I love to draw, it is my main hobby and favorite pastime by a long shot, and probably the only thing I’m pretty good at. My love for drawing and writing stories and things like that has come from a lot of places, but if I had to really nail down what formed my passion for drawing, the most important part would have to be my grandpa. My grandpa is an illustrator, he mostly draws children’s books, but he has worked on a ton of other things as well. Whether it’s professional works for a job, or personal drawings or paintings he makes on his own time for fun. 

When I was little, anytime my parents went out and had to leave me and my brother alone for the night, they would pack both of our little bags and ship me and my brother up to our grandparents house. We always looked forward to this since our grandma and grandpa’s house was pretty much anything a 6-year-old could ever want. They would let us order pizza, stay up all night, watch movies, and consume enough sugar to cause irreparable damage to a blue whale’s heart. But surprisingly, none of this was as important to my small undeveloped little brain as what I would get to do the day after these sleepovers. My grandpa and I would get in his car, drive down to the art foundry in Saint Charles Main Street, and I would get to walk into his drawing studio, sit down and just draw. 

The walls were lined with drawings, watercolor, oil painting, sketches, sculptures, art of any and all mediums coming together to replace what was once a boring white office and morph it into a giant color filled mess of creativity. He had books laid out that he had drawn years ago, scattered everywhere, tools for drawing and creating anything, and the best part was I got to see all of it and draw alongside someone who’s in the art industry. Every time I got to walk into that room, it was like I got to step inside the mind of someone who had far more experience than I did, and in a way, I was. 

It dawned on me that every piece of art that had been made that I was looking at was something that he thought about, every picture was an idea that he had sat down and recorded by drawing it. The whole experience was very inspiring and not only gave me more experience drawing and creating things myself, but it also taught me to look at art a different way. Not only as a cool looking picture, sculpture, painting, etc., but a little piece of a person’s mind, a thought they had that they believe is so good, they have to show it to the world. I hope that one day maybe I will get to do the same and maybe even get to show my ideas to the world, and my grandpa.