Name: Wendy Peacock
Nicknames: Gwendel, Samwise
Age: 20
Favorite Color: Blue
Hobbies: Drawing, Photography, Gardening, Usenet Addict
Collections: Plush Animals, Pins & Buttons, Pressed Pennies, Postcards from each state/country she has visited
I was born on Sept. 10, 1979 and raised in a rural town in upstate SC by my parents and grandparents. My grandparents raised me when I was younger as both my parents worked. The most important thing they did for me was take me to church every Sunday.
I was saved at a very young age, about 5 years old. I've heard people argue that children are too young at that age to understand salvation, but I remember that night well. As I went to the altar, I understood that God created me, he loved me, and that sin would keep me from him without Jesus to forgive and cleanse me. That understanding is all I think really mattered.
My early years were pretty uneventful. The thing I remember the most was the large vegetable garden my grandfather had. As an only child with usually nothing but my toys and my imagination to occupy me, I would spend a lot of time there playing. I think it was what made me so interested in art and creating characters and stories of my own.
I had a very rocky life as a teenager. A number of things happened at that time I won't go into, but I became very depressed, antisocial, and eventually tried to commit suicide. I remember it was the darkest time in my life, and I wish no one else ever had to go though what I did. But it was in that darkest time that God showed me just how real he is.
When I was in the hospital, I met a man that just a few days before had tried to commit suicide by overdosing on cocaine. While he was in the hospital, he was invited to a revival service. He had been saved and his life had been miraculously changed at that service. When I met him, he was happy and as eager to tell about it as was the apostle Paul. His prayers about cigarette smoking had also been answered and he was able to quit cold turkey. He helped me restore my faith in the God I accepted when I was a little child, and I find it hard to believe it was just a coincidence that I was placed in the hospital at the right time to meet him.
Afterwards, it was still a long road for me, but with the help of my family and some very good friends from my church whom I am forever grateful to, I was able to overcome it, and I plan never to go back. I do believe there is hope for people with depression or anyone for that matter, hope in God.
I have always loved cartoons and newspaper comics. My grandfather always read "the funnies" with me every Sunday after church. About the time I was in first grade, Disney premiered their first cartoon TV show, the Gummi Bears (anybody still remember this series?). I adored the show and was determined to become an animator for Disney just so I could produce some of the episodes. This began my love for drawing.
However, I never really felt my artwork was very good, and I had few hopes that I would someday call myself an artist. I didn't become seriously interested in art until junior high. My classmates then were trying to start a school newspaper. They saw a pretty decent drawing of Taz I had drawn on my notebook and offered me the position of comics editor. Their hope was to get a weekly comic strip in return. Now I still was an avid reader of the comics, but I had never dreamed of working on one of my own.
After much playing around with ideas, I came up with a strip about a family of pigs, called "Hog Heaven", that I worked on for several years, even after the school newspaper had long gone out of business (okay, they only managed to publish one paper). I even managed to be published a few times in a small online service e-zine.
However, it was being online itself that really got me focused on improving my artwork. Friends online had been telling me about a new site, SCFA (Squeeky Clean Furry Archive, now know as Yerf) that was actually a G/PG site (if you've looked for art sites that don't carry pinups and porn, you'll know why I was so happy) for folks who drew animal cartoons. I submitted a few pieces (not of my comic strip, mind you, I've not drawn any Hog Heaven strips in a long time) and they actually liked me (why, I don't know; I've improved so much since then that I think my first pieces were atrocious).
Yerf really helped with my motivation to draw. With an audience to give me feedback, I focused on putting out two or three finished pieces a day. However, that was not the best thing it gave me...
The artist I admired most from the SCFA was another by the name of T. Jordan Peacock (last name sound familiar? ^.^). He was (and still is) a marvelous artist with a style I wanted so much to emulate. After a year and a half of collecting and studying his work, I finally got up the nerve to mail him to ask for some art tips. He was much friendlier than most of the other online artists I had encountered so far, and seemed to actually want to become friends with me. Best of all he shared my beliefs as a Christian.
He lived a state away from me in NC, and as chance would have it he was coming through on his way to Florida the same night my church was having a special service, so I invited him. Before this, I had never entertained any thoughts of him being anything but a friend. That was before I looked at him. I know love at first sight is often a cliche' that only happens in movies, but I could swear that is what it was. And it must have been true, because we've been married a year and a half now. We didn't start dating immediately after I looked at him, but I won't retell the whole story because I believe I've rambled enough now.
Currently, my husband and I live in our first house together in Orlando, FL. I'm a part-time student working towards an A.S. in Computer Science and part-time performer at Disney World in Disney's Animal Kingdom. I'm hoping to eventually pursue a degree in Graphic Arts and maybe even Animation, but in the meantime my skills are continuing to improve. I'm hoping that ultimately, however, I may follow what plans God has for me, as I know only what things I can do for him will ultimately last.
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This page was started: 02/20/1998 Last Updated: 02/10/2000
All text on this page is copyright © 1998 Wendy Peacock. If any link or anything else on this page seems out of order, please notify the author.
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