When I was in elementary school (12-14 y. o.), I met a very bold and determined woman, who happened to be my art teacher for the next few years. For some reason, she immediately liked me and my art skills — I knew I can draw well since my great-grandpa was a painter and everyone was telling me that I inherited his talent. And I liked to draw, partly because I was praised a lot for it. For the same reason, the director was fond of me as well, and she was always excusing me from lessons to join random art projects (for example, we went to a local golf club to paint walls of the main “building”). With my designs, haha

I joined my art teachers art club outside the school. It was really messy club, but great anyway because we did a lot of experiments and she let us try various techniques. She was also really energetic and sharp at times, even stubborn and pushy, trying to get most of us. At some point though, I felt like it wasn’t only fun and games anymore and I could feel a rising pressure on me to do better, to improve more.

At that time, I started to hang out with my friends who liked horses. I had some experience with riding horses from years back, so I was thrilled to find some stables where we can help around and ride horses. I ditched the art club and started to ride horses (or, mostly, help around in horse stables, on farms and even in a little zoo). Thanks to my love for horses and farm animals, I wanted to either go to a horse riding school or agribusiness (.. in case I wanted to actually make money) And I was VERY determined to do agribusiness. My parents didn’t believe me though. And they were right, once my friends and I fell apart and I had no desire to go this road anymore.

It was time to choose a high school and I had no idea what I want to do. My parents didn’t want to interfere and let me choose whatever I wanted (which I don’t know if it helped or not). From all the fields, I could imagine myself in art school, but it was still a choice decided more by the elimination method than my desire to do art. And because for art school, you need to prepare for talent exams and create a portfolio, I thought about my previous art teacher because I knew she was helping kids to prepare for art schools. I packed up my anxious self, who still felt bad for ditching the art club back then and went begging for acceptance. We were kind of short of time, but I started drawing again, I draw a lot, drawing my friends at school and outside of school, coming to the atelier and staying late. I believe this was one of my most productive few months. Hell, I even managed to write 2 full scripts for amateur theatre plays we held at school and on summer camp. What a time.

And finally, after a few complications, I got into art high school.

Looking back, it made sense I went to art school. Even tho I didn’t realize it, I was really always out creating something. It seemed like something so natural to me — maybe too much, that I didn’t know how I feel about it being a field of my studies. It just wasn’t any big dream of mine, it was just there and I decided to go with a flow.

These are from when I was about 10-14 y. o. Yes, it was mostly anime-themed. Yes, I’m a weeb. It’s really likely that I liked drawing because of that reason — it was something I was good at and it was connected to something I really like.