Senior Dan Castillo has always loved to draw, sketch and even finger paint his own face, but his third grade teacher, Ms. Royce, really ignited his passion for art by allowing him to complete his homework in an unusual fashion.

“She told me to draw her a comic of the homework instead of writing it out, and that really inspired me to draw more,” Castillo said.

Castillo loves being an artist for many reasons, but he says he most values the way it allows him to clear his mind and voice.

“It’s just a fun exercise that gets everything you don’t need out of your head,” Castillo said. “Sometimes I think it is easier to express yourself through art then it is through words or written text. Everything you can’t put into words you can put into a picture.”

As for the way Castillo views his own work, he thinks it is a mixture of both sci-fi and surrealism.

“The science fiction part is aliens, robots and dinosaurs. Surrealism is a kind of art that expresses the space between reality and dreaming,” Castillo said.

Castillo would love for his years of being an artist to extend far past his years in high school and even past college.

“I’d love to be an illustrator – for books, for comics, anything like that,” Castillo said. “I just think it’s really cool to be able to draw out a story. It would just be fun to work with art, which is what I want to go to college for.”

You can find Castillo’s work in the high school’s art shows.