I’m not that much of an artist. But, I don’t believe I need to be in order to enjoy drawing, painting, or crafting. Sure, I’d love to be naturally talented and be able to just place my pencil on the paper and spew out great works of art – but I’m not, so I can’t.
My latest challenge to myself has been to figure out my own style. I’ve been doing small exercises in sketching to, besides simply practice, figure out how I want to approach a specific project. For instance, I have a card from Hawai’i with a lovely, classic style woman on the front wearing a grass skirt. I tried redrawing the picture as I see it on the front of the card. I failed miserably. I then tried a ridiculous rendition. It was, well, ridiculous. I then tried something of my own – something I could do rather quickly without a lot of thought or erasing. It turned out better.
I have no idea if this is the proper exercise to figure out what style I want to follow. But I’m hoping to one day stumble across a particular style that I can get comfortable and succeed in. Something that makes me happy with the project that I’m working on, is relatively easy to do (for me), and ends up being me. I realize this could take years but I think I will find just as much enjoyment in trying to find my style as I will in actually finding it.