Faces Among Us

The Turkish word, Meraki means, “The soul, creativity or love put into something; The essence of yourself that is put into your work.” I recently noticed this definition displayed at my gym and I think it accurately describes my stage of life right now.

A prominent feature of my artwork is drawing portraits of people. A lot of time in the evenings is just sitting on the couch practicing various sketches, not necessarily selling. However, I have an Etsy shop and I am tinkering with the idea to expand with even more original artwork in the near future. The road to art is not always a straight shot. Sometimes I feel like I’ve stumbled upon something that couldn’t possibly make me this happy. I started pencil sketching on a daily basis a little bit more than two years ago. Pretty soon afterwards, I picked up my pencil and decided to hone in on people mainly because a person’s expression often tells a story. I wanted to be able to convey that perspective through hand-drawn art and write stories that went along with those pictures. This is seen throughout my Vocal Media blog under the pen name Hannah Marie. Some of my initial art perceptions most definitely came from my Grandad, who throughout his working years was an advertisement artist. He gave me my very first art lesson when I was a young teen.

Art lessons continued throughout high school, but afterwards, I just let my art fade into the background, unless I was demonstrating a lesson teaching elementary school students! After my Grandad passed away, I hung several pieces of his art collection in my house. I seriously considered what he taught me and gradually developed that talent. I took a course from Sktchy on how to draw people. My first few attempts at facial features was not successful, but it surely showed me the basics of focusing in on human expression.

There were several other influences that pointed me toward drawing the human face. Several different inspirations trickled into my life, even when I wasn’t expediting them. I ran across a dove ad that had just come out, back in 2013, and I couldn’t believe that this was an advertisement for facial creams and soaps! Come to find out, Dove had a lot of personal ads like this, but that was the first one that I remember seeing. I thought the artist, a forensic artist by trade, was extremely talented and I began to dream that I might reach that level of creativity. I remember thinking, That is amazing! as each of the portraits was revealed. When the muse’s reactions were shown, they planted a seed in my mind that I would love to be able to draw something like that, which touches a person that way.

After that I began to see the world a little differently. A few years back, I visited a small town in California for a weekend writing conference. I decided to take a walk around and saw several types of artwork set up on the boardwalk area one Sunday afternoon. I asked a couple locals about the process and they informed me that it was something done almost weekly. I started to look more into other examples of street art. I found a YouTube video advertising an artist in Santa Ana, Brian Peterson, who began drawing people who were homeless near his community. He used those casual opportunities to get to know someone and to incorporate their personality into his finished artwork. He has since then developed a non-profit organization called “Faces of Santa Ana”.

My favorite medium is pencil, whether that be digital or physical. I like the accessibility of sending it to my phone when I draw digitally, but then enjoy the sensation of hearing the pencil scratch life into the paper when working in my notebook. Most of my favorite portraits are done in pencil. However, recently I’ve attempted other mediums and sketches just to practice additional creative forms.

No matter where I end up going with my art dreams in the future, I hope to share people as they are when I construct a portrait, whether it be laughing, confused, frustrated, joyful, or just serene. I want to show that everyone has something to share.