It's only a matter of time

As I slowly applied the watercolors to the portrait I was doing, Ezra (my ars instrusctor) stopped by to suggest what I could do to make it better. He also chided me for not being careful in mixing the watercolors, though as he moved to the next student he said "You may be good at watercolors, but I got reign you in a little"...Since when have I been good at watercolors? Now some of you may be thinking "Oh you're just being modest" well sorry to break it to you but I'm not. I thought of all of watercolors I did in the past and... they were not pretty. Anyway, I continued to do the watercolor portrait until we had our 15 min. break. I decided to look around at what everyone else did, expecting mine to be the worst in the group. How surprised was I that I actually did a good job on blending the different colors when compared to most people in my class.

I admit it I can still improve the portrait, but I felt so happy inside that I was able to do something with watercolors that came out as nicely as it did. It made me think of all those times when I was younger when I didn't want to draw because I was so frustrated that I couldn't get it look the way I wanted it to look. This lead me to think about all the drawings and artwork I did in the past. I also thought how my friends say I'm good/great artist, and yet I always say I'm not. I say I'm not because 1) I don't want to get an inflated ego and 2) I remember how I used to draw.

Though with that said I've become more confident, I still have much to improve upon and it's ok. As time passes on I'll continue to grow as an artist. I'll also slowly, but surely create artwork that will be even more amazing than what I have now. Who knows, there may even come a day when I'll look at my work with out thinking negatively about my lacking skills. Until then, I'll just keep on drawing.

Always Room For Improvement

I haven't worked on improving my art in a relatively long time. Most of my drawings are stylized, drawing inspiration from both Western and Japanese Animation. However, I know that in order to actually improve I must stray away from stylized drawing and practice more on drawing from observation. Even Disney artists brought real lions into the studio for reference while making sketches for their hit animated film, The Lion King.

Real references are important when working on human anatomy and features. Currently, I'm most comfortable with drawing human hands, since I have my own for reference. Drawing other people is difficult because they are constantly moving, so I usually can only make a base sketch, or images of people from behind. I learned that drawing from a photograph doesn't produce the same results either. While photographs are great to use when one doesn't have any other materials for reference, they are no substitute for a real life model.