The Vulnerability of Starting a New Hobby
Fun fact about me, ever since I was a child I always wanted to be an ✨artist.✨
Another fun fact about me, the way my ADHD works is that if I'm not instantly a prodigy at something, the likelihood of me sticking with it is almost nonexistent.
Over the decades, I've tried and failed to stick with art so many times that I've lost count. Each attempt would last a couple days, even a week or two, then I'd see art from someone I looked up to or knew personally who was ECHELONS more talented than I was at the time and immediately think, "What's the point?" then give up the hobby entirely. Rinse, repeat.
Did my brain care that the person whose art I was seeing had been practicing consistently for years? No. Did it care that they had potentially taken art classes? That they'd done this for work in any capacity? Also no. It cared that we had the same hobby and therefore I was to be held to the skill level that other people had already demonstrated.
This thought process is probably one of the least healthy mentalities that I've had about my worth as a creative person over the years. Art is subjective, and everyone's style is a unique culmination of the artworks/artists that inspire them, the way they view the world, and their ability to translate the image in their head onto the canvas of their choosing. I shouldn't be held to the standard of a professional when I'm learning what a contouring line is, that's insane.
Every time I'd treat a new attempt at learning art like an embarrassing secret. Behind closed doors, in the darkness of night, I'd scribble doodles in the margins of my notebooks then flip the page out of fear someone would see what I had created. I convinced myself that until I was proud enough to sell my art, to show it off with pride for the whole world to see, it wasn't worth anything. That it was something to keep to myself for fear of being ridiculed or, even worse, critiqued.
But one day, I felt like something clicked. I finally wrapped my head around the fact that I won't be a better artist in one, two, five, ten years from now if I don't practice. I won't magically master art by sitting with my thumbs up my ass and dreaming about it. In x amount of time, I will be that much older regardless if I use my time practicing art or not.
I decided it was time to make a change, so two years ago I started an online drawing course in the hope that I could stick with it for once.
Both fortunately and unfortunately for me, I'm pretty dang good at following directions. The positive of this is, if described well, I can achieve expectations pretty easily. This meant that when the instructor demonstrated and explained step by step how to draw a human eye, I was able to follow along and be pretty dang impressed by the results.
Now, the negative of this ability is that it doesn't translate into knowing how to do that thing on my own without the instructions (my ADHD ensuring I don't remember all the steps or tricks) so even early success feels like a fluke.
This meant, when it was time to move forward to the next lesson and start to learn the actual building blocks that would let me start to understand shape and dimension and shading, I found everything far more difficult. I wasn't copying the teacher, I was having to use the example to recreate a similar result with a different object. I quickly found that I stopped taking the prompts seriously and did the bare minimum instead of my best because I was overwhelmed.
And what do you know, me not trying my best led to me being rather unimpressed with my work. I felt like I'd actually moved backwards in terms of skill level. These sketches were my last before I dropped the course entirely for the umpteenth time. Not even a week after starting, I had bowed out.
Late last year, I decided I wanted to make basic pixel art for the visual novel I was writing on, Nightcap. I was honestly planning to handle the whole thing other than music myself (another classic biting off more than I can chew kind of situation that would usually lead me to burn out and stop the project altogether), but have since conceded that it may be a better idea for my spouse and I to work together on it since they've coded more than I have.
I purchased a course and got down to work. While some concepts were the same as the pieces of the drawing course I had already started the year prior, I think of pixel art as more rigid in a lot of ways. I enjoyed those limitations, they felt like guard rails. I started practicing and was decently pleased with my initial results. Even though I knew they weren't perfect, I was happy to feel like I was actually on the right track.
From there, I moved onto the next section of the course and started adding color. Again, I found myself not making "perfect" images but ones that I still felt pretty comfortable with. Ones that I felt showed growth. I would even say I was pleased with it at the time.
Then came the hardest challenge yet: making an image from scratch. No teacher imitation. No reference pixel art image. I had to take a real life thing and make a pixel art version of it. And you know what? I was honestly impressed by my efforts.
I wish I had more pixel art to share, but around this time was when I took a step back from all my creative projects. I've mentioned in a couple posts that I had a friend in town for a few months and I kind of let all my motivation fall to the wayside to spend time with them, and this was no exception. While I haven't made more progress with this specific creative endeavor since, I'm not concerned because something crazy happened.
I started back up my drawing course last month, and you know what? It's been almost three weeks and I'm STILL DOING IT! I've gotten further than I ever have in the course, and I've even taken my "homework" seriously at every step.
While I definitely feel some of these are better than others (my personal favorites being numbers six, ten, and eighteen), I still got through all 20 contours that the teacher said would be his ideal practice for us. Instruction was minimal with more focus on shadow than highlight initially, but I did my best. I followed through and didn't let myself get discouraged when I felt that I wasn't doing as good of a job as I wanted! Crazy!
Next came basic landscapes with even more basic shading, and while I did find this more fun I also found myself starting to have higher expectations. I reminded myself that I'm just learning, these aren't things I'm creating to sell or show off. I'm allowed to both acknowledge how much I don't know or can't do yet while still being proud of my progress. And I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty dang pleased with that lil house in the middle.
And this is where my "progress" stops for the purposes of this post. Not because I've once again given up or left my dream of becoming an artist in the past, but because I start the next lesson in my course today. It's taken a lot of effort, but in allowing myself to be content with incremental progress rather than expecting something dramatic, I've found a way to be happy enough with my attempts to continue pushing forward.
At the end of the day, sometimes you just have to let yourself be okay with feeling like you're bad at something for a while, regardless if it's true or not. Not everything has to be about the destination or the finished product, you can find fulfillment and pride in having the courage to try.
I don't have to have published a book to be an author, so maybe I don't have to be proud of every drawing I've ever made to be an artist. A work in progress is still a piece of my portfolio, the proof of my efforts and dedication. And hopefully someday I can post another update to show myself what's possible when I let myself enjoy the journey.