Senior Year Visual Arts

Enrolling at the Boston Arts Academy was the best thing I have ever accomplished. Attending school at BAA has dramatically improved my skills as an artist and scholar. I learned an important thing is life, which is to balance these two very important subjects. I have also learned to better by art by incorporating mixed medias, good compositions, strong value, and having a concept. All of these techniques helped me to glide through my high school years; once I had the guidelines down I had started to drift off into my own style and techniques. I love to design images to be printed onto images. Now I produce custom, hand-painted shirts, hats, and shoes, for friends and myself. When I design something first I have to look at the surface that it will be put onto. That is where it starts for me. Everything is a blank canvas for me. Walking down the street past plain doors gets my creativity going. I immediately start thinking about designs for that door. I draw out multiple sketches and mock-ups to try out varied compositions and colors, then choose one and get to work. I get inspired by practically anything; ordinary, every day objects, people, and history. I have a need to design and create things because I have too many ideas in my head and if I don’t get them out I fear I will lose them.

I hope to create my own clothing line in the near future. In this line it will encompass all of my designs and ideas and I would like to have other designers working for me as well. I am a person who really values the concept of characters. On a given week I come up with 4-5 new characters, in this way Sam Flores heavily influences me, He lives in California and has work in a store called Upper Play Ground. My characters are similar to his in the way that the body is either over exaggerated or under exaggerated. I hope to use many of my characters in the clothing line I want to create.