My daughter loves to draw.  Honestly, at 11, she might already be able to 
draw better than I can.  That's not saying a whole lot, though, but I think 
she has potential.  She LOVES anime, and that's where her artistic interest 
lies.  She wants to be an "animator".

When I was younger, I loved to draw and paint, and perhaps I could have 
developed that part of myself, but instead, I decided to take a much more 
practical view of the rest of my life, and went into the computer field, 
essentially guaranteeing (I hoped) that I would have a job somewhere.  Do I 
have regrets?  A little.  Do I think I made the wrong choice?  No.  But what 
I do think about is that I could have still mixed-in some art classes in 
high school and college.  Instead, I went all-out geek, and only took 
"geeky" classes: programming (obviously), math, physics, chemistry, etc. 
That's what I regret.

But as for my daughter, she may have more potential than I did.  She will 
likely never be a Salvador Dali, or Hayao Miyazaki, but perhaps she could be 
a Yoshitoshi Abe (one of my favorite animators).  Or maybe she'll change her 
mind when she's 16.  Who knows.  I just want to make sure that I encourage 
her in the mean-time, and if she does choose to take the artistic path, I'd 
like to know what that entails, but I don't know anything.

Any advice?  Tips?

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