I have been in practicing art for as long as I can remember. My sister is 8 years older than me, so as she was prepping to become an art major in college I saw all of her amazing artwork. I remember at the age of 10 I wanted so badly to be able to draw like my sister, but all of my drawings looked like a very sloppy knockoff that nowhere near resembled the original. I would trace faces off of the computer screen and still be frustrated with how bad it looked. I told my sister that I wish I was able to draw like her and she told me some very important advice: improving art isn’t as simple as being gifted, instead it is about hard work and practice.
I have carried this advice with me ever since that point, but I still find it difficult to explain to people when they tell me that they want to be good at art. So many times I have had people peep over my should as I am drawing and mention how they wish they could draw. If there is one thing that I want you to know, it is I absolutely sucked at art. But I kept practicing. I would go home a few nights a week and draw things. My sketches still looked jumbled and disfigured. It was only after I started doing it daily that I improved.
Practice makes progress. If you want to be better at art, it is important to practice. Too often do I see people telling artists that they wish they had their talent. Sure, certain people are exceptions and they are able to pick up any medium and master it almost immediately, but this is very rarely the case. The artists that so many people admire are ones that likely have spent years perfecting their technique and developing a style. It is a long process, but it is a possible thing to master something with time.
Few people are perfect at what they do, but they are able to build upon their weaknesses with patience. I knew a boy that was completely colorblind that painted in my class. There were times he realized halfway through class he was using green instead of a skin tone for a portrait. Other times he would accidentally paint a majority of a canvas different shades of the same color. But by the end of his senior year, he had created an amazing painting that won first place in two different shows.
If you want to get better at art, you have to take it head-on. You have to practice and put in an effort to learn. There is nothing more to art than hard work and patience.
Megan, I absolutely loved this blog post. I relate to this idea very much because I have always wished that I could create the art that I pictured in my head. My mom and grandmom are very talented painters, drawers, sculptors, you name it. However, that artistic inclination skipped right over me and hit my little sister. I like to think that what matters is not your natural ability for the creation of art, but rather, your passion for the arts. I absolutely love art, and whenever anyone is willing, I want to talk about it. My little sister can create art, but she does not really have an appreciation for it. Do you think that it is possible to truly love art but not the history of art? And also, could you possibly explain more on how you managed to become a skillful artist?
I think there are many ways to love and appreciate art. You can certainly love certain art movements, techniques, artists, but still have certain areas that you don’t like. As for me, I started to like art at the age of eight. To be quite honest, I SUCKED. It was only years later when I was fourteen and I started to really practice that I saw major improvements. I would try to do a sketch every single day. A lot of the times my sketches were sloppy and I felt like I was going nowhere, but then a day would come around where I was really proud of the work I did. On days like that, it was important for me to take notes on the things I did differently and I would try to carry it on through the rest of my art. It was a slow and not-so-steady process and I often felt like giving up. You have to practice a lot and also find a medium that works with you. I know people that are AMAZING with oil paints, but they have difficulty with drawing in pen and charcoal. It really is about finding what works for you and sticking to it.
It’s true that like everything art is something you must practice to get good at. I am horrible at art, but I am not one to practice everyday, or really at all for that matter. But you are right when you say people do need to understand that it is not just natural born talent.
I love your take on art that it is more about hard work and practice rather than talent. I normally would think “that’s just what people who are naturally pretty good at art say.” But I really believe you because I have a friend that now goes to Drexel University for art fashion, drawing things that look like they came from Marc Jacobs himself. However, I have known this girl since birth, and she used to draw the exact same stick figure pictures with the yellow ball and a couple lines coming around it (aka the sun) until the age of 12 when she became interested in art. I thought what was truly interesting about your post was the story of the colorblind student. If I hear more inspiring things like that, life may just very well look a whole lot brighter. At the end of the day, there is a part of me that thinks I will still never be artistically talented, but I am starting to realize that that is more from my lack of effort than my maximum abilities. Overall, this is a super interesting point of view!