Since the 6th grade, Tammi Sison (12) has been intrigued by art and design. With encouragement from her peers and immense support from her parents, she has been pursuing art with a passion, expressing herself through creative ways.

   Her passion first began when she bought a digital drawing tablet at a garage sale for only fifty cents. She was quickly intrigued by it and started drawing on her free time more and more. Her interest in comics at the time drew her to a comic creator community, called Tapastic, and her passion for art grew rapidly along with the following on her account.

   “Joining the comic creator community was how I found a lot of my idols and learned a lot of my digital art skills. Artists are really passionate people, so when I started looking at their pages and commenting on their works, it was inevitable that their passion rubbed off on me. It helped me figure out that this was what I wanted to do as a career,” said Sison.

   Along with her very successful comic account on Tapastic, Sison has entered in a calendar art contest for Chevron and has successfully won. She also has experience being featured on the local news station and has entered the newest Heritage High School hosted art competition.
But pursuing a creative career isn’t as easy as it seems. Even through challenging times, Sison has been committing to her dream and getting encouragement and support from her peers.

   “In general, I’d say my friends are my biggest supporters. I created art because my friends encouraged me, and they’re the ones who give me requests to fulfill as well as share my art with others. My parents have been very supportive as well, they genuinely believe in me and they trust in the fact that I’m pursuing a viable career path rather than just a useless hobby. They’ve helped me get commissions and they’ve provided pretty much everything that I need to create art. Considering a lot of people don’t get the support they need to pursue a creative career, I’m very lucky and extremely thankful to have my parents on my side,” said Sison.

   Throughout her high school years, Sison has taken four art classes in total at Heritage High School, including two years of AP Studio Art and Design. In those classes, she has expressed herself creating using digital art, but recently she has been beginning to work with colored inks, watercolor, and gouache, an opaque watercolor. Sison describes her own art style as semi-realistic and illustrative.
From the very beginning, Sison was drawn to a creative career path, and through many thoughtful discussions with her peers and most importantly, herself, she has decided to pursue a creative path for her future.
“I had the general idea I wanted to do an art-related career in 8th grade. I was pretty realistic about my career choices and researched what I thought I’d enjoy doing. But I realized no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything but a creative career,” said Sison.

   Sison plans to continue her art journey throughout college, applying to become an illustration or design major. She plans on fulfilling her dream job of becoming a storyboarder for a prominent animation studio or working on a web-comic team.