For as Long as I Can Remember...I've Been Drawing

I have been drawing since I was about two, starting by tracing my hand with the help of my mother. We were always drawing together, my mother and I, with me attempting her star and heart doodles as well as the bubble letters in which she wrote my name. And quite often I would ask her to draw Ariel, my favorite Disney Princess, for me so that I could color her in. Again, I was tried to draw my own princesses as I watched her draw Ariel. When I started pre-school at the age of three, one of my favorite activities, of course, was drawing. I must have drawn a lot of people, mostly princesses, because one day my teacher asked my mom if we drew a lot at home (which we did) and told her that for such a young age, she was amazed at the detail I put into my pictures.
I continued to draw in my free time, for my pure enjoyment of it and when we had free time in kindergarten, I drew there too. I can remember one girl asking me for drawing lessons because I drew so well! These drawings would not seem so amazing now, but back then, they were the best drawings we had ever seen. In second grade I started going to Art 101, located on Farmington, just a couple buildings north of Bates. It was there that my art skills began to flourish. It started with the simple face of a character of my choice. I chose Ariel (Big surprise there, right?). I can remember Scott, the owner, showing me for the first time of many how to get the basic shape of your drawing down first. I can remember watching and noting in my mind the way he sketched, just dark enough for it to be visible on paper and just light enough so when erased, no one would ever know the lines had been there to guide me. After that I went on to drawing in more detail, like where her eyes would be and the way her hair is shaped, afloat in the non-visible water. With some help from Scott, and probably a few others who worked at Art 101 at the time, I had drawn Ariel pretty well and it was time to add color. First I had to trace over every line with a black Sharpie and erase all pencil marks beneath. Scott then had me add marker, red for her hair, a peach color for skin and so on. And these markers were not just mere Crayola markers, I don’t actually know what kind they were, but they were much better than I had ever used at school or home. After that, I learned how to shade. Start dark with your color pencil and get lighter as you go until it fades into the color of the marker (you always use a color pencil slightly darker than the color of your marker). Once I had done that, I was finished and Scott had me sign it.
Since then my drawing skills have blossomed. As I grew older, I began to do much, much more on my own. About a year ago, Scott decided that I was ready to actually draw a person, a real person. Something I have waited for since the day I started. I chose a picture of Audrey Hepburn and started to work on it at art. It took me a while and it was done in pencil, when I finished it…Scott thought it was so good, he wanted to keep it to hang up in Art 101, with all the other amazing pictures done by students who have gone there. Of course I let him keep it, for having a picture hanging up there is another thing I had always worked towards.