My dream version of my future self is one where I can pursue my career goal to be an artist while also doing things that are meaningful to others.

I have always loved to be creative and a problem solver. This is why my passion, and the career I want to pursue, is in art. However, I was almost discouraged from pursuing it for many reasons. The first is the most apparent - art is not considered a “practical” career. So I pursued it as a hobby. The next experience that nearly stopped me from pursuing art was school. I have never loved school. If I’m being honest, I feel quite the opposite about it. Don’t get me wrong. I do love to learn. One of the major reasons for my distaste for school - cliche enough - is that we are forced into “thinking inside the box.” In school, art was by far my least favorite subject for this exact reason. Art in school was the antonym of creativity. I was compliant and I always drew what I was told; most of the time this meant drawing meaningless shapes to fill the page and create a “wonderful” composition. However, the rest of my private sketchbook was filled with characters and the subjects that I loved to draw. One day, my art teacher saw me flipping through my sketchbook. She was able to catch a glimpse of some characters I drew. She said, “You are too talented to draw that. Copying characters and stuff. Don’t you go to Kevin’s oil painting class?’ I hastily replied that they were my own characters and defensively asked how she would even know that. I saw red. I felt that my identity as an artist was being challenged. I did not agree with her, but that did not stop her words from having influenced me deeply. The next year, I gave my focus to technical skill, without putting much of myself into my work, whether it was inside or outside of school. At first, it seemed like the only option. As a result, I was always getting complimented by the teacher. However, it soon became a chore to make art. I wanted to make art, for myself, and to be able to draw without being pushed back into a box. I felt I had to focus on pandering my work towards the teacher for praise, but this meant drawing only technical exercises with little expression in them. This had been the ultimate reason as to why I gave up art class in school after my sophomore year, to draw what I wanted to, and let myself be as experimental as possible. As I kept incorporating more of what I love to draw into my practices, the more I knew what I wanted to do specifically. I wanted to go into illustration. It was not just my growing passion that led me to want to become an illustrator, but a change in attitude and mindset. My negative experiences in school helped me see the benefit of choosing my passion over doing what is seen as what you “should” do in life. Prior to making this decision to choose what I want, I always equated having a career as committing to the same unfulfilling monotony I felt in school. Making art not only helped me build skills and find myself as an artist, but it helped me to determine my goals in learning and my personal goals. It helped me with something as simple as exploring and finding other passions: my love of music and playing guitar. That is why I want to pursue it in the future, as a career that would push the boundaries of my creativity and always challenge me.

I am someone who's passionate about being an individual and making my art as personal as possible. I want to pursue a BFA in illustration, so that one day I will be able to work in one of my dream occupations, such as becoming an illustrator, storyboard artist, or character designer. I want to create art for media, such as books, movies, games, and even my own passion projects. Making art for media use is important to me because of the inspiration it has brought me to draw in the first place. Video games, anime, manga, books and comics have inspired me, as well as renowned artists such as John Singer Sargent, Rembrandt, and Da Vinci. A particularly inspiring feat that impacted my goals as an artist was that one of my favorite artists, Hirohiko Araki, had an exhibition in the Louvre. This is an impressive feat for any artist, but the fact he achieved this inspired me. This was because he was a storyteller and a manga artist, which is not often appreciated as a style in a fine arts setting. However, he developed such a unique and fantastical style that the art appealed to many different people. In this way I want to be like him, to take something I love and add what I feel is most personal to me in it. Because of this, most of my time spent doing art has been self-guided, as I always felt I needed the space to experiment in order to know what I wanted from art. My skills as an artist directly reflect who I am. My major strengths as an artist include my objective to be as true to myself as possible, my ability to be analytical and attentive to detail, and my ability to be my own critic while remaining objective. However, these skills were not just natural. It took much patience and thought in order to develop these skills during my art journey. I started drawing passionately very early on, around when I first started grade school. My focus intensified in middle school and into high school. Like my favorite artists, I have tried to combine fantasy with the work of the old masters. Now that I have a better idea of what I want from art, I want to polish my technical ability so I can draw whatever I want, and to continue on developing my style so I can appeal to myself and the art world. Because of this, I want to pursue a BFA in illustration.

I love math because it is one of the only subjects in school where I felt like I could be creative with my problem-solving abilities. Ironically, I am pursuing art to become an illustrator, but art was one of my least favorite subjects in school. In art class, teachers would try to force their vision into my art, even though art is considered a "subjective" subject. In comparison to art, math is thought of as the more "concrete" subject. After all, when you do grade-level math in school, your answer is usually either correct or incorrect. However, even in these scenarios, there are many means to achieve the right answer in math. In math, a claim that one way is the best way to solve a problem is irrelevant, because math concretely shows there are many ways to answer a single problem. It's all backed up by having proofs and theorems. Alternatively, real-life phenomena can usually be explained with math. It's very interesting to me because math shows you can envision a problem from so many angles, and that math exists everywhere outside of the realm of theory. Math is so enveloping that I can even apply mathematical concepts to my art, including the ratios within compositions. I love math because it gives many answers to the mystery of the universe, while giving us many more.

