the right path…

My parents said, I could draw before I could walk. I owe that to my Grandma Lease. My Grandma Lease who looked after me in the afternoons when I was very young; I would walk to her house after school (How in the hell did I know where I was going? Would you let your 5 year old child walk anywhere by themselves?). When I got there; of course, there was nothing to do and I didn’t have any of my toys from home but I had a bunch of crayons that she gave me in an old cigar box and I would draw all afternoon. This was before video games and cable TV of course. I would into my own world dreaming up everything – from detailed battle scenes to drawing cartoon characters.

That is where my love of drawing came to life and it only grew from there – In high school I didn’t pay much attention in regular class but I would draw on anything that was in front of me – from a desktop to the state assessment tests. This isn’t to say I didn’t do my class work – a “C-” is passing – its just that I had so much running around in my head it needed to get out. Drawing was a sort of a therapy or a release… God only knows how much a boy needs to release – in one day alone it’s astronomical.

After high school I went to work and was still drawing all the time – I venture across the country and came back home a few years later and decided to go back to school. I didn’t know what I wanted to do but I knew an education couldn’t hurt. My father and brother suggested for me to become an accountant – I had a big interest in puzzles and mathematics so I signed up to an entire semester of pre-accounting classes… On the day before classes started, I looked down at my schedule and my eye’s started to get heavy and I felt impending doom start to loom overhead. I knew that I had chosen the wrong path… I went and talk to my counselor and when she asked what I was interested in I said “really I just like drawing.” She told me about graphic design and how I could make a living doing what I enjoyed. No one ever told me that you could make a living designing and drawing things before or even suggested such a thing. I knew you could be an architect but nothing like what I was going to be exposed to in that first year of college. That was a game changer… Oh by the way – yes my brother and father were very shocked and didn’t understand how you could make a living doing that either – even to this day I am not sure they understand it. Ha! I get paid to draw… So if you want a real artist, who from the time of birth until now has been doing nothing but making things interesting and beautiful then delve into my portfolio.

After a life time of doing this its still a thrill to take an idea from nothing to something. Enjoy and thanks.

Do what you love and you will never work a day in your life.