I love art. Simple as that. I like looking at it and mainly, creating it. Ask anyone, I’ve been drawing for quite a long time, but if someone were to ask me if I plan to pursue it as a career or major, I’d laugh and say no. Here’s why. It’s degrading. For me at least it is. Others can agree it isn’t for them. For me, every 100 drawings I create maybe five will turn out great and how I imagined them. I start off doing them and hope it will look good in the end. When I can’t project an idea from my head onto paper the way I want, it’s heart breaking and frustrating. You have to be very confident or head strong to cope with constantly underachieving in something you love.

I prefer to create artwork every once in awhile when I get a spark of inspiration. I wouldn’t be able to pull piece after piece out for potential employers. Knowing me, I’d get overwhelmed by having to do commission after commission. I’m more along the lines of pulling out my sketchbook when I need to de-stress with the security of knowing no one else will see it. The photos that I post of my artwork are the ones that are my very best. People don’t see the hundreds of drafts of the final product.

For example, this piece is the final product of several three hour class periods of erasing and redoing every inch, until I found it acceptable.

I give mad props to people who pursue their passion for art, because it’s hard to love your own work sometimes. It’s the same idea behind loving yourself. Can you say 100% that you love yourself? Most people can't, and that’s why it’s hard for me to love my artwork because it’s a part of me and I have a skill of finding flaws. It’s not all negative though, finding flaws is how I improve my artwork. I've come a long way from where I first started and I’m still learning new techniques and skills to further improve myself. Maybe one day I’ll love more of my artwork, but for now I’m going to stick to doing it for fun.

The one thing I really love about my artwork is looking back at my old pieces and comparing to the most recent ones and seeing the improvement. It’s always satisfy to know that I’ve come a long way and continue to improve with each new piece. Another one of my favorites is my style. Every artist has their own style. My style of drawing has been a mixture of animation and realistic features. I can especially tell with portraits of people, the features almost look lifelike but there’s also an underlying touch of animation which makes it unreal at the same time.

This piece for example, It’s of a girl and she looks realistic, but there are parts of her that are more on the animation style. The jawline, eyebrows, and eyelashes fall under the animation style. There are too perfect to be realistic. No one has perfectly shaped eyebrows, and eyelashes don’t look like that. Overall, I like that I combine styles because it is unique to me and no one else draws the same.

An artist style is like a fingerprint. It is unique to that person and no one else possesses the same fingerprint. Even though I won’t pursue an art career I will keep it around as a hobby, knowing that I am the only one with my style. With growth of skills, hopefully comes growth of love for my own artwork. I do love my artwork, but sometimes it’s hard and that’s okay.