Talented

Talented…..

So I have started a blog, I am not sure how often I will update it but I wanted to write about the subject of talent. It isn’t often for me that the ideas in my head coagulate into writing.

I have started back at a life drawing group, there is no teacher so we sometimes ask each other for tips. A member of the group told me that she liked my drawing style and that I am talented. I admit it, this went to my head. She thinks I have talent? The rosy glow of her words lasted for an afternoon.  The next day I went back to my drawing and realised it wasn’t that great “the hair is flat, some of the shading is clunky and it’s an easy posture”.  I let the inner beast off the leash “you don’t have talent, you’re a fraud, an artist wannabe, how could you let that person think you are talented even for a second?” I will save the subject of the dangers of comparing and the inner beast for another time. I was thoroughly down on myself.

I decided to go back and look at the drawings I made when I started life drawing. I was shocked – some of them are really bad, I honestly didn’t remember them being that terrible. But as terrible as they are there is an obvious progression, at some point I discovered proportion, eventually some shaded muscles start to bulk out the form. Hands and feet remained the shape of spades and facial features are sparse. I was so pleased because I have come such a long way from those first sketches. This leads me back to talent, looking at my first drawings I don’t think anyone who saw them would have told me I have talent.  So I ask, does talent exist at all?  I love life drawing, for me it is a kind of meditation, when I am figure drawing there is nothing else, no brain static and 90% of the time I walk away a more content person. My love of it makes practising it a joy.  I have been working on life drawing on and off over a period of years, I am still learning, seeing a progression in my work gives me hope that I will continue to grow and learn. I will take some of my first sketches with me to the next life drawing group to show my beginnings. Forget talent, if you love what you are doing, just keep going.

Life Drawing circa 2009

Life Drawing 2015