Elijah Johnson plays soccer, basketball and chess.
But since the 14-year-old can spend as many as six hours a day drawing in his room, it's safe to say art is a serious matter for him.
"(Drawing) is a way to express feeling, to show your creativity," he said. "It felt good to be recognized for what I was doing."
Elijah spoke June 9 as dozens of people saw the fruits of his practice in a Baltimore art gallery last week.
The Arbutus resident's three self-portraits were part of a special exhibition at Jordan Faye Contemporary.
The Federal Hill gallery hung the works of Elijah and about 50 other students of the SEED School of Maryland, a three-year-old public boarding school that attracts students from 13 Maryland counties to its Font Hill Avenue campus in southwest Baltimore.
Only about 20 percent of the 240 students at the school were selected to have their art displayed in the gallery.
Elijah, who started drawing as a 5-year-old, said while he enjoyed the recognition, that's not why he pursues art.
"My art represents me, my feelings," he said, standing near his works, two in pencil and a third, which portrayed him as a superhero, in oil pastel and colored pencil.
"The background is black to white," Elijah said about the colored piece. "Through this drawing, I was dispersing a lot of feelings and I was starting to gradually become happy."
Elijah's mother, Carolyn Tenai, attended the art show and said it was only in the past year that she learned how much artistic talent the oldest of her four children had.
"Elijah is really someone who stays to himself," Tenai said. "He expresses his feelings and everything in art. That's what I see in his art."
While Elijah's skin-tone, nose structure and cherub cheeks all matched the self-portraits, his full, curly locks did not.
Elijah started the project four months ago, when he had a mohawk.
That his work reflects that hairstyle revealed something special to his art teacher.
"He's observant and he's sort of fearless about detail. Conquering that mohawk took some perseverance and he did a phenomenal job," said Michelle Labonte, who has taught Elijah for three years. "(I was impressed by) the line work and the fact that he took the time to really look at that.
"He could have kind of summarized it into a clump, but he didn't."
Jordan Faye Block, the owner of the art gallery, was also impressed.
"There's definitely a sense of depth," Block said about Elijah's work. "His drawing skills are impressive.
"I can see that from the first drawing up above (the color portrait). It's shaded so he understands value and color."
While many of 96 works she displayed were for sale, only a select few were purchased.
The Maryland SEED School, which currently has students in sixth through eighth grades but will add a ninth grade class next year, purchased several.
One of them was Elijah's color portrait, which sold for $125. It will either be hung in the school's office or given as a gift to a donor.
The money from the sale will be split between the school, the gallery and Elijah.
The sale brought mixed emotions to Elijah.
"It makes me feel good," said Elijah, who joked he felt rich for a 14-year-old.
"(But) you work so hard on it. It's sad to see things you work so hard on go."
The eighth-grader said he hopes to continue drawing through college and has his sights set on going to the Maryland Institute College of Art.
His mother said that art has been a constant in his life, even when he expressed his intentions of becoming an architect and engineer in the past.
"He's had so many different ideas, but he's always stuck with the art," she said.