A passion for castles and Draw 50 books

A passion for castles and the arts started when I was young, very young…when in third grade I was awarded for designing a clay pot I made at Mill Ridge School in Danbury, Connecticut.  Even before this, tinker toys and  wooden blocks, to growing up in a bake shop (literally) and living in my grandmother’s house with a greenhouse attached to it for year round gardening, which was her passion,  I’ve always been surrounded by things that forced me to use the creative side of my mind. My incredible mom recently shared some of my old artwork from way back then, which I created when home with her at her bakery, Heidi’s Cake and Cookie Shop in Danbury Connecticut.  It all started to add up why I’m so passionate about Create A Castle!

I used to draw intricate castles for hours at a time, with a fellow artist friend that I went to grammar school with and we would come up with new ideas to how to expand on our awesome drawings of castles or combine different parts of each others castles to make them battle ready.  I re-discovered some of the drawings my mother shared with me not long ago and realized that this venture didn’t happen by chance.  Some of the sand castles that I now create resemble some of the drawings that I used to whip up with my friend all those years ago!  From the roof lines to the battlements, to windows, subconsously I was re-creating those drawings from all those years ago!  It’s like the artist in me as a child was re-born by a new method.  Instead of paper and pencils, the new medium is sculpting the sand and snow to have something physical to appear before my eyes.

Looking back I realize now how important the arts were and still are in my life and how overjoyed I am that my mother saw this ability in me as a young child and managed to have me harness it as my outlet.  We didn’t have a whole lot back then, but she always found the means to buy me these incredible books by Lee J. Ames named Draw 50.  Of course, knowing my passion for buildings and castles and drawing in general, the very first book that she bought me was was Draw 50 Buildings and Other Structures. I was about 10 years old and I was awestruck when I saw what he did in his books!  He literally broke the drawings down step by step, starting with a few lines, all the way up to the finished drawing, pure genius!  I now tapped into a tried and true method of drawing a skeleton and building upon that all the way up to a finished drawing, something that could be memorized.