Joining me for strawberry shortcake on Monday, I had the special opportunity of speaking with one of Bellevue College’s blossoming artists, Stephanie Schock.
You can identify an artist by examining the behavior they exhibit when preparing to eat. Schock compiled the components of strawberry shortcake in the most appetizing fashion, with carefully arranged fruit and a perfect dollop of whipped cream.
Currently enrolled in the Running Start program at Bellevue College, she decided to partake in courses at BC because the campus provides a wider variety of art classes than Skyline High School.
She has in the past enjoyed the Digital Design and Story Telling at Bellevue, and plans to take Drawing for Animation, Basic Drawing, Photography and History of Art in future quarters.
Schock has been on her artistic journey since early childhood. One of the most prominent illustrations she remembers from her childhood depicted a planet she called “Catopia,” whose subjects enjoy a landscape consisting completely of a zany, cat-themed amusement park. It was “just an idea that I used to get out my silly ideas about cat people,” she said.
Schock showed me an array of drawings that she made on her laptop (which itself was decorated with splatter paint and cat stickers), as well as a variety of hand-drawn sketches from the past few years.
An element of her artwork that she uses often is “the use of bright, visually striking colors, and eye catching neon.”
Schock describes her masterpieces as a collaboration of post-apocalyptic scenes, with the incorporation of science fiction themes, desolate deserts, ray guns and explosions.
Schock gets many ideas for her drawings from cartoons on television, comic books, music and novels.
One of her particular favorites is called “Motor City,” a story about “people with cars, and the future of Detroit. It’s really cool,” she said. “The idea of ‘Drive Fast, Live Free’ is really inspirational to me.”
As an artist, Schock is greatly influenced by the works of comic book artists Jhonan Vasquez and Brian Wood. She credits them with weird, unique styles that she aspires to live up to. “The sketchy and loose style of their work is fascinating to me,” said Schock.
The city is Schock’s artistic haven. “I want to find a city and immerse myself in it. That would be a really good place to study art because you are constantly surrounded by a billion of different ideas, people and things that are happening. There is so much to draw from and get inspired by,” she said.
Schock morphs with her creations, rarely producing projects that are consistent with her initial idea of the piece. “By going through the process of sketching, inking, coloring, shadowing, it changes a lot. I think a lot in sketches, but the image comes out differently when you incorporate lighting as well as other technicalities,” she said.
Schock will be working hard to build up her portfolio for applying to various art institutions, such as Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Pacific Northwest College of the Arts and The School of Visual Arts in New York, where many of her favorite artists studied the craft.
For updates on Schock’s progress and prospective projects, you can contact her at S.L.schock@hotmail.com/, or check out her drawings on snurrfiedoesart.tumblr.com and exit-stage-sanity.deviantart.com.