Welcome to Gaia! ::

What inspired you to be an artist? What is the reason you chose art to be your passion, rather than just a school assignment?

I chose art as my passion because I love to create things, I have a fantastic imagination for creation, and love to see my thoughts be brought to life. not to mention I love animated films, and dream of making my own story someday.

I was born blind but was still attracted to color, the feel, taste, sight, and thought of such wonders excited me, I guess I've always been attracted to art, just a my fate ^^

what about you?

Well its starts way back when I was a kid and well dad used to draw alot in his youth. He used to draw/color model cars and even made me and sister posters. My sister had disney related characters and I had all 4 ninja turtles. Anywho as a really young kid I aspired to be as good as him one day and from then I practiced and have always loved art since then.

I've really only been picking up on art, and improving my art in the last year. But I'd say that it's my friends and anime that inspired me to draw. I love the way my friends draw. Each of them has their own unique style, and ways that they draw. It's fascinating watching other draw. Also for anime, I absolutely love the different styles of anime. I've wanted to learn how to draw anime and manga since I started watching and reading different series a couple years ago.

My drawings for a couple years ago look really bad. Though I take into consideration that I've learned what I know already by teaching myself. Studying different styles, poses, clothing designs, and more.

Also Gaia has helped me wanting to become a better artist as well. After I found a couple people I met at an anime convention (Ani-Jam in Fresno, CA almost exactly a year ago), I saw their art, and that they sold their art for gold, even doing RL commissions. I wanted to improve my art and sell it as well. I've done a few commissions already, and feel really happy when people are satisfied by the art I drew for them.

Regardless of that, I'm still learning more and more during each drawing. I usually draw from my own imagination, but use lots of references as well. I cannot draw poses that well, unfortunately, and usually resort to using bases on deviantart. But drawing bases does help me with actually drawing poses myself, so I guess it's not all that bad.

I'm also hoping that I can really improve my art, and then someday work for Gaia, being one of the many artists that works for the site o3o

What inspired me was my uncle, great aunt, and a couple of cousins. All with artistic inclinations, though my great aunt was a wonderful painter.

It's actually difficult for me to know exactly when I started drawing for the fun of it. Pretty much picked up a pencil as a tot and never put it down, metaphorically speaking.
But I do know when I started taking it much more seriously. I had this mentality to be better at what I did in art class than the rest of the kids. I wanted to make my work stand out so much that people could just know it was mine. Pokemon helped a lot with this, too. The whole "PokeMaster" mentality, but applied to art. It was sophomore year in high school that I actually started to observe other artists and learn from them, mostly due to signing up on dA.

I look back on my drawings from then, and I quite frankly think I sucked. That may be my perfectionist mind speaking; which it has a habit of doing, and it's been a lot of the reason why I've been driven to improve. I never really was able to get critique that really helped me until I started posting here on Gaia and getting people pointing out my weak areas. I'm quite thankful for those people, though, hence why I'm here now.
And like Laila, I saw that people were selling their art for gold here. I'd toyed with the idea of actually doing RL commissions, but broke the ice with Gaia commissions first. I gotta say, it helped me immensely with my artist-to-client communication. Now I've done a few RL commissions and I'm always happy to know that someone liked what I created for them.

I never plan to stop learning and improving though. I admire people like dA's Wen-M and the late Hakubaikou(RIP), hoping to one day reach a skill level on par with them.

I hope it doesn't make me a "bad" artist, but I really can't say -- I can't pinpoint a time in my life when I decided to make artwork. I don't remember any particular inspiration. I'm just an observant person. I like experimenting with materials and figures; I like seeing what happens when I put this over there.

Sometimes, too, it's difficult for me to express myself through words or actions. I'm not a vocal person; I have to show how I feel, and art is just the way I do that.

to me drawing is fun and so i started to draw wen i was little and people loved my art. then i wanted to improve the art by shading at 3rd grade. at 4th grade, i continue the shading. at 5th grade, i taught myself into shading with colors....... i dont really no, i just like drawing

My recent interest in art is more academic than leisurely. I'm not an art student, but I want to acquire good drawing/painting/art skills and be exposed to the critique and knowledge that art communities and art students have.

But to be quite honest I don't really think of myself as an artist.

I started drawing ever since I could pick up a writing utensil. I remember in preschool I spent a lot of my time drawing flowers. There was a teacher there who would draw the same scene over and over again for the kids. It was like a bunny in the grass near a house. Now that I think fo it, I don't know why she always drew the same thing, maybe because thats all she knew how? I don't know but I was like wow, I wish I can draw that as well as her. I guess I've always been labeled the artist in my class ever since I was tiny. My sister always said my pictures were ugly though and I remember thinking when I was in elementary school that all I wished was to get as good as her. In high school, not that many people knew I drew just because it was such a huge school. My friends always looked at my doodles I did in class during lunch time though xP It was weird too because in high school my parents and relatives started noticing that I drew pictures and after getting compliments from their friends on my artwork, they started thinking I was artistic. No one at home even thought I had any talent before then (my sister was aware of my love for art but I wasn't as good as her). Even though now I don't get so many compliments on my artwork like in elementary/middle school, I still love to draw. I don't know, I just love drawing something and thinking it turned out great and being proud of it =)