One of my favorite traditional pieces of art I have created is called “The Beauty in Nature.” I did this project for a school art assignment, where the prompt was to create an interesting composition by only coloring within a shape of our choice and leaving the rest of the image in grayscale. I started the process of creating this image by making quite a few thumbnail sketches. I thought for a while about what type of elements to include to get the effect I wanted, to get it to where it was almost like looking into a fantasy world. All types of foliage and birds were accounted for and I gathered many reference pictures. The ones that stood out for me for this idea were peculiar-looking fungi and mystical-looking owls. Then I decided where to place the objects. There was a lot of experimentation of where the objects of the image were placed, but I ended up choosing this composition because the rectangular colored area contrasted with the rounded focus, the owl in the hole of the tree. It also worked well because I purposely positioned the other elements in the image such as the vines, tree trunk, fungi, and grass, to make them look like they were curving around the focus, the center of the image. Then I began the sketch, where I gathered even more reference photos to refine the details. After the sketch was complete, I moved on to choosing my mediums. I chose ink and marker. I chose ink because it highlighted all the different textures of the different elements, and added lots of contrast between the grayscale and the colored section. I chose to color in Copic markers for the colored section because it allowed for both vibrant, blendable colors while allowing the ink to still be very visible. I wanted the colored area to be vibrant rather than muted because I wanted it to come alive, as well as pull the viewer into the center of the image. The world itself that I wanted to build within this image is a vibrant one too. The colors aren’t meant to be 100% realistic but rather stylized to look more like a “magical forest.” Overall the image is special to me because of the overall aesthetic, careful planning and execution, and because it also speaks to my voice as an artist. In the future, I would like to make more pieces that are like this one.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck is an essential read for everyone, because it brings awareness to an important problem in society. It shows how people with special needs often do not receive the help and support they need in society, and how they remain unseen. It shows how this eventually can lead them into a life of loneliness and isolation. In the book, Lennie would have led a life of loneliness and isolation had George not been with him and acted as his family. George was always worried about what would happen to Lennie if he was not there to support him. Understandably so, because Lennie most likely would not have gotten a job if George wasn’t with him. Most people with an intellectual disability need others to help support them. They can turn to family, but what happens if they have none? One of the reasons it is important that as many people as possible read the book, is so that we can all understand the value of kindness and community. We need to take the initiative and make change on an individual level because there are people who cannot rely on the system or society, even though they cannot help themselves. An example of this kindness is shown by George. Before Lennie was with George, he had his Aunt Clara. Since his only family had died, George had taken the role of caring for Lennie. Now if Lennie did not have George, he would not have anyone. Lennie and George always had each other, and now that isn't the case due to the ignorance in society about special needs. Lennie had to be mercy-killed by George because of the lack of understanding of his intentions, in the case where he accidentally killed a girl. The story shows how ignorance instead of compassion can lead to tragedy.

It has always been my dream to be a successful artist. I realized that because of this goal, it would be very beneficial for me to be in an environment where I can help nurture my passion and turn it into an occupation. Because of this, I want to pursue undergraduate study in the field of visual arts, specifically a Bachelor of Fine Arts in illustration. I want to take this step in my education so that one day I will be able to work in one of my dream occupations, such as becoming an illustrator, storyboard artist, or character designer. I want to create art for media, such as books, movies, games, and even my own passion projects. Making art for media use is important to me because of the inspiration it has brought to me in my drawings in the first place. Media such as video games, anime, manga, books, and comics have heavily appealed to my aspirations as an artist. These influences became apparent very early on in my journey as an artist. I first started to draw frequently around the age of seven. During this time, my inspirations remained relatively the same as they are now. Around this time, I received a Nintendo DS for Christmas, because my family knew I loved video games. Oddly enough, my first “muse” was a fictional character, Link from The Legend of Zelda series. I was fascinated by the art style and characters of these games, but what fascinated me the most was the ability it had to take me to another world. To this day, I am still trying to emulate that effect. The ability to recreate a small window into another world through a picture. A story to be told simply by a character design or a landscape of another world. This led me to pursue education in illustration, where I can learn how to tell stories with my art, and find my voice and style as an artist. I want to use these skills so that my art can have as big of an impact on others as games like Zelda had on me. Overall, my choice to pursue a BFA in illustration and pursue illustration as my career path heavily reflects my lifelong ideals and passions. Many have tried to discourage me from choosing art as a career path, but I feel that if I have a job I enjoy, I won't have to work a day in my life.