Elephant art

When I was a child, everyone thought I was going to be an artist when I grew up. Heck, I even thought I was going to be an artist! I was always drawing something, always sketching, colouring, painting. Art was always my favourite subject in school. I had countless art books growing up and my mum knew that when I was 12, my favourite present (by far!) was the briefcase full of art supplies she surprised me with. Which I still have. Thanks, Mum.

So what happened? Art GCSE. It killed the fun of art for me. I decided if this was what being an artist was, I didn't want it. I stopped telling people I wanted to be an artist. My artwork production declined. I dropped my pencil, picked up a pen - thus Terri the Writer was born!

Like art, I had been writing stories from a young age. However, I didn't really take it seriously: it was just a bit of fun, right? While my writing grew more serious, my art fell into the background. I didn't draw as much and actually went through a period of two whole years where I didn't do any drawing!

Since 2012 I've mostly been drawing the characters in my stories. It's mostly ensemble pieces.

I also like to draw from pictures, mostly of my girlfriend (she has some of the best facial expressions). Occasionally though, I will venture out even further and create Art: something that Says Something. At the time of writing, nobody has ever understood what I was Saying and maybe that's a comment on my vision/skills/friends but hey, no-one's perfect. And it's not like I'm making Elephant Art.

Elephant Art isn't a sketch of an elephant, it's a term I came up with to describe Modern Art: the kind of thing that's just like three lines on a piece of paper, or a blue painted square. I don't understand it and I don't like it. The elephant comes in because there was an elephant in one of them and I used it as my example from then on. I've been looked down on by my girlfriend ever since. But enough about my artistic ignorance.

Lately all I've been doing is writing and painting. I'm getting better with watercolours, which is great, and I'm more than halfway through the first draft of my latest WIP, which is greater. I completely spaced out on all my resolutions from 2015, so here's to a year of not spacing out!