JOHN LONG

John Long is a painter who lives in Westminster. Long became interested in art when he was 17 years old. After graduating from Westminster Senior High School in 1968, Long attended a commercial art school in Pikesville. While there, he learned to draw illustrations for ads. He enjoyed pen and ink drawing the most but did not like doing ads.

After graduating he did not continue to do artwork. Long said he was not a good person back then. He stopped drawing for 40 years.

After Long retired from DART Container Company in Hampstead three years ago, Long decided to start doing artwork again. He wanted to see if he could still draw and decided to draw a dog, which came out well. He used pen and ink as well as charcoal to do the image of the dog.

The Westminster Rescue Mission asked him to do some artwork for them so he did a colored pencil image of Jesus Christ. Long also did colored pencil images of hummingbirds for the organization.

Long decided to take art classes at the Westminster Senior Center close to his home.

“Mary Streaker is a wonderful teacher,” he said. “Streaker said one or two things can change a painting. Things like adding blue to snow make a difference.” She also taught him to never start at the bottom of painting. The artist should put the subject in the middle.”

He learned to do paintings of trees and bushes with a sponge. Long likes to paint animals such as wolves and foxes and recently did some portraits. One of the portraits is a pen and ink of the theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein and another is of Amelia Earhart, who was the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean.