About me
My name is Sarah Wheeler, and I am a Junior-year transfer student at San Jose State University. I transferred from Las Positas College, and I have lived in the Bay Area for my entire life. Some hobbies that I indulge in are spending time with friends, seeing live music, being outside, and drawing. Since I was a young child, I have always held a strong passion for all types of art forms, whether it was painting, drawing, coloring, etc. While in high school, I started taking art seriously, mainly focusing on traditional art mediums like colored pencil and paint. In my senior year of high school I enrolled in an AP Art course, where I earned a 5 on my portfolio. When entering college, I transitioned into digital mediums like Adobe platforms and ProCreate. While traditional art may sometimes be confined to a physical space, the boundless ability that digital platforms have to reach unlimited audiences intrigued me. Although I still hold a love for traditional mediums, I realized I want to pursue digital media and am excited to expand my knowledge and creativity.
The reason I have a love for art is because it is so dynamic and ever-changing. It can be anything I want it to be, and is a way of expressing myself. As somebody who often struggles writing on paper, art is my way of conveying my emotions and thoughts to viewers with imagery rather than words. When creating my own art, I usually make pieces personal to myself, whether it is an emotion I'm feeling or something I'm curious to explore. As a child, my inspiration to create art came from both my surroundings and my favorite movies. I would obtain blank sheets of paper, and try my best to replicate cartoons and images found in my room. Since most of my current art focuses on realism, I find inspiration from people, places and things that I love in my life. In my most recent projects as well as in my portfolio, I have experimented more with digital illustration and animation. This has allowed me to explore themes such as memory and identity, and create profound narratives that evoke a sense of curiosity or introspection.
Although I currently focus on digital art mediums rather than traditional, the journey to doing so was not easy. Transitioning into a completely different platform was very intimidating and presented me with many challenges. Venturing far out of my comfort zone to relearn everything I knew about art was difficult for me, but I pushed forward and got more comfortable and confident in myself over time. I now love creating on Adobe, whether it is Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, or Premiere Pro, and I am so excited to continue and grow throughout my profession. In the future, my goal is to pursue a career in a creative digital environment, such as interactive media, design, illustration, animation, creative art director, or anywhere else where I can flourish and collaborate with others who share the same passion and ideas as me. This program is the next phase of my journey, and it will allow me to grow my skills and experience in order to turn my career goals into a reality. I am excited about the chance to contribute my creativity to this community, and immerse myself further into this discipline of endless possibilities and opportunity.