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I built a strong foundation in art from taking art courses in school. In high school, I took AP Studio Art where I created a traditional art portfolio consisting of 24 traditional artworks. In this portfolio, I focused on self-portraiture that conveyed both personal and social real life issues. My art teacher, who was one of my biggest traditional art influences, pushed me to explore ways to convey different feelings through color and composition while focusing on the same subject that was myself. It was with some of those works that I applied to ICAM visual arts at UC San Diego and got admitted. However, while my art education facilitated my growth as an artist, my interest in art is not confined to the courses that were offered in school.
 

In my own time, I decided to pursue character art and design. Around middle school, I taught myself how to do digital art with AutoDesk Sketchbook and later started using Clip Studio Paint which I still use today. I was inspired by a concept art book for World of Warcraft which I borrowed from my cousin. I later fell in love with the character illustrations for many other games such as Genshin Impact and FFXIV. I practice character design by creating original characters, also known as OCs. Creating OCs is a very effective way to practice combining character design and storytelling. The most important part of my growth was a small art community that I helped create in my Discord server. Here, we can comfortably post our drawings of original characters and receive feedback. We have also held art collaborations where we created OCs based on a theme, such as circus, and showcased them together. Our close-knit group consists of people with varying experience, from middle school students to professionals in the art field so I was able to learn about the art industry from the professionals while inspiring younger artists with my work. This also taught me about teamwork among artists such as how to give and receive feedback and suggestions and compliment each other’s art styles.
 

Starting from the foundational techniques and portraiture practice that I did in my art courses, I was able to venture into character design and illustration. I expanded my passion by starting an online community of people who shared my interest and participated in collaborations. I am always looking for ways to push my boundaries with new character designs and character artwork.