Pencil Drawing
Hi! I am April, and I love art! (And these are my three silly kiddos!)
I have loved to draw for as long as I can remember. Crayons were important to me as a child, and I progressed to markers and then pencils. Kind of a backward order, but that is pretty normal!
I started taking classes when I was in 8th grade, and I loved every art class I could get into! There was no such thing as too much. I was able to start taking private and group drawing classes in 9th grade. That is where my love for drawing started, and by drawing, I mean actual lessons and training in just drawing. Those classes were different from my school art classes because all we did was drawing. I loved it! I was able to see huge improvements, and my confidence grew rapidly!
In high school I was blessed to have a fantastic teacher. He actually had taught college, but decided he wanted to teach high school after feeling like the college kids believed they already knew it all. (If you can imagine!) So, I essentially had a college curriculum in high school.
I was able to participate in many "Art Olympics" through my high school. These were competitions between a number of schools, and they were held in Kansas and Missouri. I actually won almost all of my art supplies by winning a number of these competitions! I also entered some National competitions and placed in those.
I was offered a few scholarships from various art and design schools, but ultimately ended up at Brigham Young University. I recently finished the art program there in Visual Arts/Studio Arts Emphasis. I may go back to finish my degree which was to combine that Studio degree with a teaching certificate for teaching high school art.
I recently went back to school and took three semesters with a man that has become my favorite professor on the planet, Wulf Barsch. He is an amazing artist, and his knowledge is incredible. He was terribly strict and demanding, but I adored him. There are few teachers that are willing to teach the way he does, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Even when I had to re-do a drawing 4 times because I was not allowed an eraser!
I have had training in most areas of art- drawing, oils, acrylics, oil pastel, chalk pastel, guash, pen and ink, marker, collage, ceramics, sculpture (except metals), lithography, and a few others. I love drawing and oil painting the most, and they are usually what I spend my time on.
I am currently home schooling my youngest two kids, and my oldest in is high school. I am working on getting my art studio built in the basement so I can move my "stinky" paints out of my bedroom.
My goal in teaching drawing class is to provide an opportunity to learn a method that is rarely found at school. I believe in learning to draw with the right side of the brain, and the techniques I learned in doing that made my progression faster and less frustrating because I learned how to switch to my right brain at will. I also believe that a good foundation in drawing is essential to any other art form. If you haven't learned to see, and to replicate what you see with a pencil it is very difficult to paint it or sculpt it! If you can learn to draw, and I believe anyone can- a talent that can be learned!- you can move on to other forms of art with a lot more ease and ability. It shows in a painting or sculpture whether the artist learned to draw. And I hope to provide an opportunity to learn that skill!
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