MOSES LAKE — Wondering why there are characters from the online video game, “Among Us,” or pictures of cats etched on the bottom of the math assignment just turned in?

Well, it might be the artwork of sixth-grader Nora Finnegan Hines, passing the time at Chief Moses Middle School.

Hines said she’s always been an avid drawer, doodling in class or at home with any chance she got. After gaining an interest in digital artwork in 2019, watching some YouTube channels with digital artists and animators, she decided to try it herself.

It gave her a new medium for her creative process and she said she worked on her family farm outside of Moses Lake in 2019 to raise money for a graphic tablet.

“I thought, ‘That’s pretty cool, I should try it,’” Hines said. “I worked for a drawing tablet, a Huion Kamvas Pro 14; it was like $300. That’s when I started, which was the beginning of last year, so 2020.”

With the pandemic in full swing shortly after getting her new tablet, she said she could draw as much as she wanted.

With digital art, Hines said there’s a lot more room for mistakes.

“On paper, it’s really hard to erase things and really hard to fix mistakes,” Hines said. “With digital art, you just push a button and the last thing you did, it’s all good.”

She said the process just feels more “slick” than working and drawing on paper. The Huion tablet connects directly to her computer at home, showing the mirrored display as she draws with her stylus on the tablet screen. She said she also uses a drawing app on an iPad, giving her the option to continue working on the go.

“The Huion, you have to set it up and it’s more of a ‘do it at home’ thing, but sometimes I’ll go to my grandma’s house and I don’t want to have it in a big bag,” Hines said. “I’ll just bring my iPad because you don’t have to hook it up to a screen or anything.”

Before getting into the digital process, Hines said she drew a lot of birds due to a love for the movie “Rio.” She said she just thought birds were a lot of fun to draw. One of the other things she’s drawn a lot are cats.

Glitch Sixxle, a digital artist with a YouTube channel, is someone who inspired Hines’ drawing ideas with some of her multi-animated projects, and focused around the “Warrior Cats” book series.

Hines said the animation process is something she wants to dive further into as she continues to fine-tune her digital artwork skills.

“From the book I read, I thought I should just try drawing them, and now I just draw them all the time,” Hines said. “Sometimes I like to do it realistically, but it doesn’t have to be all realistic. I’ll add some cartoon-y features, I don’t know why, but it’s just sort of fun.”

She said a lot of times her artwork will include a lot of wacky or weird things she feels like drawing, such as mythical creatures. Hines said she doesn’t really like to color as much, so she’ll often let her friends pick some colors.

She said she’s noticed her artistic style has changed a lot. Before, she said cats or animals she’d draw on paper in class might look “deformed,” but now her artwork is more realistic while including some of her style.

Hines said she still works on paper, but mostly during breaks in school. She said she’s not the best person with words, so drawing helps her process things.

“I’ll just do it through my drawing,” Hines said. “How I’m feeling, I’ll just draw it into the piece and then I feel good and then I just draw something else.”

She said if she’s motivated to finish a piece, she can power through and work on it for hours. Hines admitted she’s not the most patient person, so will sometimes rush to finish a piece, or set it aside and not come back to it at all.

“Sometimes with art I’ll get mad if I’m not finished and then I’ll rush myself, and then think, ‘Oh crap. what have I done?’” Hines said.

She said she would really like to pursue animation when she gets older, as she hopes to turn her passion into a career.

Casey McCarthy can be reached via email at cmccarthy@columbiabasinherald.com.