I've been thinking about my favorite subject again. Why is it that people are afraid of drawing? I say this almost every time I open my mouth in a lecture or class. We have to give ourselves permission to be imperfect. We have to give ourselves time to learn. I think it's crazy that we assume we are not an artist if we can't automatically draw the first time we pick up a pencil. We don't expect a food lover to be a Chef until after they've trained. We don't call someone an author without them first having learned to read and write and compose.
Here I am an artist- and I have to admit that I'm sometimes guilty of it myself. I sketched all the time but was afraid to draw a face because - well - it's HARD! I finally stopped whining about it and decided to DO THE WORK!
The goal was to draw a face a day for a year. I'm not so good at consistency when it comes to things like daily tasks - there is is too much "life" going on at my house. But I did fill the box. And I'm still doing it. I used 3x5 cards instead of sketchbook because they are not "precious." They are kind of junk paper. You can't ruin something if it's already junk right?
Guess what - it's paying off.
The time and effort and the work, work, work. It's paying off.
More than once in the past few weeks I've held up a sketch to show a member of my family and they immediately knew who it was. That's huge progress here. :-)
Mind you - it's by no means effortless. I still have a long way to go but it's such a fun journey to be on. What pleasure to open the box and see how far I've come.
How about you?
For those of you who followed along last year - have you seen the fruits of your efforts?
What is easier now that you've put in some time doing the WORK?