Over the summer, junior Oscar Miller’s friend gave him a challenge: draw “time”. Miller pulled out his pencil and filled the page with hourglasses, lines and other symbols that represented time to him. He soon had a landscape of ideas in his sketchbook — all relating to his prompt.
While it was a weird request in the moment, he’s since drawn many words — hope, perfection, uncertainty and more. The transition from words to visuals has shaped his own art experience.
“When I’m trying to turn a word into a visual I do it so I can see something that doesn’t really exist in the real world… something from my mind’s eye and putting it on paper,” Miller said.
Miller’s been drawing everything from words to dragons since he was in preschool, but never took any art classes until he was in eighth grade. He’s now in Drawing 2 at East — where he can draw without structure and create his own ideas.
Most of Miller’s drawings are done on his own time. His favorite of the drawings is a very detailed dragon, featuring many scales and spikes— something that took him two months to complete.
Dragons seem to be a recurring theme for Miller, something constant but also something he can always draw differently depending on the day. When he was younger, they were two-dimensional and lacking in detail. Since then, his techniques have grown to an emphasis on individual dragon scales, and even some three-dimensional pieces.
Currently, he is working on another dragon that he started four months ago. Most of these larger projects take multiple sittings to complete, mostly so he can let ideas form over time in his mind.
“It’s helpful to do some of a drawing and take a step back, take time to think about what to add to it,” Miller said.
He posts some of his work on his private Instagram for his followers to see. According to Miller, the feeling of showing people something you have worked hard on and getting positive feedback is rewarding.
Some people describe some of his work as morbid, but Miller disagrees.
“It’s not not dark, [my work] is just not cheery,” Miller said.
Miller isn’t planning on pursuing drawing as a career, but wherever he ends up, he’ll always save some time to sketch another dragon.