Art

Both of my parents were interested in art, but I remember my mother especially drawing and painting. Since I’m the youngest in my family (by a decade!), the minute I was old enough to hold a pencil, my mom would spend the day showing me how to draw.

I was constantly drawing, up until a short period of time where I needed a break from it for personal reasons, as well as learning how to sew. When we moved to our current place, we ended up with less space than we’ve ever had and I needed to choose what to pack away and what to leave out. Sewing won, and my drawing tools continued collecting dust.

When The Hobbit movies came out, sewing (which had eventually come to a pause with no recent projects) lost out and got put away while the drawing tools got dusted back off. I took an interest in drawing the Dwarves from the movies, since my husband and I were such fans (and he LOVES Dwarves). I set up a DeviantART account and posted all my new artwork there. My old fan art (original/prequel Star Wars and NHL hockey, plus some miscellaneous art) were kept separately on my original website that no longer got updated. I stopped updating that website, because I had gotten to the point where I was just cranking out updates for the sake of updates and wasn’t pleased with the quality anymore. Nor was it fun.

I swore never to work that way again.

I have had a potential high note with this current fan art — it had been selected for possible inclusion on the documentary that’s on the Battle of the Five Armies Extended Edition DVD. Sadly, it didn’t make it to the final cut (which I knew would be a very high probability, as they gather as much art as they can find before editing things down for a final cut). You can read a little about that here.

It’s very strange feeling so clumsy and almost struggling — when I stopped drawing, I was at my best. It can be very frustrating when your hands won’t work like they used to, so it’s been slow-going finishing art and rebuilding my gallery. Of course, part of that is still getting my drawing area set up, replacing old supplies, and balancing all my hobbies and everything else in this incredibly tiny apartment. The fact that I still take little breaks to focus on different things means a constant and annoying cycle of getting back into practice again.

I have found a new way to continue learning and enjoying creating art while helping others however: in 2020, I joined the Maybel Arts team and started creating artwork to help vegan animal sanctuaries. This has become a new passion of mine – while I can always donate money, or even labor with local sanctuaries, it’s something special to be able to work with a sanctuary to create something unique just for them to sell and raise funds.

And you can see some animated art progression of how I usually work here:

I’m currently building my art gallery up here (listed by topic).