Welcome!

Welcome to my long overdue illustration blog!

I confess, it has taken me a long time to get this blog up and running due to one core fear – not being ‘good enough’ at drawing; a fear which I suspect is felt among many aspiring artists alike.

I have found that whilst the internet (and books) can provide a great wealth of inspiration, and enable insight into other artists’ works, it is easy to become almost overwhelmed by the sheer volume of talent out there.  Our human nature compels us to compare ourselves to others, whether we do this consciously or not, and this unfortunately can lead to us doubting our own talent.

Even until recently I would find myself producing what I felt was a reasonably good drawing, but then after going online and viewing other artists work I would suddenly feel disheartened with what I had achieved.  Furthermore, the more art I created, the more infuriated I became at myself for constantly putting my own work down.  I knew that I would get nowhere with that attitude and so I had a good ole’ rethink!

I decided that, for me, illustration was not about perfection, but about expression instead.

I know I am not the best artist, and I would be conning myself I tried to convince myself otherwise. However, one should always remember the saying ‘I may not be the best, but I am not the worst’. Besides, art will always be subjective and it is not a competition (unless stated in T&Cs haha) – and there will always be someone somewhere who will like what you've produced – no matter how shockingly poor you think it is!!

Mostly, we are our own inhibitors of our drawing success – the fear of failure coupled with the lack of self-belief act as restraints on what should be a completely freeing process.  

So, I came up with a motto for the next year regarding my illustrations:

‘be brave and start sharing’

Acting on this motto will hopefully help me to overcome that debilitating fear of not being ‘good enough’, and maybe with art being subjective and all, some of you may even like my illustrations (and rambling writings)  – but also what I would really love to do is hopefully inspire others to disregard that ‘drawing fear’ and feel uninhibited when that pencil touches that paper!

Anyway, in keeping with my motto I now share with you two little ‘practice sketches’ I produced a little time ago. I used pastel pencils (which are lots of fun) with a simple biro outline – hope you enjoy.

Emma

Practice 1

Practice 2