Making a Living from Art

Artwork and story from Luke Smith

Hello. My name is Luke Smith.

Hi! My name is Luke Smith. I live on a farm in the middle of nowhere. I started taking art seriously 2 years ago when I was painting with my family and I realized that I really enjoy painting and drawing. Currently, I have a mentor for oil painting named Ryan. Ryan and I met when he was visiting my Dad. He is an amazing oil painter, so I asked if he could teach me. We have been calling every week since then.

Art is a pretty huge part of my life. I work very consistently, doing 1 hour of practice almost every day. I’ve been doing this for the 2 years I’ve been taking art more seriously. During the summers, I have a more extreme schedule, and I do art for a minimum of 3 hours a day.

Although I enjoy doing art, it doesn’t come without its struggles. The majority of the time, I don’t have enough funds to purchase art supplies, and as I live in the middle of nowhere, there are no art lessons I can go to.

I have many goals in art. I want to learn classical realism, to the skill level of well known artists, such as Jeff Watts, Stan Prokopenko, Ivan Aivazovsky, Robert Henri, or Vladimir Mogilevtsev. I want to be able to draw anything, without the need to learn how to draw it. I want to be able to draw portraits with sufficient likeness to the model. Another goal I have is to be able to make a living off of my artwork.

I love the free lessons from Drawing Academy. I have learnt so much, but I know that there is a lot left to learn. I would like to win the course because I can see the value of the lessons, but don’t have the funds to pay for them. My mentor is helpful, but I’m getting to the point where there isn’t much more he can teach me in this field. He will help me spot crucial mistakes, but he can’t really tell me much more than that anymore.

Thank you.

I want to win this Competition and I need your help!