This was one of my new favorite digital art pieces I have made it comes from a deeper place them my others. I chose to make look like a greeting poster/greeting card on purpose. It started out as a self-reminder that turned into a sketch and then a full-fledged picture for myself that I was trying to make visually appealing. “Love Yourself” is about loving yourself and your natural body. I like to make illustrations about mental struggles and this drawing is more personal. When I articulate my feelings through a drawing it helps me process my emotions better. It is easier to translate my emotions into pictures and only then can I put them into words. Loving and accepting yourself can be a battle and some days it can literally feel like you are drowning, and you can barely hold when you are at your lowest. This illustration represents the struggle to cling onto life and to persevere through adversities and personal hardships, by showing the limbs of a person holding onto the flowers in a current of water flowing beneath. The flowers and plants represent multiple things such as perception of beauty, living, growing, femininity, ect. I like to use all sorts of colors like purple, green, yellow, red, orange, blue, and pink, when I make people in my illustrations as I associate colors to emotional states. Yellow to me symbolizes hope and orange is strength and courage. I wanted the waters to be dark purple and blue to represent hopelessness in sharp contrast to the yellow and orange limbs and bright flowers. The head is unseen under the water hidden behind the flowers to show ambiguity. I chose to put the words “love yourself” in large letters because it is a phrase people say, “to just love yourself “like that is a magic switch that can be flipped. Depression is hard and complicated, and a lot of the times other people do not understand and cannot relate. Loving yourself can be difficult but in the end I have come to believe it is a battle worth fighting every day. It can be difficult to bare ones heart and soul on paper and put write it all down for strangers to look at and judge and even though it is hard and embarrassing to admit hardships I think it is really important. Mental health is such personal pain that can go unseen by everyone but the person experiencing it, I think it’s healing to share these types of pains, so others don’t feel so alone.

There were 2 comics that impacted me a lot, Calvin and Hobbs and Marvels X-Men. Comic book collecting was one of my dad’s hobbies in his less religious days. We had some shelves full of his comic books in our library and computer. I remember sitting behind a big chair hiding away from my family and losing myself in the world on comic books. Calvin and Hobbs comics were comforting, they would make me laugh and give me worm fuzzy feelings of cozy home and nonmatter what trouble Calvin got into with Hobbs they would both be ok in the end. X-Men helped my face some of my fears, Strom was my absolute favorite she was badass, powerful, strong, and scared of no one. Even when she lost her powers for a while, she didn’t let that stop her. Strom was on of my first positive female remodels.

I had a very strang and tough childhood but I like to be grateful for what I did get growing up. I know I am privileged to an extant for being born in a country with opportunity to make my life better. I did have a difficult and strange childhood that I don’t usually talk about because I was embarrassed felt like I had to keep it a secret. I am currently still in contact with both my parents but mostly my mom. My parents were extremely religious, homeschool all 10 kids tell my dad left and they divorced when I was 14. It came to light my dad had a double life, cheated on my mom for most of their 30-year marriage and was also a high functioning drug and alcohol addicted. He was paranoid conspiracy theorist with a closest full of guns and servivul gear. My dad was controlling, physically, and emotionally abusive to me and my siblings, most the time we didn’t know when he would blow up so we walked on eggshells most of the time. I spent most of my childhood with no friends or other kids to play with outside of my siblings who most of whom were older. We were not allowed to go anywhere on our own or play with other kids. My dad kept us mostly isolated from the world to the point he got rid of our TV, newspaper, and monitored the internet for the older siblings who were the only ones allowed to use it fo an hr a day. After my dad left, my mom would have weekly backdowns and our house went from extremly controlled to almost no rules and barley any schooling. I had to learn a lot of self-reliance and was finally able to have aces to a computer on my own. My mom got me and my brother Ryan into one day a week school through homeschoolers highschool group to suplament our education. We had little to no social skills and It was very hard and painful, a lot of the times I would cry in the bathroom and was by myself most of the time. My stunted social skills, anxiety, and overall shyness just added to my depression. It took me a while when I finaly went to college to really make lasting friendships. All through my teens I was having a lot of anxiety attacks and mental backdowns and when I was 18 I finaly went to therapy. My therapist worked with me to heal my memories to help my present and future life. I had a strong fear on men and avoided dating for a long time but in the past few years I have worked through a lot and have been able to date and even have several relationships and work out my issues. I am in a much better place now and I am finally in a healthy relationship with a loving partner through a lot of tile and error. I know my past contributes to who I am but what really matters is how I treat and love myself now. I see my past self as a different person, a scared little girl who I love with all my heart and would fight like a tiger to protect.

