Among many talented students that attend the school, sophomore Owen Derringer has an artistic streak of his own. He creates many different genres and styles of art including pencil and paper as well as his own clothing style. He enjoys everything from the 80s and 90s and from music to horror movies.
Outside of school, Derringer enjoys illustrating and recently has gotten into dinosaurs, using plaster to create an allosaurus head. Anything Derringer is interested in at the time, he likes to create, so his room is filled with his interests and creations from over the years.
“I’ve learned just how important practice is whenever I’m talking to somebody about art and they say something like ‘oh I can only do stick figures.’ I just think like you can do it too, it just takes time,” Derringer explained.
He enjoys many other people’s creative works in forms of video or music, such as James Cameron, Wes Craven, John Carpenter and David Lynch. He makes his art while thinking of his room, and if it’ll go well with his posters he’s hung up.
Since fifth grade, Derringer has made art relating from horror movies to older bands. His years of practice came with a lot of learning and growing along the way. “It’s kind of lame how people think it’s just some natural talent; [it] takes away from how long people have had to practice for skill at it, you know,” Derringer said.
Another memorable feature about Derringer is his clothing style. Derringer gets inspiration with his outfits by characters from older movies.
“I like usually from the 80s or 90s, but sometimes I’ll want something really specific like a nice graphic on a shirt for a band,” Derringer said.
He also enjoys older bands who mostly play grunge and metal. The bands that stand out the most to him currently are Bush, Stone Temple Pilots, Korn, TOOL, Primus, Alice in Chains, Coal Chamber, Mazzy Star and Incubus. He picked these bands by hearing what his parents enjoyed when he was a kid and finding new ones.
With school, Derringer enjoys it for more of the social side, like being able to see friends and meet new people. High school for him has been about getting better at meeting new people and coming out of his shell more.
Derringer is a very go-with-the-flow person, not letting much bring down his demeaner. His advice to high school students is “to not worry about things like one bad grade. Just work hard to get your grade in that class up or extra credit,” Derringer said.
