Artwork by JoyAnne Lozano

Just Accident or Not?

An accident, yes an accident led me to be where l am today. I was born with severe health complications so that the only places I went was the doctors office, hospital and home. The only thing take with me or get a hold of was paper and a pencil or pen, so naturally I started drawing.

At first it was gust doodles, the I watched the old anime cartoon Swan Lake and fell in love with the style of the characters. After that I had a clear theme in my drawings-princesses, fantasy settings, dragons, fairies etc.

By the Tim I turned twelve the sever health problems I had had decreased dramatically, to the point that I could function normally. Around that time my parents setup art lessons with a local artist.

It was during that period that I decided that I wanted to be an artist and that I wanted to focus on children’s illustration. So with that in mind when I graduate high school I went to college for commercial art.

During my sophomore year I was hit by a van while on my way back to work after lunch on my bike. After the accident I was not able to continue my education in a traditional way because of a severe brain trauma and continued through a correspondence course by the art institute. Which gave me a good overall foundation for my art.

When I had finished that I was presented with the opportunity to learn a new artistic medium- stained glass. Which made me fall in love with art all over again.

During this time I meet and married my husband. Now seven years and two little girls later I have found myself wanting to improve my abilities again by working on one of my problem areas. Getting the pictures that pop up in my head down on paper. I have all these pictures that I come up with in my head but can’t seem to get them down on paper. Don’t get me wrong give me a picture to work from and I will go to town with it. But give me a piece of blank paper and tell me to pull something out of my head on the fly an I will be agonizing over it for days before getting even a bare sketch of an idea on paper.

I found the Drawing Academy when I was looking around online for resources that could help me. I think that it is setup with a good learning platform and that the free videos are done well an very informative.

I want to win this competition because it will probably be the only way I would be able to afford it right now. Especially with two small girls and paying bills with only my husband working full time while I take care of our girls.

I want people to vote for me because this is something I have wanted to do for a very long time, no just the Drawing Academy but art in general. With everything that I have gone through and dealt with to get to this point I want to keep going an prove that my getting to this point wasn’t just an accident.