I would say my mom has taught me a lot about being selfless. We lived in an elderly neighborhood, and she would have us help her do chores help with yard work. We volunteered for a time at Haven for hope serving food and cleaning the dining hall. I would say my mom’s influence has really set good example for me to giving and helpful. I really love animals and I generally team up with my sister Leslie (who I live with currently) to care for strays by feeding and finding homes for them. All our pets are strays and for the cats and dogs we come across we try to get them medical attention they need, house them and find them a good home. This month we just found a home for a bullmastiff mix puppy we had rescued. We called him Pup-Tato because he looked like a potato. He was super malnourished and had parvo. We took care of him for about a month and a half and I happy he is now healthy and energetic in a loving new home. As a student I don’t really have a lot of time but I still do what I can in some way to make the world a better place.

I would say iPads have really stood out to me, in that they are so varietal and can be very useful especially for the older generations. IPads have really made an impact in my mom’s life in recent years. My mom is in her mid 60s and uses her the iPad so much that her computer usually remans untouched. Being not so technologically inclined, my mom likes the simple iPad layout with multiple apps that make her life easier. My older siblings and I gifted the iPad to her about year and a half ago as and early birthday present. She finds it easier to carry around, check emails, bank info, messages, YouTube videos, and it fits in her purse very well. As the years have gone by my mom’s eyesight has deteriorated and so using her phone is a little is not as easy as the iPad has been. The iPad is perfect for her as it provides a big enough screen with multiple uses so on a simpler system all on one device. My mom doesn’t have a TV and prefers having a home with less technology bulk in her home. One of her favorite things to do is watch her shows have video chats with us kids and her grandkids on the iPad. I can see the iPad is a positive piece of technology that can and has impacted my mother and can also benefit other older individuals as well. I myself use an iPad and have also seen iPad like devices appear all over the place in customer service as the convivence of them is boundless.

Being a Texan can mean a lot of things to many people but to me it means that Texas is a part of me. Hot winds that blow across the dray gassy plains, rough wild scrubby vegetation growing out of the rocky earth. Texas is not the easiest place to live but it was a place people moved to start something new. Being a Texan means to me, be a good kind person, be proud of your roots that nourished you and don’t let words of others tare you down and most of all stand up for what you believe in. Times can be hard with current things happening and sometimes it seems like people would rather case more hurt and suffering in Texas (and other states) then actually helping people. I’m not ashamed to be a Texas but I feel like as a state we can do better and try to live up to our motto of “friendship”. That I feel Is a big part of being a Texan.

To me the meaning of life is to find that thing you are good at, that thing you feel pulled to. To nurture it and make it something you do well at uniquely to you and refine your gift/passion. This could be anything from painting, writing, teaching, or collecting and studying interesting bugs. Whatever it is you hone in on it and make it something wonderful and till you have sculpted something amazing and can share it with the world in some way. Giving a part of yourself back into society to improve is the other part of it because what was given to me was what helped me move forward and to do the same, I believe is only what is right. I want to refine my passion for art and stories and create something beautiful for people that helps them in some way.

I would love to work in a position where I can utilize my creativity. I have a passion for illustration, but I think combing that with design in a way to create a narrative for people to identify with their struggles. I deal with mental health issues myself and believe that the more we awareness we bring to them better we can help people work through them. I would like to explore topics like loneliness, trauma, love, forgiveness, ect. Colors are a powerful compensate to any message you want to convey and creating a story or narrative that show the viewer exactly what you want to say without using words. Picture can speak to the heart is something that people can connect to that transcend language barriers and impact on an individual level. I have thought about silent books before or even animations that deal with strong topics to help children, teens and even adults work out intense feelings from past or present issues. Sometimes life is so complicated that when one returns to a childlike way of seeing the world it makes things easier to understand. I have sketched out story’s when I have been at my lowest to deal with my own depression. I would love to be in a leading Art directors’ role to be able bring ideas things like this into fortition that can impact people in a positive way.

