For my senior project, I will be creating a short story collection with illustrations in varying mediums.

I’ve always loved stories. As a child, I spent car rides telling tales to entertain my younger sister. When I grew older, I filled notebooks with my writing and spent hours reading books in the school library. In high school, I’ve fostered this love by taking several writing workshops to build upon my creative and storytelling skills.

Similarly, art has been an integral part of my life. My grandpa is a painter and when I was younger, I’d often watch as he stood in front of his canvas, brush in hand. I’ve taken studio and 3D classes all four years of high school, and have had the time to experiment with many materials, such as oil paint, clay, charcoal, and ink.

In an honors project this year, I explored the medium of comics and began to think about how to combine art and writing into one cohesive form. My senior project is based on a similar concept–a melding of these two interests. I’ve wanted to write a book for some time now and by creating a collection of short stories, I can break this goal into more manageable pieces. Given a longer stretch of time, I’ll be able to fully devote my energy to my writing. Furthermore, by creating illustrations for each story and the cover image, I can explore mediums that interest me.

My project fills three buckets: creative, experiential, and academic. I’ll be using my artistic and creative writing skills and learning to work on a self-guided project till completion. My project is academic because I’ll be engaging in both the arts and English. To fill my service bucket, I plan to volunteer at a children’s art organization and also deliver food packages with Heart of Dinner (a volunteer service I’ve participated in before).

My measure of success: 

I would consider my project a success if I’ve grown as both an artist and a writer by the end. I want to see how far I can push myself to create art and writing that I can be proud of. Because my project is product-based, I hope to have an edited, revised copy of my work in printed form.