Greetings, They call me Brit, or T-Mac

[Brit Taylor]

Hello folks, I’m going to say this first that I’m glad to see you here. Art is very important to me and it always made me sad that more people didn’t enjoy it. It’s a need, a craving, a more potent want than anything else in this world (save, the love of my children).

I’m 34 years old and I’ve been drawing since first I could put a crayon in my mouth. I was told that art was not a profession and my family had loved my art but they refused to support me on any level in broaching art as a career. They did it out of love, make no mistake, it’s easy to worry for the professional advancement of your family. That said, art was always a hobby, something cool I could do, for many years. I joined the military because I had no way to afford college on any level and it has been an eye-opening experience. Truthfully, if I had gone to art college, I don’t think I would have had these other experiences that have formed me into the person I am today… and that would have been very sad, because I like who I am and what I’ve seen.

I spent my first year with the Air Force saving my tiny amount of money to buy my first tablet, thinking that it would make me a good artist. I got it, a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet bundled with Corel’s Painter X. The program was so advanced and difficult to use, I just about quit drawing because I couldn’t understand anything.

If you’re wondering, expensive tools do not make you better.

Years later, I was 26, and I saw one (free) YouTube video that changed my life forever on how I approached drawing and painting. I pulled out that tablet, got myself into OpenCanvas 1.1 (Which is freeware) and set to work. I still don’t think the drawings from then are professional grade, but it was the most advancement I have EVER experienced. I was learning how to learn how to art. With just a little free encouragement from the internet (videos, speed drawings) and with Prokopenko providing a lot of real, REAL instruction (for free), I learned so much about art.

The Lexicon, Render, Value, Hue, Shade, Edge, Gesture… Methods of practice… none of this had ever made sense to me because these were words I never understood. Dictionaries weren’t helpful, they didn’t share many of the same words, but I was really determined to keep at it and to try and understand. I had an amazing conversation with Steve Argyle, who reviewed my portfolio, and I decided I was going to really go for it.

I don’t like spending money but I really do feel that the resources on this website are helpful and so I want to give it a shot.

I’ve completed my 13th year in the US Air Force and I spend a lot of time traveling, deploying… and then also drawing. I hope to continue my self-education through the next decade to market myself after military retirement but I am aware that I can work two jobs at once. Once upon a time, someone told me they would pay for my drawings and I am grateful for the encouragement they provided. I still crave more learning and even though I have less of a struggle to go to an actual university or college for Fine Art, the very idea that I work full time and travel a lot has been a concept no one seemed to get.

The opportunity to work on my own time with legitimate, standard, and advanced training was something I had to jump at. In the mean time, I’m still looking for a University that will allow a non-standard education (distance learning, lecture by phone) to earn that expensive piece of paper that says I have arrived… Or… just to arrive. I’d be cool with that to land my job in art, I’ve spent my whole life waiting.

Adore to all of you, and thanks for reading. I appreciate you and what you do and never stop moving that pencil or that brush, or that digital stylus.

o7 Brittney Taylor-McMurphy (Brit Taylor, the Illustrator)

 

List of Equipment

Wacom Intuos 3 (No longer in production) – Service life of 12 years without falter or failure, I brought this baby with me on 5 deployments and around 23 countries

Wacom Intuos Pro (The next gen of Tablets) – In Service, 1 deployment, 6 countries so far (it’s the same drawing area, but the tablet is smaller, so much easier to bring around!)

Photoshop CC (2020)

Corel Painter 2020

Open Canvas 8

Stolen Office Paper, a Mechanical Pencil (I’m such a barbarian)

[Joshua Jacobo]

Thank you for your service and welcome to the community. Those mysterious terms that you mention that get thrown around really are everything. Hopefully here you will get the confidence and skill with the fundamentals you’ve been looking for to really take your art to the next level. 🙏

[Josseline Jeria]

Hi Brit 🙂

Thanks for sharing with us a bit about yourself and your art journey so far. With regard to having to get a degree and that paper, there are many examples of artists who have made art their full time career and are self-taught 🙂 it is absolutely possible. Being self-taught can be tricky as all the direction, allocated work load and accountability all relies on yourself, but with passion and creativity, many of those things can be resolved, albeit not perfectly and linearly, but it does and will get better with more practice and time.

Which course/s are you undertaking and planning to take this year?

All the best!

[Author]

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