As long as I can remember I have always had a passion for the arts but drawing and music are my favorites by far (I am sorry to admit I am mystified by the understanding of poetry). I grew up in St. Louis, Mo. around my mom’s library of art books such as Da Vinci, Michelangelo and one of my personal favorites, Normal Rockwell, and my dad’s love of rocking out loudly to Herb Alpert or Chicago Transit Authority. To this day, I still crank the volume full blast anytime I hear one of my dad’s favorite CTA songs “I’m a man” and think of him. My mom’s library of art books has since been passed down to me and I cherish them and look at them often for inspiration or just to admire the beautiful art represented within them.

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Like many artists I describe myself as self-taught. I have a desire to recreate interesting pictures that I see, for reasons that are unknown to me (maybe it was all those art books I grew up around). Just when I think I have completed my quest on a  drawing, something else catches my eye that I feel I have to draw. Since I have always had this desire to recreate things in drawing, I found myself practicing quite a bit. I made up my own drawings or copied pictures from books like the art books in my mom’s library. Over time I could draw things like eyes, noses, mouths and profiles without looking at anything. But this took a lot of practice, like drawing a whole page of nothing but eyes for example, at different angles over and over again.

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All of my early drawings were done in graphite using a good ol’ #2 pencil. I yearned for color from the start but was extremely intimidated by painting. Plus I loved the control I could get with a pencil and felt I would not be able to have that control with a brush. So for a long time, I never felt I could achieve any art in color until I saw works being done in colored pencil that just made my jaw drop. I knew I had to figure out how to use colored pencils! I mean, it’s really just like a pencil and I knew how to use that! I read tons of books on the subject. I probably own all the “major” colored pencil books out there but I still struggled with understanding how to use this medium that was new to me. I became frustrated and stopped trying to use them and went back to graphite with a bit of a grudge. That was some years ago before art instructors started finding a platform on YouTube and that is where I found an art instructor named Lisa Clough (goes by LACHRI on YouTube). If you are trying to learn how to use colored pencils, I STRONGLY recommend her instructional videos!  Once I started applying her colored pencil techniques my art has never been the same. THANK YOU LISA!