Artwork by Amanda Bowoade
I am a housewife with four young children. I stay at home with my two youngest, who are babies. I have hopes of eventually becoming a 3D animator and I am currently in school for this, but to become a great animator, you need to be a great artist first: and so I am always learning, trying to fill in the gaps in my art knowledge. However, I live in a very small town in the depths of Alberta, Canada and there aren’t many opportunities here to expand my skills in the ways I want to.
The time that isn’t spent changing disappears and picking up after four children and feeding six hungry mouths is spent drawing, painting, or studying.
Art is my biggest challenge, my best friend, and my greatest enemy – I’m either excited about what I’m achieving or angry about my shortcomings. Art keeps my mind from becoming stagnant and makes the isolation of being in the house all day bearable. I have carved out a sizeable chunk of our living room and that is where I spend most of my day, at my drawing board, surrounded by my pencils, drawing and painting while my sons play at my feet.
My artistic challenges are colour theory and composition. I have been drawing for many years but have only recently moved into colour, and I can’t make heads or tails of it. I still also find myself struggling with composition. There are very few books on composition, so trying to learn it without a mentor is nothing but an exercise in futility.
I want to learn to paint in the Classical realist tradition. I love realistic art that tells a story, I have ever since I was a small child, and I have always found the Old Masters to be the epitome of artistic excellence. This is the kind of art I want to be able to create – a product I can be proud of producing, and showing. I would also like to finally understand colour and composition!
The Old Masters academy looks amazing! I love that there are art teachers who are returning to painting classical realism, and I can’t imagine how fantastic it would be to be able to study under Natalie Richy.
My goal is to become the best representational artist I can, and there is no one around me who paints in the manner I like – traditional and realistic – the kind of education I would get at the Old Masters Academy. I use oil-based coloured pencil and I am trying to translate coloured pencil techniques into the methods of the Old Masters, whose art I have always admired and wish to emulate, but this is very difficult when I am relying on teaching myself! Books can only take you so far, and I would love to find a teacher with Natalie Richy’s skills to show me the areas I need help in. I am always striving to increase my artistic skills and the Old Masters Academy seems like it would be the best place to continue my education, especially since I don’t have the option of teachers and art schools in my location.
Having young children means that we are perpetually short on funds (there is no money for stuff like this when groceries are the priority) so this would be my only opportunity to take part in this course.
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