April, the month of the captivating April Lyrids, which are the strongest annual shower of meteors from the debris of an ancient comet, that shoot down at our planet for ten consecutive days, from April 16 until April 26, are as unique and amazing as the polished artists at our school. And today we present to you one of those captivating artists, and the April artist of the month, Vera Boukhonine, who is an 16 years old AP Art student at Lincoln, and a Junior.

Vera had taken interest in art long before she reached High School, as a kid she always saw it as another half of her ” I have done art all my life and started classes when I was still 8 years old,” and she says that noting had inspired it rather, she was born with a desire and liking for art.

Though Vera practices with a variety of art styles, starting from collages and ending with paintings, she developed a particular liking for drawing pictures in pen or ink, and this she enjoys due to the perfect line quality that you can get by using a pen. In addition to this Vera likes to paint and work with watercolor in general. She loves bright colors, and holds an amazing sense of creativity.

During our interview Vera also had somethings to say regarding Lincoln art program, ” I think Lincoln’s art program is great, the teachers Ms. Zamora and Ms. Arredondo put a lot of their time and energy into supporting the students in the art program, including me as much as they can.”

She mentioned that she likes how the art teachers use all kinds of creative ways of teaching their students art, and how to express themselves through their art. She especially likes their tactic of helping students only when absolutely necessary, without which she says they would not be able to learn art and develop their own creativity and style.

In her recent art piece above, “Dreaming Red Wolf,” Vera used oil pastels, which could often be vey complicated to work with, to create her very realistic captivating painting, which almost makes us feel as if the wolf is really staring deep into our soul. Vera says that her inspiration for this piece came from her liking of anime, she said ” she watches a series called “Spice & Wolf” and the main character was a wolf, and she had a reddish fur, which inspired my piece.”

After this, she mentioned that another reason she chose to draw a wolf was because she likes wolves and thinks that they are fascinating animals. “In the end” Vera says ” . . . the main thing I want people to take away from this piece is that there are all sorts of things people do not understand ant that they should try to embrace them.”

Despite the fact that Vera does not yet know, exactly, what she wants to do in the future, she says “I’d like to major in some art field, but I also want to major in science. I enjoy both subjects. I have been creating different pieces for my art portfolio since ninth grade.”

Hey, who knows, maybe Vera will become a scientist and artist, and perhaps she will develop enough interest in Astronomy to paint an April Lyrids meteor shower scene. We wish Vera the best of all in her future as an artist and a scientist!