It seems like forever since we were under the stay-at-home order. Quarantine has made us try out new hobbies and ideas.

     Two Fenwick students have learned or perhaps re-learned creative skills throughout quarantine. Shawn Isleta ‘24 has been learning to draw better. Isleta said that he started off by doing light sketches in a school notebook. He began to improve at sketching in his school notebook. Isleta then upgraded his tools buying a sketchbook and, better quality colored pencils.

     Isleta was the most proud of his landscape drawing. “I found that the colors blended into each other almost perfectly,” Isleta said. “It was truly a drawing I felt really proud of.”

     Isleta said that drawing is not his main focus, but that he instead will focus on being a part of Fenwick’s broadcasting program. Still, he said that drawing was a great creative skill to learn.

     Nora Erwin ‘24 re-learned a skill during quarantine. Erwin said that in quarantine, she learned how to sew again and made her own pair of pants.

     Erwin normally looks forward to going to Florida every summer. But as Florida currently has 650,922 residents with COVID-19, she decided to forego the trip to Florida this summer. She said that sewing made those endless days go much faster.

     “I began my process of trying to remember how to sew by trying to remember what I did when I was younger,” Erwin said, “and once I did, I got on a roll.”

     In the end, the time has never been better to learn a new creative skill than the present. You can try sewing like Erwin or drawing like Isleta. But everyone has the potential to be creative and try a new skill.