A B O U T
✪ M E
My name is Erica DeLeon. I am a sophomore student of Adelphi
University, and my current major is in nursing. I was born
in New York, and it is where I currently reside. My parents
are from the Philippines, but as far as language goes, I am only
able to understand the basics of Tagalog.
In high school, I took 4 years of French (but due to the many
years of no practice, I am unable to be of use in any French
speaking country). I was a part of Global Links, and was a
member of both Art and Senior National Honor Societies.
I have always loved drawing ever since I was 11. I would sit
at my desk for hours on end creating little stories that would
never see the light of day. I practiced vigorously between
my tween years, but as soon as I hit high school, I was bumped to
advance classes and started taking AP courses, so I couldn't find
as much time as I would have liked to draw. Unfortunately,
the art classes that I was required to take in high school did not
help me as much as I would've liked them to, but it did push me to
new mediums. Although, the same can't be said about the art
courses (Drawing Workshop
and Watercolor & Painting)
I took last semester. Those courses were exciting and
insightful. They helped broaden my world in art with, more,
new mediums and my professors gave our class wonderful guidance in
learning how to improve ourselves even after the course was
over.
The style of art that I admire most lies in Japanese anime/manga
(manga: Japanese graphic novel). Many, many people look down
over this style of art for reasons that I cannot necessarily
understand. People believe art is much more mature than
simple cartoons, yet even though they do see these types of
drawings, I don't believe their eyes are fully open. But,
people are entitled to their own opinion and we should respect
them for this, and yet, many days in my life, I would find myself
a little hurt and a little more determined to show them that
sometimes the most simplest of things might just be a bit more
complicated than they imagined.
Photoshop CS2 was the first program I used for digital art.
I started in high school, but I don't think I started to improve
until my senior year of high school. This was because my
parents gave me a Wacom Intuos 4 as a graduation gift (they gave
it to me early so that I could use it for my AP Studio Art
class). After Photoshop CS2, I used other programs such as
Paint Tool SAI and Photoshop CS5. Between these three
programs, to my preference, Paint Tool Sai has been absolutely
brilliant because of the pen tool sensitivity.
At the moment, I am not pursuing a degree in Illustration, but
maybe after everything, I would go back to school. It is my
dream in creating my own set of stories for all ages to
enjoy. Whether as a writer or as a mangaka (a manga artist), I want people to have
fun, and maybe for those who don't know it (or do not have any
interest in the genre), to discover a new sort of like.
I would not call myself an artist just yet.
