blog: on the subject of growth 🌈

Hi friends!! I just wanted to pop in and say hellooo and LOOK AT WHAT I MADE !! I just finished a redraw of this piece from March 2020 — I drew it in March, again in May, and now (almost a full year later) I had another go at it!! I really love doing redraws~~ They're a great way for me to track my progress and growth, and also it's a great way to just..make art without having to think up whole new concepts hehe. Kind of like a "draw this in your style" but just for me :D

A question I get really often is "how do I find my art style? I feel like nothing ever sticks/I can't find it/etc." and the advice I always give is "keep drawing!!" and never more have i realized that to be true than in the past few months. 

I feel like it's only been in the past couple months that I've finally gotten over the fear of drawing things I'm not good at (mainly, practicing bodies and poses in a more focused manner, though I have a loooong list of other stuff I wanna improve at but I've been working on character stuff~) and in the past few months I feel like my art has improved more quickly than ever!! I've talked for a long time about wanting to let go of the fear of being "bad" at art, or drawing ugly things, and I think I've finally been able to take my own advice. I draw and scribble in my sketchbook, and some of the stuff looks weird and bad, and I cringe looking at it, BUT I know it's a part of the process and it's all valuable. 

I've been consuming a bunch of art via Instagram and Twitter, and carefully analyzing different styles that I admire and trying out their techniques in my sketchbook. This is something that Austin Kleon says in How to Steal Like An Artist (which is a great, very quick read): he says that you should copy your heroes and figure out where you fall short in these replications. These shortcomings are most likely the things that define your work and instead of seeing them as failures, you should lean into them and work to amplify them !! 

For instance, an artist I've been talking about a lot lately is Maud Bihan — I love love love their balance of soft, watercolor-y textures with bright colors and clean shapes. And the fact that they're able to do it all digitally! I've tried a handful of times to replicate their style, and I have found that without lineart, I have a hard/weird time trying to navigate a canvas. So, I've embraced my love of lineart in my work, and now I get to use that as a fixed navigation point in my journey to become better at digital painting!!! (which is...v slow going, but it's going!! digital painting is so hard oml)

I think this sort of jumping in headfirst approach has been the scariest and also most rewarding move I've made with my artwork. (well, that combined with how I've scaled back on things and now actually have time and energy to draw hah) As Ira Glass says, we're constantly working to close the "gap" between our taste and our work, and I can see it closing a bit now — I know it'll get wider again soon, and I'll have to keep pushing forward, but seeing the progress is thrilling and incredibly encouraging for me. ಥ‿ಥ

I hope you're doing well!! Happy happy Monday xx 💕💕💕

Love,
Chey