When people come up to me and look at my drawings and say how I’m “really good”, I don’t take it as praise, because soon after, the words “I’ll never be that good” follow, and it pisses me off. I’ve been drawing since i was twelve, that’s eight years I’ve been practicing and trying to improve, and I’m nowhere near being done, I plan on practicing until the day I can no longer hold a pencil. When I ask these people if they practice, they tell me “I don’t have the time for that” or “I’m not any good so I don’t bother”, I tell them that’s bullshit. I started out doodling, and got tips from three very dear friends of mine every chance I got. I redrew so many sketches multiple times, I drew certain objects over and over again, I looked up hundreds of references, and still do on a regular basis. I won’t let the words “I’m not any good” get to me. I won’t let my younger sister, who “wants to draw like her big sister” say that she’ll “never be any good”, because if she thinks she can’t do something, then how’s she going to handle it when she takes the BAR exam to become a lawyer? I know, drawing and being a lawyer have pretty much nothing in common, but for my younger sister, drawing is something that teaches her that she can do anything she wants, as long as she doesn’t give in to the words “I’ll never be that good, so why bother”. So when you see all this wonderful art scrolling through Tumblr and think “I can’t be that great” or “Might as well give up”, I want you to think about a ten year old girl who, so far, can only draw those really fat doodles of cats and has aspirations of being a lawyer, and I want you to doodle. It can be anything from a fat cat to Godzilla, to a three-legged emu, but just keep doodling. Don’t give up on yourself before you give yourself time to improve.
