Portrait of a Young Artist

For a budding, 11-year-old artist, Sky Waters has quite the fan following.

Take, for example, actor Kevin Costner, who has one of Waters' paintings hanging in his Tatanka interpretive center in South Dakota. Or Adam Young—the Minnesota musician behind platinum-selling musical group Owl City. Young posted one of Waters' paintings to his Facebook page accompanied by the words "I LOVE THIS!"

That's just the tip of the iceberg for Waters, a fifth-grader at with a big smile and an affinity for basketball. One of Waters' most recent works, a painting entitled "Silent Flight", will compete this spring in Lucerne, Switzerland, as part of the 2012 International Aviation Art Contest.

The picture, which depicts a powerless glider and hot air balloons hovering over a cloudy horizon, has a translucent, ephemeral quality, thanks to Waters' mix of watercolors and airbrushing. Inspired in part by the music of Owl City and images of hot air balloons, the young artist completed the picture over a four-day span.

Waters' painting took first place out of 750 entries in the 10-13 age division of the Minnesota Aviation Art Contest on March 2. His victory there earned Waters entry to the 2012 U.S. Aviation Art Contest in Washington D.C., where Waters' work placed third.

Waters' artistic abilities first caught his parents' attention when he was 5 years old.

His father, Dale Waters, remembers watching a televised Packers football game with his son, who drew a scene inspired by the game.

“He did it from memory, he saw the thing on TV, and then he went down and sat on the table, and he started drawing it," Dale remembers. "He had unbelievable recall, and he captured it with such specific style and motion."

From an early age, Waters worked with his father—a graphic designer—to practice his skills and learn about artistic techniques. Waters says he draws several hours a day, five days a week—depending on the weather and school obligations. His favorite subjects are sports figures and nature scenes.

"I just like it because I can come inside from playing basketball and I can sit down and find a picture I like and just draw and sit down and relax," Waters said.

Because of his sudden success in the aviation art contest, Waters has entered a number of other art contests with the help of his parents, including the Endangered Species Day art contest and the State-Fish Art contest. His artistic skills were recently the subject of a WCCO feature, and Eagan Sen. Ted Daley even made a point of congratulating the fifth-grader.

"I’m very happy about all of this, and very proud of myself," Waters said, referring to his success in the aviation art contest. “I didn’t really know how hard it was going to be, and I didn’t know what it take to do it, and it kind of surprised me."

"We were thrilled, I’m absolutely thrilled about it," Dale said. "We were pretty pumped that Sky won state; that was a huge accomplishment, but to get third in nationals, that was like 'Wow'!"

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