I started making when I was very young. At first coloring in the lines or drawing a 5 point star with in one pencil stroke was hard. To be honest, I taught myself how to draw cartoon characters by tracing peoples work like Jim Davis or Chuck Jones, then memorizing the steps and details. This worked out well for me and I won an art contest for the Los Angeles Times when I was 10. That is a moment that defined and saved the rest of my life.
A few years later I wanted to grow more in my cartoon character skill level. I saved my allowance for a few weeks and bought myself a book on the early history of Looney Tunes. I started trying to draw the pictures in the book. Suddenly I realized that what I'd been drawing for the last few years wasn't as good as I thought. So I got a stack of paper and really focused my study of what made Elmer Fudd, Elmer Fudd. It took me a day or so but eventually I cracked the code and memorized and improved through practice.
During that same timeline I was started to get into drawing portraits of real people. I was in my early teens now so my art became a mix of cartoon characters and pop start characters. I'd been signing up for art classes as electives in jr. high but it really wasn't until I was in around 9th grade that I had a teacher, I would say, was actually an Art Teacher.
His assignments and homework and lessons were actually about the fundamentals of 'art'. This was another organic blessing that changed and saved my life forever. His teachings and reference materials really just, turned the light bulbs of understanding on for me.
I would get better and better over time.
After high school, like many non-Disney drafted artists, I went to community college for half a semester to study 'art.' I was surprised to find that though I'd already had all of these lessons as a young, serious artist since I was 10, these classes were really just bullsht electives students took as part of their transfer credits. The lessons were very remedial and councilors seemed very empty headed about what actual artists are supposed to do. And transferring to more advance classes wasn't an option. It's not even an option to test an artists skill level for placement. So lame. So I dropped out.
A short time later I went to school for Graphic Design. I did a tour of the 'campus' if you want to call it that, and I thought I saw what I wasn't actually seeing. But I was 18, what could I know?
Anyway, the lessons I learned about desktop publishing were very invaluable however, when it came to using my shiny new Graphic Design, Associates Degree, creative job choices were limited to, let's say, Auto Trader Magazine. We'll say that, because that's were my first Graphic "design" job was. To my surprise and great disappointment it was basically a clip-art, data entry and proof reading job. I didn't stay long and I'd spend the next good while trying to find an actual Graphic 'Design' job. That never really happened.
Many years went by and the only real creative jobs I found was the projects I made up myself for my own works like making album covers for my music releases. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention, at some point in high school I started making song demos. I put my first album out officially when I was around 21. So - after high school, after college, after leaving Auto-Trader I decided to publish an album of music and design the artwork or product packaging and promotional materials for it.
Aside from my own work I was pretty miserable for a long time.
It wasn't until some years later I'd find a 'dream come true' job as a Lead Illuminated Manuscript Artist at Disneyland, CA. I stopped making music and my own art for a minute, just so I would be totally focused on this dream job gig. But you know, it was only a matter of time before I learned that most Artists at Disneyland or Disneyland Artists for that matter, learn, is that there is a whole other... sect of Disney where the artists actually design stuff, and I wasn't it. Where I was had many twists and turns, odds and ends, highs... and lows. After a few years I was incredibly depressed and stressed out like crazy for various reasons so I left. I needed to focus on myself and my own original work.
Since leaving the Dismalands I've been making music again. I've also gotten myself tangled into quite a few projects from comic books to pins, curations, paintings, sculptures and so on, eventually forming medium specific brands, all housed under one main company brand, The Imagination of Robert Saenz.
When I was growing up, even as an adult still growing, I found that were far too many other kids or grown ups with control issues. People who want to tell other people who to be, how to be, what to like, etc., and the only escape I had/have is always my Imagination. And I have this want in me to free my experiences and creativity my mind and onto paper, through a poem, through a song or to paint or sculpt them into the physical reality. And then to share them with you to bridge the distance I feel, that you might also feel, between each of us. When that bridge is built, when we have related/connected, we aren't strangers anymore, we're friends.