Almost Summer!

One more week until my summer begins! I am so looking forward to getting back to my art. I don't know what I was thinking, going to school full time and trying to work full time! The good news is I have discovered alot about myself and realized that college is not for me! I do have a degree already, I thought I wanted to go back to get my certification to be an art teacher. What I found is that I am an artist pure and simple. While I love working with kids, I don't have to be a full time certified teacher to do that. Knowing as much as I do about the profession of public school teaching, both my parents and my husband are public school teachers, you would think I would have been scared away from it long ago. A big part of my decision came from writing a research paper for my English class on the No Child Left Behind Act. I didn't know much about it until then and that was enough to push me off the fence of uncertainty.
I had already been considering my motives for becoming a teacher; trying to please my parents, feeling like I don't contribute enough to our finances, feeling like a bad person because I only have an Associates degree. I'm not doing it for me!
Why should I care if I'm the first one in my family to NOT earn a BA degree? I have known since I was 13 that I wanted to be a professional artist. Being an artist is the only "job" I've had that I can work at for 80 hours a week and not feel like I've worked at all. I guess the only problem is that I don't earn an hourly wage! I guess that is besides the point because I am doing what I love and I need to stop letting other people make me feel like I don't work. I work harder at being an artist because it's my dream and I love what I do. After all, isn't that most important? For me it is! Life is too short!

Below is my first finished piece in months! I just finished it today and boy am I happy! It took waaay too long to get this one done. It is a commission piece. This is a pencil drawing of a Mata Ortiz pottery piece. I still have two more drawings to do for this commission, then on to another commission, a portrait.