A bit about myself.  My name is Pamela Goodman.  I started drawing when I was a very young child. My dad was a freelance artist and I would sit next to him at his drawing table and draw when he would create magazine layouts.  My mom was very creative also.  She always wanted to be a fashion designer but that never happened for her.  Instead she was a master in the kitchen. 
 

I never considered a career in the arts because I started playing the violin when I was 10 years old and was really into my music.  I joined my high school band where I played the flute and piccolo in a National Championship Marching Band.  We marched in the Cherry Blossom Festival in our nations Capital and marched at President Nixon's Inauguration. Thrilling times for a 17 year old kid.  Sports was also a passion of mine.  I belonged to a  State Champion Track Team with the most amazing coach one could ask for.  I actually ran in the Penn Relays in high school an still have the 2nd place metal they awarded us.  Some proud moments for sure!

After High School I attended The College of New Jersey (Trenton State College) for Music Education.  I lost my passion for music as I could not see myself practicing my instruments in a 6x6 room for the next 4 years.  I quickly enrolled in Art Education and got my K-12 teaching certificate.  During my college education, back in the day, we were taught all the disciplines unlike art education today, it is more specialized in one area. I became proficient in Photography, Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, Welding, Jewelry Making, Ceramics, Puppetry, Printmaking, Layout and Graphic Design.  I taught elementary art for one year and decided elementary school teaching was not for me. I didn't find that age group very rewarding to teach.  So I pursued photography as my art form for 27 years specializing in Pet Portraits, Action Shots of Dogs, Marketing and Commercial Photography. 

After 27 years of my own Photography business I decided to go back to teaching.  I landed a job in a high school 10 minutes from my home teaching high school fine arts. This age group was much more rewarding for me than elementary school art.  When I was hired I was asked to build a Graphic Design program my second year teaching which was right up my ally. You see I was self taught in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign so I could edit my photographs and design my own literature.  I started my graphic design program with 13 computers and 26 students in a Photoshop class.  After the first year of teaching the Adobe Program, I felt that the program needed to grow because the graphics field was already growing so fast, so I wrote curriculum for 7 different courses.  My program  very quickly grew to 3 computer labs (25 computers in each lab) and 3 Graphic Design teachers. Our student numbers, that is the students wanting to take our courses, were higher than any other course in the high school.  Our courses were the three Adobe programs, Photography 1, 2 and 3, Corporate Graphic Design and Yearbook.  Yearbook was my baby for 16 years. You can see some of my cover designs in my portfolio at pamelagoodman.zenfolio.com in the Graphics Folder.  My covers now line the halls in the high school.

I was also the webmaster for the high school website maintaining the site and was the set design advisor for all of our theatrical performances (32 to be exact).  In addition to painting the sets, I created 55- 16x20 portraits of the students for each Musical/Play and hung all 32 show portraits with the help of a colleague. I photographed each character in costume for the posters on a Tuesday, printed them on Wednesday, mounted them on Thursday and hung them on the Friday of the show opening.  Parents flipped over the portraits and paid a substantial amount of money for them that supported our theater program.  I also created all the promotional posters, covers for our programs, invitations and T-Shirts.  In addition, I photographed all the shows and hung 30 pictures that are still displayed in the theater.

I retired from teaching the February before Covid-19 hit in March 2020.  I couldn't have timed that more perfectly.  In January of 2021 I was going through my art supplies when I came upon my graphite pencils. I thought to myself, "I wonder if I can still draw realistically. " After all I had been teaching graphic design for the last 16 years.  There really was no need to draw realistically with a pencil because the computer was my drawing tool.  So I picked up my pencils and drew some random dogs, horses and cats.  Lo and behold and to my surprise I still had my talent.  It was like riding a bike. Soon after, on a whim, I posted my work for sale and my IM lite up like crazy.  Totally to my surprise one order after another came rolling in.  Before I knew it I was drawing at least 3 portraits a week. During the holiday gift giving season that same year I was totally booked from September straight through December 24th drawing one portrait and sometimes two drawings a day. Hence a new retirement business was born and I now had a way of staying in the arts and keeping busy in my retirement days.  No worries though, I still have time to travel and do fun things each day.

I have been told by many that I under price my work.  I totally know this but I like to make people happy and if I price my work higher I would eliminate the people that could not afford the high prices of original art today.  I absolutely love drawing.  It fulfills many aspects of my life.  I don't do it for the money although it is nice.  Drawing Pet Portraits is my hobby, my relaxation and supplements my income for expensive adventures. Who could ask for anything more.  My next venture is color pencil, sculpture and painting.  I was quite a sculpture and painter in college but have not picked up a paintbrush since then except for painting theatrical sets. We will see if I still have it.