for as long as i can remember, i wanted to be an artist and a creative.
it started with late nights… laying in bed with my great-grandmother, Dora Lee Ray. she’d draw pictures of houses and people while telling me stories about her childhood, helping to raise and birth her siblings. not completing grades past the 8th. getting married to a man she met on the Louisiana-Mississippi state line. she was the reason that i learned to be an artist and a creativity.
before now, i would write my articles with ai instead of using my own words because it seemed easier to do. but, now… writing in my own voice feels better than the ai words that seemed to generate my ideas but not in my own voice.
as a child, my mother would experience me writing and drawing on her apartment walls and bedsheets with red Fashion Faire lipsticks, one of her favorite things in her makeup collection. she would later encourage me to be my creative self. watching as i drew on poster boards and 8.5x11inch pieces of paper. she’s catch me later writing an inappropriate story in a notebook, trying to be like the girls in my 8th graded class.
after my uncle drew either my 3rd or 5th grade school pictures, i got interested in realism art. i’d model what would later become my digital paintings in photoshop after women that i knew personally. on paper, i would try to emulate the images to look like the images i was copying. but, nothing was better than those digital paintings.
i learned to draw on my own. i learned graphic, print and web design by watching and studying graphic and print designers i’d met on message boards and MySpace. i studied those i wanted to be like before eventually before developing my own design style. a style that would later become versatile across industries.
now, i’m in a place where creating art means more than making a living from my art. it’s moreso about creating an impact. i desire to create my own after-school programs teaching children how to turn their art into income where ai would not be enough to withstand the industries that others mean to use it as a way to take over.
yes, i use ai to create graphics and designs, but… nothing takes the place of my traditional skills as a designer. because i can create my own designs without the use of ai, using ai to add to my skills is nothing. it takes my skills in design & makes them tools that can help me to create things that my mind didn’t know would be possible.
what do i use ai for? creating logo designs that i can mix with traditional design skills to develop one-of-a-kind brand identity systems. developing stock images that i can use to develop photo manipulations with the use of photographed images from stock image websites to complete these images. i mostly create models that i see in my imagination… typing prompts that generate images of models that would give Black and Brown women representation in art and media.
why is the starving artist trope dead? because artists are no using art as a means of creating for pay. they’re creating movements that are generate impact over income. they are using their skills to develop movements that will outlast them even when they are gone. something their children can pick up the mantle on and continue their legacies outside of the projects that thehy developed while their children were watching.
i have 3 children of my own. 2/3 of those children choose to develop their art skills while the 3rd seeks to build the sports legacy that his father instilled in him. he was a basketball star before he learn his abc’s.
i went from designing websites as journeys and worlds that took people to wherever their imagination could take them. as a teen, i later moved those talents to teenspot and MySpace, using my talents to make money from the internet. it helped me to find my first internship as a graphic, print and website designer for a tech company based in Bourbonnais, IL. that opportunity led to a position teaching small business owners how to build their own websites and later working with the Kankakee County Convention and Visitors’ Bureau to draw in tourists and locals to landmarks, museums and sights they’d never seen before.
i can always make money from my skills. but, where can i leave an impact on my community? that is the question that must be answers. this is bigger than money. their is about inspiring future generations of artists and creatives to go after their art goals and using it to bring something different to the communities they live in.