I Used to Struggle as an Illustrator & I Still STRUGGLE with My Art

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If You only knew How Much I Used To Struggle!

 In fact, I still STRUGGLE with my art.

Fish King

To this day I still have a problem drawing in front of people. I have no problem painting in front of a group but I’m so unsure about my drawings I get really self conscious.
This fish for instance goes through a really rough loose stage that changes form many times before I start to see things I like. Often I don’t like where it’s going and have to start over from scratch – that would make a really fun demo wouldn’t it? (sarcasm intended)… and the fear of that happening is paralyzing – so I don’t often draw in front of my classes.
A lot of our artist friends that are realy good at what they do, don’t want to do a course for folioacademy because they are afraid of the camera, they don’t want the world to see them struggle.

Developing Your Art Skill Takes Time

I know I’ve talked about this before but I really want you to know two things:

1. This art thing that you want to get good at takes a long time – a lifetime really.

2. It’s really fun when you start to put all the pieces together and start creating images that gather an audience!

Assignment: Create a “Fish King Character”

King Fish line artI gave an assignment to create a “Fish King” character in my Imagination and Visual Literacy class at UVU and invited my students to send me images to post – some of them took me up on this invitation. I hope they realize that they draw better than I did when I was going to college. In fact, I was put on “probation” as a provisional student for being such a horrible artist. I was one of the few that didn’t get a studio space my junior year and I was on probation, I had to improve or I wouldn’t be in “the Program” my senior year. So I spent my Junior year being a lesser student. Yes that was stressful and depressing. And scary, to spend three years in University just to be told that “I can’t be an artist”.

Here are some preliminary sketches.

Oh yeah – it was my son Aaron’s idea to put fish hooks in his lips – credit where credit’s due!

Evolution of a Fish King.

King Fish line art c

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s What My Students are Drawing

King Fish line art d

I love the diversity you can see in their work. By nature artists want to be different. Artists want to show the world something they’ve never seen. Check out Dallin Orr’s and Todd wilson’s work.

I don’t mind admitting it, some of my students are a lot better artists than I was at their stage in the game.

 Here are a few warm up sketches I did.

King Fish line art b

2 thoughts on “I Used to Struggle as an Illustrator & I Still STRUGGLE with My Art”

  1. I swear, you and I are brother and sister! Either that, or you are the younger male version of myself! Haha! You are REAL. What you share is the nuts and bolts….the very truth about being an artist. You share the struggles and the fact that NO it doesn’t come “easy”. By sharing your honesty, you enlighten your followers to the reality of what it takes to be an artist. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for “putting it all out there” so that we too, can see that with our own struggles to do what we are passionate about, we can better understand that through our own failings, success is possible.

    • Thank you for your comment and don’t get discouraged, any trade is tough to ‘master’, and art is worth it. with love my sister, or female version of myself.

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