My mom told me always to make the best of what I have and try to imagine what it would be like it I didn’t have the things in my life. A lot of my art supplies were given to me by friends or family over the years and that really helped a lot when I was taking studio art classes as costs of martials and supplies can add up. Finical aid has helped me tremendously through the years to get me where I am now in perusing my dreams. My friends and put together a clothing giveaway every so often with each other which makes us be thriftier and helps us all save on clothes. We donate whatever is we don’t need to the local thrift store. I am grateful for the support and help I have received over the years, and I try to help others in return by paying it forward and giving what I don’t need to others. I believe that If you bring up your community with you you will rise yourself

I was a very anxious as a child growing up and always had problems with my self-confidence. It was hard for me to socialize, and I Didn’t really make any good lasting friendships until I was in college. I noticed the more I pushed beyond my comfort zone the more it grew, and slowly mu confidence has grown. I started dating, applied and am in college going to school, I joined a gym and work out regularly, and make an effort to talk to people I don’t know. All of these things scared me, but I try. Like a muscle I have learned that I need to exercise my social skills and confidence, pushing myself more and more so I don’t become weak by disuse. Covid really took a toll on my mantle health, and it’s been really heard bouncing back but I have been making that effort every day. Somedays it’s really hard and I still feel panicky when someone rings the doorbell however I know that a lot of other people are going through something similar and it comforts me to know I am not alone.

When I was a kid my mom uses to take me and my siblings a park/ nature center with a creek running through it. I remember alone one pathway there were casts of huge dinosaur footprints in the rock with a description and illustration of the dinosaur to the side. I remember the wonder it sparked in me and the hours we would play and imagine that we were tracking dinosaurs in the park. My favorite class was art, and my teachers name was Mis Cowen. She was always patient and nice. She always told me that having patient with myself and that my art will not always be good every day. Art sparks interest, art captures people’s attention and pulls you in and can raise awareness, Students sometimes leave zines around campus to spread a fun comic or silent message. Its pretty cool and I thought it would be fun to make my own. I would make mind about Isolation and how it can make a person feel small and lonely in a big school and when sometimes all it takes is some simple human interaction to make a person’s feel seen. When I was 14, I was part of a Venturing program, and there was a kid who was 16 who I didn’t like. He and I would get into dumb arguments and one time he pissed me off so much that I made a mean drawing of him, and the other kids thought it was funny and passed it around. His older brother saw it and told me that it wasn’t cool as that is a form of bullying and that is not what being a Venture is about. I still feel bad to this day that I did something like that.

When I was a kid, my family lived in a house with a backyard that extended into a creek which was technically on flood plan, but because we lived in Texas it hardly ever flooded. Us kids were always out in the creek working on our fort built from broken branches and trash. One rainy day we stepped outside to a world or water that had transformed our yard and creek into a sea. The fort became a pirate ship for almost a week until the waters crashed use ashore. It was one of the best memories from my childhood.

I live and breathe it art, I feel that it is a part of me that comes out in what I create. Its always something I have felt pulled to in that it gives me joy and feeds my soul. My life did not start out so easy, I come from a strike religious upbringing and due to my parent’s beliefs at the time I was never encouraged to peruse a carrier or a college education. I was homeschooled by my mom who did not have any sort of teaching certification, so it was basically whatever my mom thought was important I was taught. My parents were very much unplugged from the world so when my mom couldn’t understand why I was so difficult to teach she just assumed I was dumb and never went searching for outside answers. It was not until my teen your when I was allowed access to the internet, and I figured out I was by happenstance that I have dyslexia. I was a very anxious child and the thing that I loved most was laying on the floor and coloring or drawing while my older sister would read to me. She would transport me to other worlds that I would try to recreate with my drawings to put on paper the pictures the formed in my head. Whenever life was hard or confusing, I could push it all away and make since of lines on paper and create something from just ink and colored pencils. I thought picture books were the best books as the worlds they created were so intriguing. Even as an adult I wonder into the kids’ section sometimes to flip through the books and let myself be pulled into the world though the pictures. Colors and patterns would ketch my eye all the time as a child, id find them fascinating and want to somehow chapter them and have them to look at them. I remember a tea brand called celestial seasoning that would have these amazing illustrations on the boxes that my mom would let me keep. I would I want to be able to create art that captures people attention, that takes them to a different place. I want my art to make to life better for people in some way. With this scholarship I will be able to purse my education with a little less worry and anxiety about my finances. I am a full-time student and am hardworking and driven I just want to somehow make the world a better place.