I drew a lot as a child but that’s not the interesting part. As a child I drew like any average child did. Circles for hands, scribbles for hair. Very average. But I didn’t care, I kept drawing anyway. It was fun and I liked to make things up. In fact I was considered to have an overactive imagination.
Things changed that one day in 7th grade. I was minding my business, drawing on the side of my paper as my teacher was well... teaching. Two girls in the class happened to notice me drawing. The one came up and took my paper to see. I felt very overwhelmed at this. I had maybe one friend and appreciated my space. However this girl said that she loved to draw and was excited to see someone else like her. It would be rude to deny her that so I didn't protest.
Her excitement waned quickly as she looked at my paper. Next came the critiques... they were not constructive. They tore apart the forms and referred to them as childish and even began drawing things to compare how their drawings were better than mine. So naturally I got frustrated and became determined to prove them wrong. After that I spent months looking up tutorials, buying anime art books, asking another student for help in order to learn how to draw. At this time my dad and I watched anime together so that was the art style I was determined to learn. 3 months later one of the girls admitted to me that I had improved and was better than her. All according to plan. (I'm kidding I don't believe in comparisons like that).
After that I continued to learn art but this time for myself. I enrolled in studio art in high school as well as graphic design. These classes taught me many valuable lessons such as composition and gesture drawings. However I hated the oil painting section due to the lack of time that I had to work with this completely new medium and at the time I was more focused on wanting to create comics that oils seemed frustrating. Especially when it came time to the second painting and we had to build our own canvas and then oil paint. Not only that but paint a landscape when I had been focused on people for all this time. I was not into doing all that.
After graduating from high school I got a job working for an airlines with hopes of travel. I did get to travel for some time but in 2020 things were shut down and while I still had to go to work there wasn’t much work to be done. So I decided it was time to try oil painting again. This time I had my own timeframe to work on it and plenty of videos to learn from. I was thankful for the lesson I had taken in school since it helped me to have a familiarity with the medium making it less daunting to start.
I like to think that Madison's Scribbles is founded in resilience and I hope that my artwork reflects that. Hopefully the dreamy whimsical scenes speak to you.
