My Story
HI! I’m Khrystyna Khristianova and I am a full-time artist , wife & mom based in New Jersey. Art has always brought tremendous joy into my daily life and I decided to turn it into a career. I have a Bachelors Degree in Fine Art from The George Washington University, but a great part of my knowledge I gained from personal researches, books, interviews, trials and errors. It’s a great pleasure being able to share my experiences with others which is how I became an art teacher for both kids and adults. Majority of art related skills are very personal techniques that develop with time and these are hard to find on the internet for free, most of the artists save their tricks to themselves or publish in books, but I believe in information being free and accessible for anyone. I work in a variety of mediums from oil paints to digital designs and love experimenting with all of these mediums to find my vision and develop my unique style. My style emerged after combining my traditional art training with contemporary influences while simply remaining exited about the ordinary things hoping that my journey will inspire others!
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About ReFineArtBlog
I discovered my passion for teaching by a pure accident. While in college, I specialized in photography and one day I knocked on a door of a local art community center ArtSpaceDC, in Washington DC, showed my portfolio and offered my help, the manager of the center offered me to take over the darkroom and teach a film photography class. I spent a full day recovering all the equipment that hasn’t been used in years, the manager ordered all the supplies and people started registering. I was extremely nervous before teaching the first class, because all of the students are adults with full time jobs and here I am a college student teaching them how to load a roll of film into the camera, shoot manually, develop film and make prints. To my surprise they loved it, and came to class every Thursday after a full day at work and were eager to learn more. I shared everything I knew and a few weeks later they could do everything independently and I couldn’t be happier, I helped these people learn something new, something that makes them happy. After graduation I moved back to NJ and started teaching photography classes to kids as an afterschool enrichment instructor and then I started teaching even more art classes of all kinds, drawing, painting, jewelry, craft. Something about seeing others succeed was making me fall in love with teaching more and more. The best compliment I received was that I can find a way to make art easy. And so I got an idea to create my own educational blog/platform for people of all skill levels, make art accessible, enjoyable, and insightful. I wanted to create a place where ‘Fine Art’ wouldn’t sound like it’s coming from a professional painter’s atelier, I wanted to change the way we see art and talk about it, I want it to be approachable. That’s how I came up with the ReFineArtBlog name. It’s a refined, better version of teaching and learning. Tutorials in all mediums, book reviews and suggestions, art supplies reviews, advises and all my knowledge in a written and visual form. This is a community, every blog post is a conversation and I value your input and your comments because I want to make art being an enjoyable experience for all of us. Send me questions, leave comments, share with others, find and tag me on social media and share your work. New posts will be added weekly and I would love to hear your recommendations for future posts! I hope you enjoy this blog!
