My freshman year in high school I went part time to public school and was homeschooled the other half of the time. Since I only took three classes, I decided to take choir as my elective. I had taken art on and off since I was little, and even though my mom tried so hard to convince me to take art instead, I decided on choir. She was a soprano soloist in high school, so maybe I was aspiring to that. Probably not, cause I was barely a first alto, almost a second. Anyway, I took choir my first two years of high school until my mom finally convinced me to take an art class. I started out in an Art I class, which turned out to be filled with freshman and sophomore hoodlums who wanted an easy class. After two or three weeks of the class, my teacher, Mrs. Sellers, got permission to put me in the higher class, since I was one in thirty in the Art I class who actually cared about learning to draw. So I got moved up to Drawing II. It really wasn’t that much more advanced than the Art I class, but it had less than five students and was combined with the AP art class. That’s really where I learned the most. During this time, I probably produced quite a bit of worthless art, but there are a few that I actually feel good about.

Mrs. Sellers was really good about finding art contests and then shifting our class assignments to fit these contests. Because of this, hardly a contest went by where at least one of her student’s received a medal or award of some type. One of the contests we entered was a Holocaust contest. I can’t remember the exact guidelines, but this was the piece that I drew for that.

I didn’t end up winning a thing, but I really loved this drawing and continued to turn it in to contest after contest, simply cause I wanted some dang recognition for my awesome drawing! Right? Well, it won some things later on, but I was still always a little bitter that it didn’t win the holocaust contest. Ha.

These were other drawings I did during my Drawing II class. Mrs. Sellers had us work a lot from photos since there were no available models, but she also had us work from still-life’s.

I don’t think that my shoe ever won anything, probably for good reason, since the only reason I drew it was because we were supposed to bring a still-life in and I forgot. And since I thought converse were SO cool back then, why not draw it? Yeah, embarrassing. Anyway, my baseball glove won an Honorable Mention ribbon at the Boulder City Art Show, and it was actually a funny story. We had to do a certain amount of volunteer hours for the class, so my classmates and I signed up to help set up and take down the BCAS. Part of this job was going around with the judges and putting ribbons on the winning art. I didn’t get this particular assignment, but my friend, S, did. She had also done a drawing of the baseball glove and when the judges came around to her drawing they oooh’d and ahhhh’d and decided to put the Honorable Mention ribbon on hers. They didn’t know it was hers since all the names were covered, but she smiled as she placed the ribbon on her drawing and moved on. Then the judge went around the corner and saw my baseball glove drawing hanging up and said to S, “Go get that Honorable Mention ribbon from that other drawing. I like this one much better!”

So this was the beginning of my future life…and it all started because my mother basically forced me. Thanks, Mom.