How I Started Drawing

Like most children I have always drawn. All children have to draw something in elementary or primary school at one point or another. However, I stopped around Middle School to Highschool about the time that I started homeschooling. This was mainly due to my father. He did not believe that there was any fundamental need for art. That included all art. I was not allowed to listen to music or watch TV other that PBS and I was not allowed to leave the house. The first comicbook that my mother bought me was from Malibu Comics. She also told me not to let my father find out that I had it. Unfortunately, my father eventually found out a few months later, tore it up in front of me and tossed it into the trash. The man was insane.

Also, my homeschool education was kind of shitty compared to others. Halfway through around maybe my second or third year of highschool that he gave up and left me to my own to study and create my own curriculum. I remember the exact moment that happened. I was in his office or more specifically “my bedroom that he took over and kicked me out of so he could turn it into his office”, he was talking about something at me. He always talk at me. He was never the kind of father who would talk with his children. These kind of “talks” happened in droves throughout the day and they range from moderate rants to the extreme. This was one of the moderate ones and my brain just shut down and I stopped listening. It was then that he slapped me hard across my face and called me an ungrateful bitch and yelled at me to leave. I went and sat down at our kitchen table. A few moments later, he came and tossed all of the homeschool materials onto the table and told me to teach myself. And I was like, “Ok” finally you weren’t doing that great of a job anyway. I mean if his goal was for us to focus on mathematics then I should not have been still doing pre-algebra in my second year of highschool. Anyways, I created my curriculum and included art into it. Luckily, for me my mother was also going to junior college at the time for a degree in fashion. So, she had a few how to draw artbooks and she also had to get the internet to do a lot of her homework. So, I had the internet for all kinds of research on art, art history and a bazillion how to draw tutorials. I learned Photoshop from an online tutorial. I was even able to get my home school advisory to incorporate my independent art study into the my curriculum mainly due to the fact that he was impressed that I went from pre-algebra to finishing college algebra and geometry in under a year’s time.

I had really wanted to pursue a career in art but again this time both my parents interfered and I spend two years after graduation trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I ended up going into Computer Science and then found out I didn’t really like it to engineering which I stuck with because I found out that I liked it. What also helped was knowing that a lot of the great engineers were also artist. However, again my parents did not want me do to that because I was told I was not “smart enough”. By this time my mother had divorced my father and I no longer was in contact with him. At that point I was in school for so long that I didn’t even care what anyone said anymore I decided to finish my engineering degree no matter what. I was still drawing throughout that entire struggle of trying to figure out what I wanted to do and I found peace of mind doing so.

Also, please note that my homeschooling is one of the bad examples. Homeschooling is a great option for parents that provide true care an love for their children. I am now going to be a mother myself and if the only option was homeschooling I would do it but I would do it very differently.