Junior Sam Jack pulls out two pencils, grasping one in each hand. He places them both onto the paper of his sketch pad, an idea instantly popping into his head. Suddenly, he begins to draw, the pencils sweeping back and forth like a couple on a ballroom floor. Sam doesn’t lift the pencils off of the pad, instead letting an endless stream of lead flow across the paper in short and long strokes. In thirty seconds, his drawing is a tiny masterpiece, a young man smiling, and he finishes the dance with an autograph.
Since he was four years old, Sam has had a passion for art, mainly through his interest in sketching and drawing. Despite the fact that he struggled to grip a pencil when he was in preschool, he now has his own business and YouTube channel, both centered around his art.
Sam’s interest sparked through his love for Van Gogh’s unique style and the way he took hard times in his life and turned it into art.
“It’s really hard for artists to do that because it’s easy to make pain out of pain but it’s harder to make beauty out of pain,” Sam said.
Despite his love for Van Gogh’s colorful abstract art, Jack has an interest in sketching. He prefers to draw in pencil, and has ever since he learned to draw. He would get upset with his teachers and parents when they asked him to draw with markers or colored pencils, and would refuse to even touch them. When his mother would bring home new crayons, Jack would break them on purpose so he didn’t have to use them.
“To me as a kid, color ruined a piece,” Sam said. “If you need color to enhance your piece than make your piece better.”
However, Sam now believes that colors bring out meaning and emotions in a piece and has started to use it more often. He keeps a sketch pad with him at all times and collects ideas from what the people around him say or what he reads.
“I like the free hand, open minded aspect of [art],” Sam said. “You could say I have a plan going in, but I believe that art is more of a moment thing.”
• • •
Day after day, 12-year-old Sam walked down his driveway out to his mailbox, waiting for his Highlights kid’s magazine to come in. He constantly asked his mother, Donna Jack, whether or not it had come in. To her, this was strange because she had never seen him this excited for the magazine. When Donna asked him what was wrong, Sam told her that he had drawn a picture and sent it in hoping to be published in the magazine.
“I told him ‘Well sweetheart, there’s probably a million kids who sent pictures in. Not every picture that gets sent in gets published,’” Donna said.
About a week later, Donna received a letter from Highlights saying that Sam’s colorful drawing of a monster had been selected and they wanted to publish it. Donna was in shock that his artwork had been accepted into a national magazine.
“The art is something that just flows out of him. It’s effortless,” Donna said. “It’s a gift that I’ve never seen before.”
Sam has started up his own business through his art. He gets hired and paid to draw at parties and social events, like business openings and birthdays.
Sam drew at the opening of Monkey Mouths, pediatric speech therapists, where he sketched animals for the children. Since then, he has signed a contract with them and draws for them at different events they host, mainly around the holidays.
Sam’s Youtube channel, ATallArtist, is where he can show off his art process to the world by drawing with music playing in the background for added effect. Sam’s partner, Ben Stewart, controls the cameras while Sam freehands his drawings. Their channel has been up for about three years and he hopes to continue it for many years to come.
Sam loves drawing for his friends and family, mainly caricatures, which are cartoons that highlight people’s outstanding features. His favorite part about the art is people’s reactions.
“I almost like the reactions better than the actual art because people will have a wide variety of, ‘How did you do this?’” Sam said.
Sam aims to attend Stephen F. Austin University and get his major in illustration and minor in performance art. After college, he hopes to become a commission artist and illustrator while acting, directing and writing on the side. And Donna will support him because she knows that he will make it no matter what he chooses.
“I just want him to be true to himself and do something that really makes him happy,” Donna said.
