Each year, more than 300,000 visual and written works are submitted for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, a prestigious national competition whose past winners include Stephen King and Andy Warhol.

Luke Farwell, an eighth-grader at Oxford Middle School, recently earned two honorable mentions at the 2018 Southeastern Michigan Region of the Scholastic Art Awards for both of his charcoal drawing submissions.

Farwell officially received recognition Monday during an awards ceremony held at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

The competition starts off with a regional round, where students in grades 7-12 can win Gold Keys, Silver Keys, honorable mentions or more distinctive awards.

Although Farwell did not make it past the regional round this year, he plans to continue entering the competition in hopes of eventually receiving the coveted Gold Key award and, potentially, a scholarship.

“I honestly didn’t expect to get any recognition this time, since it was my first try. I was really, really excited to get (honorable) mentions for, not one, but both of the drawings I entered,” Farwell said.

More than 6,400 individual works were entered in 16 different categories in this year’s regional competition for middle and high school students.

Farwell’s works will be exhibited, along with other top-placing artwork from this year’s competition, in the College for Creative Studies Walter B. Ford II Building on the Ford Campus through Friday, March 3.

Farwell, who first began his artistic journey at a young age by drawing superheroes and sketching comic books, has been growing rapidly as an artist over the past two years by taking lessons with local artists Eugene Clark and Diane Heath.

“Luke has been doing art intensively for the past two years but has been in art classes since second grade,” noted his mother, Laura Farwell. “He has always had an artistic mind and can simply see art in things that most people don’t.”

Farwell has experimented with all mediums and has been trained in pencil drawing, charcoal, acrylic and watercolor painting, TRIdigital (digital art) and clay sculpting.

He plans to continue pursuing his love of art well beyond his college years.

“I really can’t imagine doing anything else at this point,” Farwell said. “Art has always been my passion, so it is definitely something I hope to do eventually for a career.”