Aaliyah Garza
Artist Statement
From ages 4 to 6 I’ve been drawing simply for fun. They were harmless doodles and nonsensical simplistic drawings of houses, cats, and dogs. All of which were made with lackluster Crayola art supplies and paper. At age 10 I had moved to another and later on that fall I was going to start middle school. Six grade wasn’t a very pleasant and fun memory for me. I didn’t much talk to anyone and just kept to myself throughout the three years I was in school. When I was bored I began to doodle in my notebook to pass time while waiting for class to end. I have no idea why, but I really wanted to draw a wolf so I kept trying one to the best of my ability, but it just wasn’t coming out the way I envisioned. I looked up a tutorial online and followed it step-by-step. There was a certain gratification that I gained from drawing that wolf, the gratification and a sense of accomplishment that I hadn’t experienced before. So I kept trying different rules and kept giving them different accessories and appearances. Eventually, I started to draw other animals and giving them weird quirky accessories like overly saturated eye color, markings, emo hair, and really big bushy tails. As I continued drawing throughout my middle school years I finally came to the conclusion that I wanted to do this as a profession.
Graphic communication wasn’t necessarily the first career choice I had in mind but I gradually grew to want to pursue it. I have always been a simplistic and forward person. I do think that there is immense adequacy and charm to simplicity and how when done right the most simplistic designs can stick with you forever. I feel that graphic designing is one of the more complicated and immersive career fields out there because in order to be great at graphic designing you have to learn all the rules before you can break them in your illustrations.
