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"Art and I have been intertwined for nearly all of my life. Although the subjects of my pieces have varied, my passion for art and sports has always remained consistently strong. In viewing my website, I will take you on a journey as I explore new art media and platforms on my way to perfecting my craft."
Pre-School
The "M" filled with a stick figure of my mother and me represented my first attempts at drawing. This still makes me laugh to see how simple my early drawings were.
Kindergarten
The "Y" has a stick figure cat drawing and a roof with a chimney silhouette because this is a representation of my CASA award winning snow globe paper collage.
1st Grade - 4th Grade
The shark inside the letter "A" represents how my first attempts at realistic drawings were based on animals. I learned and practiced using a drawing instruction book.
My dad would always look at my drawings and say "add some color," and so eventually I did. Although coloring took extra time, it did improve my drawings.
Frog_chalk
Pelican_Chalk
Rain Forest Animals
Frog_chalk
1/5
4th Grade
The letter "R" has a Haystack Rock silhouette inside because that was one of my best landscape pieces of art. As I became more interested in art, I expanded my skills beyond drawing and into other art mediums.
3rd Grade - 7th Grade
The letter "T" has a stick figure dunking a basketball in order to represent my new found love for making animations.
The more familiar I got with Powerpoint and Keynote, the more detailed and complex my animations became. After years of using keynote, I know nearly every feature and utilize its full capabilities to create excellent presentations and even some motion graphics for @GoDucks & the Hillsboro Hops.
3rd Grade
The Pikachu silhouette in the letter "I" represents my love for drawing Pokémon. Aren't they cute?!
8th Grade
The reason for an eagle in the letter "S" is because my eagle drawing is the piece I looked at the most. It represented my middle school mascot and my goal to achieve the Eagle Scout rank.
The daily reminder must have worked as I earned my Eagle Scout rank two years later in 2014!
3rd Grade - 7th Grade
The letter "T" has a basketball player silhouette because of my passion to draw all of my favorite sports players.
Proportions were a bit off, but I had so much fun making these! I really started to fall in love with sports and it became more and more integrated into my artistic journey as I got older.
To this day, my love for sports and art continues to grow as my career is making visual content for sports organizations and brands.
Freshman Year
The bamboo silhouette inside the letter "I" symbolizes my bamboo watercolor. During this year, I was able to experiment with the Japanese style of painting and made several watercolor pieces.
Since my great-grandparents emigrated from Japan, these paintings have a special place in our family's heart.
Freshman Year
The letter "C" has the Eiffel Tower in it because it represents my first paper cut. Paper cutting turned out to be a technique that I am very skilled at.
Freshman - Sophomore Year
Here are my favorite graphic design and art pieces from these two years. As you can see, whenever I got the opportunity I made my pieces centered around my love for sports!
Sophomore - Junior Year
The Seattle Space Needle is in the letter "E" because I have incorporated the silhouette and the Seattle skyline into a monogram that displays "MN" in the sky section of the design.
Junior Year
The letters "V" and "O" have a biker and a crouching videographer in order to resemble my uncle and me as we film clips for our mountain biking YouTube series: DC Freeride.
Junior Year
Inside the three letters "L," "U," and "T" are outlines of shoes because of a three-part series of string art Nike shoes I made. An artist, Chris Teguh (SoleStitches.com), inspired me and I had to try this technique. Chris made a Nike Air Foamposite 1, so I did my best to replicate it to learn the technique. I then improved at making tighter weaves when I made my basketball shoe, the Nike Kobe 9 Elite Low 'Moonwalker.' Finally, to truly create a one-of-a-kind shoe, I designed my own Nike sneaker, the MNELZ 1 'BCA,' and created it using string art.
These were the hardest and most labor intensive projects I've ever undertaken. However, the feeling of completing one is awesome and you can't complain with the end results!
Junior Year
The letter "I" has bird silhouettes to represent the paper cut birds I made for my "Birds in Flight" series.
Senior Year
There is an origami crane in the center of the letter "O" in order to represent the installation that I designed and my classmates helped me build for our school.
By: Mark Nelson, John Killam, Sam Waldam, Eric Flatten
Senior Year
Finally, in the letter "N" there is a detailed silhouette of Russell Wilson, my favorite athlete. This represents how my drawings have become more detailed and precise than ever before.
Since there's nothing better than having a drawing of your favorite player sitting on your desk, as a thank you to my high school basketball coaches, I drew each of them a drawing. Here's the collection plus some of my own personal drawings:
To Be Continued..
Whether it's art or football, Russell Wilson said it best,
"I'm not telling you it's going to be easy, I'm telling you it's going to be worth it."
I couldn't agree more with this statement. I have spent countless hours working on each project and sometimes want to give up because I'm so frustrated with how it's going. With any daunting task in your life, you always have to remember to power through and finish what you started.
"Always persevere, always have a great perspective, and always have great purpose in your life."
- Russell Wilson
Thanks for getting to know me and my evolution as an artist! My journey hasn't stopped here, check out my work portfolio.
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