Karen Rhiner is an award-winning colored pencil artist who enjoys drawing the world from a slightly different angle. She is a member of West Coast Drawing, San Diego Art Institute, and the Colored Pencil Society of America.

I have turned my back on making money with art in order to express my heart and mind with art. Colored pencils have become my liberation.

Long ago, I got my B.A. in journalism from USC and was a reporter for five years on the Evening Tribune before becoming Henrietta Housewife and Molly Mommy.

Somewhere along the way I discovered weaving, which led to a technique called wrappings, which led to 100 commissions and 100 gallery and show pieces in ten years. I got into California Fibers, a juried-membership organization, and served two terms as its president and was on the board of the Combined Organizations for the Visual Arts.

I'd finally had it with making decorator art by 1991 ("If I have to make one more of these things in mauve, I'll puke.") and told my galleries goodbye and sold 1,000 pounds of yarn.

I sought the formal art education I lacked. I attended classes in UCSD's visual arts department for two years-until I realized the studio art professors didn't know much more than I did.

I had lived in the conceptual art world, that department's strong suit, for 20 years already. I wanted skills training, only minimally available at USCD. So I got it here and there from various teachers outside traditional academia.

I spent several years making painted papier mache sculptures, which now are all over my studio being eaten by the bugs that got in them.

I decided to try to overcome my fear of foliage (the drawing kind) in 1997 by taking a botanical drawing class, for which the prescribed medium was colored pencils.

I got hooked on the medium. I tracked down the local chapter of the Colored Pencil Society of America, joined, learned the technical details, started entering juried shows, getting in, and winning awards.

In 2003, I founded West Coast Drawing, a small, juried organization of the best artists in San Diego County working in drawing media. I'm also a member of the San Diego Art Institute.