HOW I LEARNED ART
I was always interested drawing and doodling when I was a kid, like many other children. I would draw on note pads, A4 printing paper and the back sides of used calendars. I would draw ninjas battling military tanks and planes all in two dimensional sideway views. The movement would always be from left to right, or right to left. I remember drawing a lot of super heroes, monsters and robots, and they would always be engaged in some kind of action. I remember one time when I was over at one of my mother's friends house, and the daughter in the house was good at drawing as well, except she was drawing unicorns, ponies and princesses. Even with the subject matter being different, I was really fascinated at the level of detail that she had put into her drawings.
I remember my mum sending me to our neighbors for me to learn the piano. The teacher was really nice and she would make pieces of toast for me with pizza and cheese toppings. I was never really interested in the piano lessons but I was really interested in her secondary level son's drawings of antique cars. The level of details, shading, values and crisp linework was so beyond what I was capable of depicting, but it really made me want to reach that level of technicality. This got me even more interested in drawing and mechanical objects. Also, he had a Nirvana CD album with the baby underwater. This was another piece of media that really burned into my memories.
I didn't get much artistic training as a kid, but I would watch a lot of cartoons, anime and read a lot of Japanese manga that were translated into Korean and Chinese. The Chinese ones I never really understood, but when I couldn't travel to Korea to get the translated releases I would grab the Chinese translated copies just so I could guess the storyline by looking at the visuals. By the time I was in primary school I was asked by my friends to draw them pictures of our favorite characters. Back then it was either Rockman (Megaman), Mario, Sonic and Goku. I was pretty confident with drawing Goku because I loved the character enough to be able to draw him off by heart, but only at a certain angle. I was also pretty confident at drawing Bugs bunny. Unfortunately when it came to conceptualizing my drawing I was pretty poor, and I was only really able to draw those certain few characters.
I remember trying to join a group of friends who were into building their own characters, and I was trying so hard to join their group just so we could build characters together, but I was always rejected. This was also a period in my life where I was very reclusive and kept to myself. I would also not leave my room unless I came out to the living room to play video games. I was good with my mum because she was always trying to engage in some kind of conversation with me, but I was terrified of my dad because he was always busy at work, and would come back home stressed and upset.
I had also started to gain a lot of weight during this period, and I remember being really upset after some random Korean ladies commented on the size of my breasts while we were in the elevator. The ladies and I were both living in Hong Kong, and they must have thought I was Chinese. I remember this was when I started to become more conscious about my body and appearance. I also didn't help alleviate my reclusive nature.
Entering middle school, I was a young lad who preferred to camp in his room and spend time by reading comic books, looking through picture books and daydreaming about animated fantasy and sci-fi worlds and characters. Even during my early secondary school years I would spend most of my time in the library drawing my favorite media characters of that period. It really was the only thing I really knew about, and this was the only way I was able to cope with my adolescent self consciousness. I did eventually break out of this mold when my classmates started to find me in the library and game me positive comments on my art work. It was a very meaningful gesture to a reclusive kid and I was really happy to have felt a sense of appreciation and acceptance. This was when I started to join different social groups and attend different activities until I was able to find some stability in my social circle.
During my secondary development phase I was more interested in the mainstream media, because that was the main form of communication between my peers. Art was on the back burners, but I would always keep a sketchbook with me in my room because it gave me a sense of comfort. Honestly, I was terrible in my art classes, because I was disinterested in art history and academic or conceptual art practices. I just wanted to draw things that I liked and things that I was interested in. Of course this did not reflect well on my grades.
When I got to my upper secondary years, and things felt a bit more serious I started to attend art classes outside of school, that were separate from my school curriculum. I was preparing to apply for art college, but my school grades were not reflecting well on my chances. I remember taking SAT and TOEFL courses to improve my chances in applying for American colleges overseas. (My parents still complain about the exorbitant fess that were involved in the financing all the way up until my graduation, and my brother harbors a level of spite over the fact that he was limited in his school choices because of my expensive schooling.)
I remember my subject grades for art was very poor, and it was not going to cut it for most schools. The teacher who I would visit after school was someone who had a very strict academic training, and she would drill us with drawing practices for 2~3 hours. Being a high school student back then, having to keep your focus for more than an hour was already a daunting task. Keeping that focus for more than that amount of time felt like torture. Still, I convinced myself to grind through because I truly felt like I had no other option. It was either this direction or I was not going anywhere.
All of the extra hours spent on the after school art sessions did help me improve. I was producing artwork that was not about anime or cartoons, and yet I was still proud of it. Looking back at them now, I don't find them to be as good as I thought back then, but it signifies a time in a period of my development. I would continue to take classes from this after school art studio until I graduated from high school. If it weren't for this teacher I would not have been able to get to college. (Thinking back at it now though, I don't know why I was stressing so much about getting to college. For some reason I thought if I didn't make it to college I would somehow stay a failure for the rest of my life. Even saying so, I don't want to disrespect my parents who were putting up with so much shit from me just to get me through further into life. There were truly many people to thank.)
High School Artworks:
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