I have been drawing since I was a very little girl. (There I am - a very little girl - in the photo above, with my brother!). (Note that I am the girl, not the boy - "Jean" being a girl's name in this country; I believe that some who come to my site have thought I was a man because Jean is a man's name in other places!)

Drawing came naturally to me as far back as I can remember, and became my preferred way of expressing myself creatively, as I was always very shy.

After high school I went to work as a secretary and a statistical typist, and I was always the office "artist" -- which usually just meant drawing "political" cartoons (goings-on in the office). When my children were small, I did artwork for their schools, drawing illustrations for school bulletins, and doing other jobs that required drawing. I also designed programs for "little theater" companies, and after taking lessons from an excellent calligrapher, I began making invitations for ourselves and for friends. I even carved wooden signs in those days, with people's names on them, to put in front of their houses. I often visited art museums (I was lucky to be living in the Los Angeles area at that time, and I was also lucky that it wasn't expensive to visit the museums in those days).

When my children were young teenagers, I enrolled at Pasadena City College and majored in art; at that time, I was no longer married, and I have never remarried -- I am a person who thoroughly enjoys my own company, to tell you the truth. It's not that I don't like other people, and in fact I very much enjoy communicating with - and have a strong need to communicate with - many other people; it's just that I communicate not primarily for the purpose of being "sociable," but for the purpose of a real exchange of thoughts, ideas, outlook, suggestions, important or otherwise useful information and/or help and so forth - that is, a real, substantial "exchange" rather than superficial social contact that has no purpose other than to make social contact.

Self-Portrait - Conte Crayons
Back in those days

I then started working nights teaching English as a Second Language, then moved to another area where I enrolled at a teacher's college and took the full course required to be able to teach Spanish at the high school level; however, this is when I came to the conclusion that I had been following the wrong path for years and years, ever since I left art behind.

It was, above all I guess, an embarrassing decision to make, since I had just "wasted" several years pursuing the wrong vocation, and I was not getting any younger -- but this was my last chance to make the right choice, and so I did. I did not begin teaching high school, and in fact the idea of doing so seemed very repellent to me. Instead, I went back to art, and I had to start all over again as a "beginner" -- I began by drawing with pencil, then changed to Conte crayons, and recently I started working with pen and ink, a medium I have wanted to try for many years, and I do love it and

intend to continue with it "forever" (as well as with Conte crayons for as long as I can find them and afford them), and I fully intend to paint in oils - small paintings, I believe, though not "miniatures."

Subjects that interest me

As a person who has many interests, I find that I am intrigued by many different subjects when it comes to drawing. I have tried drawing small animals and birds, people, still-lifes, old cars (and trucks and tractors), landscapes ... I guess that about covers everything. It's hard to say what subjects I like best to draw, as sometimes I feel like drawing a person, sometimes I feel like drawing an outdoor scene, sometimes I feel like drawing an old truck, etc. -- What I draw usually depends on what grabs me and asks me to draw it.

I love "streetscapes" even more than natural landscapes although I love natural scenes, too -- I like to be in them (I like hiking, for instance, in such places), or if I draw them, I like to show a view that indicates that people have been there, or could be there - not because they're into Extreme Sports but because they were living and/or working there in the first place or had to go through, or by, or climb up, or down, that place in order to get where they were going -- or, if they happened to live nearby or be visiting there and it was convenient to climb or walk to that area - in other words, if it were a place where people belonged; in fact, what appeals to me more than nature alone is the relationship between humans and nature - how they affect each other (how they get along together; the effects they have on each other).

If you would like to read more about what I think about the subject of art, you can visit my new blog, which is called THINKING ABOUT ART.

If you're interested in why I draw pictures, you can read about it here.