About Me

My name is Amber Maynard, but "Riku" or "RikuDrak" and "Reikaza" are nicknames I also answer to. I am eighteen years old and currently not enrolled in any school, but I hope to be sometime in the future. I have a great love for animals, nature mythical beasts, and in general character and figure designs. I am interested in learning to create and animate 3D models, and I am also interested in being schooled in illustration and other forms of design.

I guess you could say I like a lot of application of art.

Art History

I have technically been practicing art since I was very little, however most children doodle and colour in their spare time. I have been practicing my art skill in a serious manner for six years. Most of that time was spent sketching and doodling; practicing proportions, poses, and interactions. Officially I have only taken one high school course in drawin and painting, but I am independently self-taught. I have, however, taken a high school course in graphic design and since continued with it in independent practice.

When I started drawing six years ago, I adopted a Japanese anime/manga style which helped me with my proportions, and later began to move on to develop my own style. It is very possible that I currently retain traces of it in some of my recent works, but I hope to move further away from that.

If you do desire a work of art from me in a Japanese anime/manga style, please drop me an e-mail and I will consider it.

In the past I have dabbled in different art styles and techniques such as: vectors, cel shades, basic animations, icons/avatars, and digital abstracts. You are perfectly welcome to ask me to create artwork in those styles, however I may not have examples available to show you.

Art Experiences

I have partaken in a multitude of free community and solo art projects. I have been in numerous art exchange communities for three years, at least, drawing or painting another person's original character in exchange for someone else drawing or painting mine for me. I have also participated in online community digital murals, creating a frame of art meant to pick up the flow of the previous panel and send it to the next, and a few community contests and challenges. Of those, I won second place in a school-wide illustration contest.