Meet Vanessa Olguin, current Senior whose passion for art has defined her four year journey. With every stroke of her brush, every pencil sketch, every dedicated hour she spends trying to perfect her art her artistic powers illuminate the art class. Captivating many of her classmates and especially the teachers. Vanessa not only reflects her unique perspective and imagination she shows this in many landscapes paintings, portraits, and even famous celebrities. This truly shows how talented of an artist she is. As she embarks on her final year her art stands as a testament to the dedication, skill, time, and limitless creativity she exudes.
Saint Scroll: How did your love for art begin? 
Vanessa Olguin: Honestly, I used to be [redacted] at art but still loved to create visually appealing stuff, so I would trace stuff, but more into quarantine I started getting a ton of art tutorials on my for you page [TikTok] and I would experiment drawing digitally on my phone. It wasn’t really until junior year though (in Mr. Black’s intro class) that I started to become more passionate about creating work traditionally, sort of being forced by the class curriculum.
Saint Scroll: What pursued you to take art all 4 years? Was it the teacher, the curriculum?
Vanessa Olguin: I didn’t take art four years, it really only goes up to 3 years if you take each of the arts every year, but I wanted to take advanced art this year because I really liked what I was doing during junior year, and was told that the prompts had a lot more freedom in advanced. I originally wanted to do AP, but I guess it didn’t fit into my schedule, but in a way I’m glad I didn’t; I keep seeing stuff from the other students in AP and I don’t think I am that advanced truthfully.
Saint Scroll: Are there any artists or art movements that influence your style? 
Vanessa Olguin: Mmm…well my art is sort of based on what is relevant in my life, so its kind of always changing, but I feel surrealism probably has the most solid foundation in my art.
Saint Scroll: What challenges do you encounter while creating your art and how do you overcome them?
Vanessa Olguin: I think creativity and skill are probably my biggest challenges; I tend to look to my favorite app ever (Pinterest) for inspiration for my works, and I just get so swept in the detail I feel its criminal to add my own input, so I have to reframe my mindset to remind myself that my goal is not to replicate the other person’s art, but to make my own. Skill, on the other hand, I’m still managing, but–as annoying as it is–practice really does go a long way. Warming up really does help too; saves a lot more time than when I just jump either into or back into a project, and helps just overcome my doubt in my ability.
Saint Scroll: Does your artwork reflect your personal experiences or emotions?
Vanessa Olguin: I would say yeah. While my current art mostly reflects my interests, the way they are portrayed is sort of based on what I am feeling. Like, I’ll tend to go towards cooler, more desolated depictions of stuff when I’m just having rougher days, or will create visually busier (whether in color or just subjects in general) pieces when I feel a bit more overwhelmed; ironic, because when I’m overwhelmed I don’t really have the time to be doing all of that in the first place.
Saint Scroll: What has been your favorite piece and why? 
Vanessa Olguin: I have a lot of favorite pieces, but I’m probably most proud of my album cover one. I usually have to take stuff home to work on it, but that piece I had done in paint, so I only had class time to work on it. I probably could have done better if I had a bit more time to work on it—I literally see things I could clean up right now if I had the opportunity– but even despite that, it was my first actually complete work of that year (junior year) because I had a lot of trouble making works the way I wanted in the time that I was given.
