Something that I have been doing ever since I could hold a crayon is drawing. Naturally, over the years my illustrations have become more sophisticated; I now like to include a nose and ears onto my subject’s faces while when I was five I might have considered these features unnecessary. I have also discovered that my favorite subjects to sketch are, and have always been, people.
I have tried working with other objects and scenes. I have drawn fruit, which frankly, if you’ve drawn one apple, you’ve drawn them all. I have tried drawing trees but I usually get very impatient with them, because who really wants to draw out all of those leaves? Not me. And there was an unfortunate circumstance in which I was required to draw a pile of tricycles. It did not end well. In the end, I always come back to people.
I suppose that one of the reasons I love to draw people, and particularly faces, is because they are all different. Even identical twins are not exactly alike; they make different facial expressions, their hair falls a different way, or they smile differently. Each person has something special about them that makes them fascinating to look at, even if it is not something that is traditional beautiful.
I have also noticed that no one looks exactly the same every time I see them. They might be wearing different clothes, or they look tired, or maybe they are just standing in a different light. Some people are more intriguing than others, but I still feel that I could go up to any given person in the street and spend hours on end studying them and sketching them out. I do not actually do this because I think it would cause society to view me as a creep.
If someone had asked the eleven-year-old me what I wanted to be when I grew up I probably would have adamantly described my dreams to be a characterture artist at Disney World. My plans for the future have changed since then and none of them include being a professional artist of any kind, but I believe that drawing will always be something that interests me. And who knows? Maybe in ten years I will find myself sitting on a stool on Main Street drawing silly pictures of six-year-olds in Mickey Mouse ears, and I will love every minute of it.
Student Essay: Published with Permission
Lynn Radlauer Lubell, Publisher of InLikeMe.com and Founder of Admission By Design, an Educational Consultancy based in Boca Raton, Florida.
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