If you told me 5 years ago that drawing nude models would inspire me to make my own merchandise for my grilling brand I would have never believed you, but here we are. During Spring of 2022, my freshman year, I came up with the idea to create my own grilling and catering company on campus. I settled on the name Gritty Grill. It has been a blast so far. I have catered events, parties, and morel. Planning for the events requires lots of organization. It takes some number crunching to figure out how much of each ingredient and other supplies should be bought beforehand. One time I had to figure out the logistics of cooking and serving upwards of 35 pounds of beef in as little as an hour and a half. I have created merchandise for the company. All of the logos have been drawn up by myself digitally. Drawing has always been a hobby of mine. However, I first began to ‘learn’ in my drawing one course my freshman fall semester. The course was very interesting and taught me to step out of my comfort zone. In high school I went to an all boys high school and our elective courses were typically based on religion. My drawing course was the first class I had in my freshman fall. This was my first mixed gender class in 5 years. The juxtaposition of this class and my previous 5 years couldn’t be starker. I spent the next 2 hours and 30 minutes drawing a naked model who stood no more than 5 feet away from me. This was when it really set in how different my liberal arts degree at Wesleyan was going to be. My friend and I were the two worst in the class and had the least experience in the class. Some of my classmates were incredibly talented. I remember us looking around and seeing what looked like a gallery with these 2 outlying pieces which looked like garbage. Despite our crappy artwork and the strangeness of the class we decided to stick with it. This was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I learned to love creating art and it is one of my hobbies I still do today. I have transferred the knowledge I learned from the drawing course and have been able to use it today. Some of the designs I drew up for my Gritty Grill merchandise would not be nearly well created if I had not stuck with that class.
