When I was 6, and everything we did on class was drawing, I couldn’t even draw stick figures right. I’d give them giant hands and heads… I wanted to draw well, but I couldn’t. And one of my classmates was always drawing sharks! He was amazing, and I wanted to be just as good as him!
On the first day of school (Or was it the second? I forgot.) we were asked to draw something. I knew I couldn’t draw good stick figures, so I just made a drawing with curvy pink lines and yellow circles. I think I also added some blue. This was the first time I realized that there was a different way to draw.
It wasn’t until 3rd grade, on a different school, that I actually started developing my style. On the middle of the year, the teacher asked us to write the first 1000 roman numbers, so I would bring my book and a pencil to lunch time and do it. On the day I finished (and I was the first!) I didn’t have anything to do, so I decided to draw on the napkin with the graphite pencil. I used to make some lines, and connect each other. I’d do this on black pen or pencil for the next 2 years. I wish I still had those drawings.
On 5th grade, after the other school, I drew even more, because I was always alone and I always had some pencils and sheets of paper with me. I used to draw on the back side of writing assessments, and always with a pencil. This was also the time people started asking what I was drawing. I always answered “I don’t know”. It was just a few weeks later that I used the word abstract. “(What is that?)” I didn’t like visual education classes because we had to do stuff like the teacher said He once told me I couldn’t draw a blue santa claus. I kept on drawing blue santa claus.
6th grade was probably one of the worsts years I had on school. I was 11, and there was a 16 year old and a 15 on my class, who used to beat me while I was drawing, but they eventually stopped because I always kept the same face and never cared. Still had problems, but at least my drawings were fine. At the end of the year, I made a decision that I would regret to this day. I threw everything I had from 6th grade away, including about 50 drawings (actually I don’t know how many they were, but they were many).
The school I was on 5th and 6th grade ended up closing (good thing), and I didn’t draw anything during 7th grade. Never felt like it. There wasn’t anyplace on the school where I would feel comfortable drawing, where people wouldn’t look. I was really sad, but at the end of the year, I’d draw a little on class.
I changed schools again on 8th grade and I started drawing again. I was worst than what I was on 6th grade, and I’d still draw on the back of writing assessments, and used really cheap stuff, but my style developed very well that year. I had the first good visual education teacher, an the best I’ve ever seen. She was always saying “don’t be scared” while we were drawing, and surprisingly, it helped me a lot., specially when we learned the “degrade” technique, which is the thing I use the most on my drawings (light to dark, one shade to another, softly). This was when I started sharing my drawings on the internet, and created my youtube art channel. The good comments on DeviantArt motivated me a lot!
On 9th grade, my style developed even more, because before, I only used 1 pencil, but now, I used 2 (A big development for me), a HB and a 2b. At the end of the year, I bought soluble graphite pencils, and I started using these more often. I was still terrible at choosing materials, so I regret buying a lot of stuff.
On the summer vacations after 9th grade, I started searching about graphite materials and seeing reviews on the internet about materials, and my style changed so much! Materials don’t make the artist but they sure help, and they helped me a lot, specially with shadows and contrasts.
On 10th grade, I started bringing a bag with all my art materials to school, which made it much easier for me to draw anytime, even tough I wasn’t on arts (wasn’t able to go to arts because of the transport). In October, I went to Amsterdam, visited Van Gogh museum, and that somehow changed my style a lot again. I don’t know how, because it’s a very different style from mine, but I bought a moleskine sketchbook there (didn’t like it much, not for me) and in 2 months, it was finished! When I was getting back to Portugal, still waiting for the plane, some people were watching me drawing, and one of them said something. I didn’t understand, and my mom told me to stop with my red face. I think he was chinese. He looked at me and laughed in a good way saying something. I don’t know what he said but I took it as a compliment. This was the drawing I was doing: Eye spirit. And it was also the first thing I drew on the molenkine. I started filling every part of the paper, no blank spaces allowed.
Now, on the middle of the 10th grade, I decided what I wanted to do with my abstract drawings – A world. I called it Mia, and I’m creating (drawing) creatures, plants, landscapes… For example, this is Dono:
Dono takes care of the fire on Mia. Made with Artgraf soluble graphite.
You can see more details about this world on my other posts, or to watch my youtube videos. I already created creatures that take care of the water, earth, fire, and air – Fale, Tera, Dono, and Adin. And this is going to be a life long project.
Now, there are many things I still want to do, and here they are:
- Use soluble graphite more often.
- Do bigger drawings (A3 or bigger)
- Do smaller drawings (A7)
- Start selling drawings.
- Grow an audience.
- Make a living out of art
- Don’t starve
But I’m way young yet so I’ll just develop my style even more now. Thanks for reading.
Lua Eva Blue 
