About five and a half years ago, I decided I wanted to learn how to draw. I can’t say what promoted the desire; maybe it was the COVID lockdown, or perhaps I just needed a different creative outlet from writing given that writing had become my job. Regardless, I bought a cheap pressure-sensitive drawing pad, watched some instructional YouTube videos, collected a bunch of reference materials from some of my favorite artists, and gave it a go.
The portrait below was my very first piece of digital art. At the time, I was really proud of it. Heck, I’m still proud of it. Despite my technique being rudimentary, I was able to capture the model’s expression well, and I think I did a great job rendering her tattoos, even if I did trace them from a photograph. At that moment, I was super excited about where my drawing adventure would lead me.
Little did I know that I wouldn’t illustrate another drawing that I liked as much as that first one for over a year. It wasn’t for lack of trying. It was simply that every drawing I made afterwards was somehow lacking. The faces were either too cartoony or they veered into that weird, uncanny valley where they looked creepy. I’d try drawing characters without a reference and the anatomy would be ghastly. My ability to use foreshortening wasn’t there. My color palette was off. Mostly, however, the issue was that my ability to identify problems was growing faster than my technical ability to fix them.
This is actually common in all creative fields. We start out creating something (a drawing, a short story, a musical composition) and we think it’s great, but then we learn a little more and broaden our horizons, and all of a sudden we see a lot of flaws in the piece that we didn’t see the first time around. Unfortunately in creative endeavors, the ability to recognize flaws usually develops faster than one’s ability to appropriately address them, which funnels you into a try/fail cycle where even though you’re progressing, you still feel like you suck.
So that’s where I found myself, improving as an artist but still feeling impossibly far away from where I wanted to be as an artist, with my art not close to matching the vision I had for it.
So I stopped.
I quit drawing, in part because I couldn’t see the path toward where I wanted to be, and in part because I didn’t think I could turn this hobby into a side-gig (which is its own tangent, but suffice to say, there’s value in doing things for reasons other than monetary gain). Regardless of the reasons, I didn’t draw again for almost three years.
But eventually… I came back. I missed it. I realized it brought me joy and challenged me in lots of little ways, so I picked the pen back up. Few of you probably realize it because unlike that first year and a half, I haven’t really shared my progress. I’ve been drawing mostly for me, just working on my craft, making steady but meaningful improvements.
The piece below is my latest illustration, and I can say, honestly, that it’s the first piece where my execution matched my vision. It’s a good feeling.
Now, to be clear, finishing this new piece doesn’t mean I’ve reached some sort of pinnacle. If I keep drawing and studying and improving, I’m sure in a few years I’ll look back on this drawing and see a lot of flaws I’m currently missing. There’s always room to improve. At the same time, I also don’t want to denigrate myself. That first drawing I made was good. There was nothing wrong with it that needed to be improved, but it also didn’t match the vision I had for it. It’s important to have goals and strive for them, not simply settle for what you have now because it’s good enough.
So, yeah. Go out there and make art. Real art, by hand, not with AI. Push yourself. Strive for greatness, and don’t give up when you don’t get there right away. You won’t regret it.
Special shoutout to James Artemis Owen, who reminded me (and many others) that making art is as simple as drawing lines and deciding where to put them. There may be a little more to it than that, but fundamentally, it really is that easy. Thanks, James.