Ana Gonzalez, a junior Fashion student, barely notices the hours passing by as she’s too focused on the finishing touches of the drawing she’s been working on all day. As she finishes up, she takes a step back to admire what she had just created. “Not bad for a digital art beginner.” She says to herself.  

Ana started her art journey at the age of 3 years old, her first medium being paint. She would paint anything and everything she thought needed some color. 

“I remember always getting in trouble for painting and scribbling all over the walls in my bedroom,” Gonzalez said. “The white looked so bland and boring to me, and I had some markers in hand, so I went to town.”  

The older and more serious she grew, the better she got. She upgraded from paint to watercolor, which is not an easy medium to work with as it spreads quickly across the paper and isn’t very opaque, so you have to build up the color. Gonzalez also got really good at expressing her emotions through her art. 

“ My main motivation was to showcase my feelings since I wasn’t very good at expressing myself, so I used my drawings to tell others if I was happy, sad, angry, etc,” she said. “I am more of a visual learner, so it was easy for me to use drawing and painting as my form of communication.” 

Gonzalez finds drawing realistically to be her main weakness. She says that whenever she tries to attempt this style, it never really looks like the image she is referencing. Her art style is more cartoonish so drawing realistic body proportions and facial features/expressions is not in her ball park.

“I feel that realism is a perfect art style; all your mistakes and errors are easily noticeable and it’s not very forgiving,” she said. “I am already a perfectionist, so doing realism would stress me out. But I would say that I’m pretty good at being able to use references in my style and effectively express different emotions through what I create.”

She plans on redoing some past artwork to see how much she’s improved. “There’s this one drawing in my room that I did based on some mushrooms I saw online that I really want to redo, just because of how terrible the proportions are; I see so much wrong with it,” Gonzalez said.”

There is one piece that Ana holds close to her heart, and no matter how many times she redoes it, the first version holds sentiment value.  “It says if you’re always eating lemons, your mouth will always be sour. What that means to me is if you’re always feeding yourself with bad thoughts you’ll never be happy. I make sure to always keep that quote in mind to remind myself to try and always look at the bright side,” she said. 

Gonzalez has done commissions before for some friends. She plans on starting an art Instagram to promote her work and hopefully increase her commissions. “I can make anything that is asked of me from anybody,” Gonzalez said “I usually charge whatever they are willing to pay, but I never go any lower than $5. Currently, I’m working on a commission for $35; I’m painting their license plate.” 

In the future, she hopes to turn this hobby of hers into a career by becoming an animator. “ I would love to work for a big company like Disney or Pixar and create something monumental. I find the art and complexities of animation to be fascinating., and get in trouble of course.”