I’ve been drawing and painting for as long as I can remember, but I didn’t do much dabbling in watercolors until a year or two ago. When I was eleven, we were reading King Lear with another family, and we had trouble keeping all the characters straight. I decided to paint some people dressed in period costumes to represent some of the characters. While I never ended up finishing that set, a year and a half later, Act It Out Shakespeare was born.
The very first play I started with (not counting the King Lear set I never finished) was The Tempest. The Tempest has long been one of my favorite Shakespeare plays — who wouldn’t be interested in an adventure on a deserted island — and it didn’t have too many characters so I wouldn’t get overwhelmed. That play took about 8 months to finish, because I had never scanned an image or used Photoshop before, but I finally figured it all out, and before long, I had another play ready.
In the space of four months, I’ve set up a website, started an Instagram account, and made three plays. Who knew I would come this far? When I started painting, I never expected this.