I am writing this because a friend of mine seems to think that a.) good artists don't need as much encouragement as those who aren't, and b.) good artists don't understand the struggles of those who are not.

Since I've been included, for the sake of this argument, in the category of "good artist," I'm going to attempt to debunk these theories based on my own experience.

Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be an artist. I was ten when I started drawing. And ever since I can remember, I've dealt with one struggle after another along that path. I was homeschooled for five years, so I didn't have a formal education until the year before high school. At that point, I tried to get into a specialized art school (called Harrison School of the Arts), but the drawings I submitted weren't up to their standards, so they rejected me.

I took AP Art in high school for the last two years, with a pretty nice art teacher who we called Pie. I made decent enough grades in the class itself (if you can't pass a high school art class, it's pretty sad), but I failed the AP exam. The judges wrote that I had no talent for art.

That pretty much devastated me, and I quit drawing after high school. Collected with the other drama that happened in my life (I could write you quite the novel about childhood trauma, but ye gods, let's not), I went on a lovely downward spiral in my first year of college. It was only three years later that I picked up a pencil again -- and that was only due to my current husband, who literally pulled on my ears until I applied to the local art college.

The combination of his insistence that I actually had an iota of talent, and the many stories we would create through role-playing, served to spur me into making a comic. I wanted to be a great artist, and as my first figure drawing teacher at the art college told us: "You're going to do a million shitty drawings before you do a good one. You might as well get the million shitty ones out of the way."

Taking his advice and my newfound alley of exploration, I began drawing Wicked Alchemy. I studied character design, panel layout, website coding and layout, and for the first time ever, I used a computer to color something. It was pretty horrible, but the story itself and the inspiration my husband gave me kept me going.

I colored that with Jasc PaintShop, if you were curious, with a mouse. ;D Because of the story, I had to draw things I'd never even tried before -- like huge, crowded bar rooms, or people in positions I'd never thought to draw them before. I experimented with different styles of drawing, and different effects to learn the programs I was using better. But despite how wonderful my husband said I was, and despite the few fans my comic managed to gain, I still thought I was a horrible artist. I wanted to be better.

I continued experimenting with traditional media. I made icon characters of all my friends both on and offline (well over 100, which are no longer available for view online).

After two years at the local art college (Ringling School of Art), I ran out of money. I'd been working a part-time job, but it wasn't enough to pay our bills -- and I couldn't get any private loans. My father had been helping a little, but they upped the price again on me, and he had his own debts to pay. So with no way to come up with 600$ a month, I had to drop out of college and get a real job.

I didn't want to stop drawing -- I couldn't, because I knew that it killed me the last time I had. So I started a community on LJ in which I did free art for people. From that community, I made free icons for people. I had a pirate game -- I made a template for a pirate and asked people to send me their pirate ideas -- different clothes, colors, hair styles, etc. I did over 100 of these, just so I could experiment with various colors, clothing, and facial expressions.

I found Photoshop and switched my comic-making over to that. My husband bought me a Wacom tablet, and I taught myself to use it while I was teaching myself Photoshop. My job has some pretty awesome benefits -- I'm able to draw while I'm there, on my down-time, so that's all I did and still do while I'm there.

The downside to my job was that for the first four years (up until 2 months ago), I was working swing-shift. So while my husband had a 7am to 3pm job, and my daughter went to school 7am to 3pm, I had to work 3pm to 11pm (along with mandatory overtime sometimes until 3am). This gave me another eight hours in the daytime with nothing else to do and no one to hang out with.

So I drew. And drew and painted and drew. Every comic page I made in Wicked Alchemy was a new experiment -- some pose I'd never tried before, or some new method of coloring, or some experimental panel design. Every single page, I can look back on and say "Oh, that's when I wanted to try (this)." It's like a diary of my personal training.

And along the way, I found out something rather annoying -- that no matter how much better and better I became, I was never as good as I wanted to be. I could never depict the world -- my own world -- in the way I wanted to. From concept to creation, something always fell short.

A year and a half ago, I was finally in a situation where I could go back to school. I've been attending school full-time again since then, while working a full-time (and then some) job, and trying to be a part of my family. My family life slowly fell away from me. After four years of barely seeing them, I barely know them. But there I was, still toiling desperately away to reach some perfect, unreachable pinnacle.

