About Dorothy
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Name: Dorothy T. Rose
Age: 24
e-Mail sheringford@hotmail.com
I started drawing when I was very young. I don't remember most of it, but my mother tells me that I would sit at our bar for hours on end with nothing to occupy me but a stack of paper and a large bucket of crayons. I remember having a favourite crayon. It was very short and red and curved in a way that made me think of a hotdog. Pretty much everything else I don't remember until I was several years older.
I used to write silly little stories when I little. I would start with no plot and no outline and just start writing. The act of writing the story was how I figured out what happened. Later I would add pictures to illustrate the story. Sometimes the pictures helped tell the story. Sometimes they were what created the story and the text came later. I still have a couple of these stories, complete with intricately clothed stick figures or horses dressed like princes.
I don't know why, but my passion in art was horses for a very long time. Being left handed, I usually drew them from the side, facing right. I always started with the head and was most comfortable working my way from right to left across the page. It came naturally. Unfortunately, though the technique was natural, drawing a horse was not. My first attempts looked more like giraffs than horses. They went well with the stick figures and giant birds that I doodled on everything, including my desk.
Later, as I began to fine tune my skills and my horses stopped looking so much like giraffs and my people began to have a little flesh to fill out their clothing, my mother introduced me to art books. My first ones were "Drawing" and "Drawing 2" from Walter Farley, and "How to Draw Horses" by Carrie A. Snyder. Almost overnight, my skill in depicting horses improved. I had never imaged the wonderous help that basic shapes and simple guidelines could be. My drawing had always been permanent from the moment the pencil hit the paper. Now, I realised that some lines could be drawn lightly for the purpose of being erased later. Such a phenominal thought!
By the time I was in my mid-teens, I was finally ready to attempt a little shading. I had my oldest brother's old art pencils, including the amasing 6B pencil, and a few from various art kits by this time. Again, I attempted to copy Snyder's instructions, but was sadly disappointed with the results. However, I badly wanted to be able to create beautiful shaded art like I was seeing everywhere, so I kept trying. The key came from Walter Farley and his concept of erasing out the whites from a charcoal-blackened sheet of paper. Charcoal is very forgiving and, before long, I had a grasp on the idea of shading and needed only to hone my skills. I was soon looking for black and white horse related images on which to practice and I found them everywhere. My schoolwork was in greater peril of being decorated than ever before, but it was not long until I created my first notable piece of art: an image of Citation copied from a very small photograph in a library book. Shortly thereafter, I received my first commission: a shaded portrayal of a paint pony, sold for a mere $15.
About this time, I also illustrated my first book, creating four images for Frank Peretti's "This Present Darkness". Ironically, there was not a single horse in the whole collection, but only people and angels, whose anatomy I had largely ignored all these years.
Soon after, I began to experiment with paints. My mother had taken me to a few art lessons (where I acquired the sadly out-of-print book, "Drawing Horses with Sam Savitt") and I had developed a fascination for oil paints. Unfortunately, the lessons did not last long and oil paints are expensive in comparison to acrylics, so when I had to return to my own unguided experiments, I attempted to make my fast-drying acrylics work like oils. It was an excersise in frustration that developed a new love for my Prismacolor pencils, especially when mixed with ink.
Finally, it was time for me to attend college. In retrospect, I try not to be embarrassed by my pitiful application for an art scholarship. I can only thank my professors for not saying much of anything. After all those years of drawing, I was still so very untrained that my best efforts were far below my level of acceptance now. Yet, the professors were kind and patient enough, slowly reintroducing me to oils, revealing secrets and ideas that I had never dreamed existed, and guiding me through the steps in creating illustrations and working with a client. Though my skills in art improved only minimally, I did learn many techinical things related to art and acquired a much treasured knowledge of Photoshop.
Finally, in my senior year at the university, I discovered DeviantART. Why my skills have improved so drastically in the two years since, I am uncertain, but I can only guess that the wealth of inspiration found there had something to do with it. I must thank Cynthia Poirier-Gravel and Adele Lorienne for introducing me to the concept of borders in my art and the idea of modern art nouveau; Jenny Dolfen for showing me the value of line shading in sketches and inspiring me to create more and more realistic lineart; Marta Dahlig for sharing the wonders of minutely detailed digital paintings and revealing a surprisingly simple way to portray embroidery; and Stefany Belisle for proving that realistic portraits are possible to create and that a touch of the gothic can be a pleasing break from realism. These artists and many others have indirectly and, in most cases, unknowingly passed on knowledge simply by sharing their work. I am forever indebted!
I would be vain, indeed, to think that my learning is complete. In fact, to find such to be true would be very disappointing for I am not as proficiant as I would like to be. Where I will ultimately go from here is unknown, but I will always continue to challenge myself to greater artistic feats. I believe I have the potential to paint like Michelangelo and sketch like Devinci, but I know these skills will not come without countless hours of practice, anguish, stress, and fretting. All good things have their price.
~D~