Advice for a 15-Year-Old

Advice for a 15-Year-Old

Friday, April 25, 2014

CAPTAIN MARVEL, JR. 2014.
Ink & watercolor on paper, 7 × 10.5″.

Q: Do you have any school recommendations for a 15 year old that wants to focus more on his art? Night classes, private schools, etc?

A: 15's about the age when I got more serious about it. I took every class in high school that my schedule would allow. I also started to familiarize myself with the different colleges. My high school art teacher offered after school life drawing sessions once a week after school... think I went to most of those.

All the art schools are mad expensive, so he'll want to start looking around now to see if it's something he really wants to work toward. Also, National Portfolio Day is a great place to go and talk to recruiters. I went to one my senior year in Sarasota (the locations rotate) and that's how I met RISD, where I eventually went.

I can already tell you what they'll tell him, though: draw from life. If you can draw people, you can draw anything.

15th Birthday Party Invitation. 1996.
Photocopies, Expresso Pen, and Sharpie
 on copy paper, 11 x 17".

In other news, I've added another offering to my digital tool shop, the Remove Color Action. It's a Photoshop Action that automatically removes any colors from your penciled or inked artwork, leaving near-white in its place. The action then selects and copies the entire work so it can be manually pasted in a page template of your choice.

It removes all colors, not just cyan.

It's easy to install, and can be yours for $2. Thanks to everyone who has purchased tools from the shop! The next item will be be my gutters template. Have a great weekend!

⊡ 12:00:00 AM