I used to borrow my church’s digital camera back in high school. It was a Sony Mavica that fit about 10-15 pictures on a 3 1/2 inch floppy disc that went into the side of the camera. This camera changed my life. I would fill up the floppy disc, then copy the pictures onto our home computer (a Compaq Presario, high tech at the time), then go back and take more pictures. Sometimes I would carry more than one disc, but most of the time it was the tedious process of snapping, transferring, snapping, transferring…on and on. I didn’t know how easy it would be in the future, all I knew was that I could instantly create a photograph and share it with my friends.
I wouldn’t say it began my love of creating art (most wouldn’t really call what I was doing art), but it definitely got my juices flowing early on. I would use the photos I took to make flyers for my band and other silly things that I would print off and put up around my room. I loved it. When I was 17 or 18 I got a digital camera that really changed the game. I’d spend hours in my room learning how to use Adobe Photoshop, still making band flyers, T-shirts, pictures for my Xanga blog, whatever I could.
Then Myspace came around and I really started getting into the art of design. With Myspace I would change the layout and look of my profile page at least once a week. Then I started doing it for friends’ profiles, too. Pretty soon I was spending sleepless nights learning how to do simple HTML coding and really getting into designing small things in Photoshop.
Now, almost 10 years later I’m a whole lot better than I was then…but my skills are still juvenile compared to the work I see from many of my graphic designer friends. It’s to the point that I would say design is much more of a hobby than a skill I have mastered. I can hold my own with simple things, but I haven’t really learned a ton of new skills in the past few years.
Recently I’ve really been taking advantage of my free time by learning new techniques, using different tools and challenging myself. Like I said in my last post, I’ve started using a sketch book for the first time so I can really learn the fundamentals of art and composition. I think that change of perspective will really help me see things I never did before. Already I’m seeing improvements of my drawing capabilities, which is in turn helping with my personal and work design projects.
I really look back on those days of walking around with the Sony Mavica fondly. I didn’t now how awful it looked, I just knew that I could create something immediately and I loved it. Later in life I hope I can look back the period in life I’m going through now and think the same thing. Inspiration keeps coming, and I’ll keep strengthening my skills until I can’t go any further.
dylanjamesmorse.wordpress.com 