When I was a little kid I drew all the time. I really liked drawing trees . There are straight parts and curvy parts and textured leaves and bark. You can add animals and grass and roots. I just loved drawing trees. I had little interest in drawing faces and people because symmetry is hard and so is drawing representationally. I drew for my own joy with no intention in mind. As I got older I had less time to draw and my style evolved to suit the time I had avaliable. I got into drawing patterns and really graphic work. I also became more aware of the commercial side of art.
My mom is a graphic designer so I knew about that side of art. To my mothers dismay I also became more aware of tattoos and the "alternative" side of commercial art. However I was still not a fan of representational and realistic drawing it did not come easy for me and struggling with it took the fun out of it.
I remember when I applied to fashion/art schools a lot of places wanted fashion illustrations. I absolutely hated drawing them there were different rules for fashion illustration and I had to draw faces which were the worst. It would take me hours just to do the heads.
Even when if was accepted and in the department I struggled. I could make the garments, easy. Drawing them was a different story.
What I failed to realize was that fashion illustration is just that, illustration. I had always tried to make my drawings from photographs of my work combined with photos of models. This made for weird proportions and things that were always a little off.
At this point I began to dislike drawing.
I went from a place where there were a few kids who were good at drawing, my high school. To a place where a knowledge of drawing and art was a pre requisite, and some people had come from highs schools where art was considered far more important than math. Very much unlike my school, that had an engineering program. Anyway I was suddenly a goldfish in an ocean of sharks who, to me seemed like they could all sell their proverbial doodles for quite a pretty penny. It's one thing suck at one thing as much as the rest of your communitiy does, but it's another to feel like the only one.
So I took an illustration class, it was really intimidating. Even beginning was filled with people who had an amazing gift and passion for illustration.i forced my self to keep drawing even though I didn't really like it. It's hard to be bad at something you want to be good at. It's harder to try to be better when it seems to come easy to everyone else.
But I'm working on it. And maybe someday I'll be pretty good at it, and maybe then I'll enjoy it again.
