.

Can you describe some of the ways that you expect your experiences to differ from the experiences of other artists?

I don't really expect to differ much from others, since there are those who have more talent, more motivation, and much more experience. My experiences could be different in how exactly I draw, considering unlike others, if I'm doing a drawing with colored pencils I don't tend to use outlines, and much of the time, I don't know the basics of what I want to draw. I'll just draw it without actually thinking about the outcome, and people say they like it. I don't meet others like that. Then, with skin drawings, with the henna, I use watercolor colored pencils since they work on skin, the marks easily come off, and if I go over the outline with henna, it won't normally prevent the henna from taking hold and dying the skin. I hope that is a good answer for your question?

Did you end up painting the shed?

I have the design but we need to wait for summer to come before I can paint it.