The Grade 11 student at Corner Brook Regional High was recently named winner of the annual local legion Remembrance Day art contest. It was the second year in a row she claimed the top prize.
As she looked down at a copy of her beautifully crafted sketch — which depicts an aged war veteran overlooking a battle scene from the trenches, with a grieving uniformed man at a gravesite to his side and comrades at his back — she said she has a lot to improve upon.
The weathered face of the war veteran is Barnes’ own creation. She looked at several pictures of veterans to help her visualize a face. Then, she crafted that vision in a way which every wrinkle resonates like a photograph rather than a drawing.
Three years ago, as a junior high student, she placed second in that age category. The previous year, a third-place finish. Over the years, as much as her artistic ability has developed, so has her appreciation for the efforts of soldiers.
“It is really hard to express on paper what they had to go through,” Barnes said.
The regional contest’s winning piece is submitted provincially, and there is also an opportunity to compete nationally. The aspiring artist said she did not place in the provincial competition last year, and is not confident she will this time either.
She did say this year’s drawing is much better than last year’s, and admitted it would be quite an accomplishment to be recognized provincially for her work. The acknowledgment is nice, she says, but the work itself is what she enjoys the most.
Drawing has always been a passion for Barnes, but she has become more focused on it in the past couple of years. She started sketching anime characters, developed an interest in depicting faces in particular, and is starting to expand into surrealism and fantasy work.
She keeps her work fairly private right now, and she has done very little publicly outside of the legion contest. She said some of her friends are also very talented artists, and they share their work with each other. However, other than a few requests from family members, her talent is a relatively hidden one at this point.
She is content with that, for now, as she draws just for fun. With only a couple of years of high school left, she is contemplating her future.
Barnes has aspirations of becoming an artist, but is specifically eying a career in video game design. Although she has just started working with video art, if her growth in drawing is any representation, it will be only a matter of time before some very visually appealing graphics are depicted in some video games.
