Since I graduated high school, I knew I wanted to go to college for Illustration. Over the years, however, the goal from there has changed drastically. All of high school I was a fan of painting, specifically with water colors at the time. Then, in between Junior and Senior year of high school, I got to go to a summer program at Ringling College of Art and Design, and I loved it. It was a magical month of trying new things, being in a new place and learning what I wanted to do, or at least what I thought I wanted to do.
At the time I was in a class for storyboarding. I was immediately hooked. Getting to quickly draw expressions and have control of story telling, I enjoyed that power. For the next few years that’s what the plan was. Once I started at RMCAD, I had geared my major for that path. While I enjoyed my time on the sequential art track, there just felt like something was missing.
Then I took figure painting. This was my first experience with oil paints. I always enjoyed the human form and getting to paint it was difficult but rewarding. I cant lie with how many times I cried in that class due to bad color mixing. But it was an area that I really put a lot of time and energy into and ended up being very proud of myself for the abilities I developed. It was also around this time I found the Instagram page for Rebekka Lord-Johnson, TheWeddingPainter. There I saw what she had been capable of with for wedding painting. The joy she gave her clients was so apparent. I wanted to be able to do that for myself.
If you would like to see some of my sequential work, check it out over on my portfolio!