I make straight A's at my school, which mean nothing to me. I haven't missed a project, and I've only missed a handful of classes. On every assignment they give me, I go above and beyond -- not because I'm better than everyone in my class, but because I put more hours into it. To every one of their hours, I put three or four. On a project that takes them a weekend, I'll work eight hours a day for two weeks... because I want it.

I think people underestimate how much effort it takes to become anything great. People aren't born with talent -- they're born with desire, which, with the proper ambition and obsession, can be turned into talent. Nothing in this life that's worth having or worth being is easy to have or to be. It's not even moderately easy. It's a constant and impossible struggle that comes from nothing other than a strange, inexplicable and insatiable hunger inside. And if you don't have that hunger, I can't explain it to you. Try starving for a few days, and feel how very much you want any kind of food. That's what I feel like, constantly. I feel like I'm starving.

Perhaps that's what the real definition of 'starving artist' is for me. I'm only filled, I'm only fulfilled, when I can create something beautiful. There isn't a day in my life for the last three years that I haven't drawn for at least six hours. I've burned through a couple computers, two wacom tablets and a couple external hard drives in only a few years, because of what I put them through. I have a chest in my room that takes up half a wall, and it's jam-packed to overflowing with sketch books. There wasn't enough room, so the underside of my bed is also jam-packed with newsprint pads and canvas. I have unfinished paintings stuffed between my dresser and my wall, and wedged behind my desk. Half my closet is stuffed with old work. My night stand holds six boxes, all of which are filled with art supplies. I have two fishing tackle boxes cluttered with charcoals and paints.

And of course, there's the physical abuse my poor drawing hand has endured. I think, of all my body, I have forced this appendage to suffer the most. I broke my wrist, severed my smallest finger so I can no longer bend it, stabbed an exacto knife straight through it, slammed several of the fingers in quite a few car doors... It's a wonder it still works for me at all.

I've written all of this, because the idea that 'talented' people don't understand what it's like to be 'untalented' made me laugh. I wanted to explain why it makes me laugh. What part of this, dear friend, makes you think I am any better than you? When people ask me 'what is art,' I often can't find the words to explain it, because to me... art is everything. Art is suffering; art is endurance; art is truth. Art is what breathes life into me. Art is why I slave through my job, art is why I kill myself to go to school full time, art is all I think about every day, all I dream about every night, art is all I wish that I can do with my life.

I'm tired. It's late, and I have to be up to work another eight hours on my day off. But I'm still writing this, because I feel like I cannot end it. Perhaps it's because if it weren't for the encouragement of my husband, I would be dead now. That you really think I don't understand how much people's words can hurt and help disheartens me somehow. I pour my soul into the deviantArt community because within it I've found so many other people who, while they're there, are thinking about art. I've become addicted to its flow -- it's a world of art that never seems to stop, because I can go there and constantly feel fulfilled by finding new art and creativity and veins in which people are pouring their own ideas. I joined *GimmeFeedback and started the chatroom because if there are people who really, truly want to be better, in the same way I do, I want to be there for them. That small spark of desire... when I see it in anyone, I see a mirror of me. And that, I think, is what makes a true artist -- that perpetual yearning, that inexplicable desire. Art isn't about creating for other people, or creating for money (although those might be wonderful benefits). It begins when you want to create -- and the more desire you have, the better you can become.

I think I'm done for now. I'm not sure what I was trying to accomplish with this rambling, but I think I've lifted my own spirit with it a little.








Tech & Nature - Jun 27
Mucha - Jun 29
Fantasy/Dark - Jun 30
ID Design - Jul 1
OC - Jul 1
Six Word Story - Jul 4
Forbidden Love - Jul 20
Fairytale - Jul 30
Novel Illustration - Jul 31
The Fae Realms - Jul 31
The Gift II - Aug 10
Far East - Aug 16
Aardrii'd Character Design - Aug 30
Lazeros - Sept 1
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I got featured in this lovely article by *miamsm. Thank you!







Also, I still can't change my journal mood.