Odds over Ends

me: yes

*lighting appears*

me: yES

*thunders explode*

me: YES

*raining intensifies*

Questions from Pranav from Instagram that I answered with a little rephrasing. I believe some other aspiring artist can find this useful or inspiring: 

Do you get overwhelmed when you look at more talented people than you. If yes, how do you manage the feeling. Can anyone with zero talent achieve your level of skills in 3 years?

I get overwhelm all the time. But you got to remember, no matter how much talent you think they have, it is most likely took the YEARS to get to where they are now. The artist I look up to have being doing this for 40 years and I’ve only alive for half of it. Even if the people I look up to turns out to be younger. I have to take into account the degree of their hustle and dedication they had to get where they are now. You need to use that as inspiration to work just as hard. Put just as much effort that the people you look up to do. 

If you are willing to hustle and do the work, you and any aspiring artist can improve a lot in a short amount of time. Again, keep in mind I have been drawing for years. If you want to catch up within 3 years, you have compact my 15+ years of experience into that small time frame. That mean’s you are looking to put in at least 4 hours a more each day, everyday with high intent and focus to learn and improve. Even if you just dedicate an hour a day for a week that is 7 hours of dedication. That will take you far compared to someone who wasted it on watching Netflix or gaming instead. Not saying that it’s bad to watch or game. But if you want to get better and actually go somewhere as an artist, you have to sacrifice and put in the work. How bad do you really want this? And if you are the type of person who has done it for “years” how much of it was really dedicated in learning your craft and trying something new? How much effort really went into learning and executing. How much of it was spent failing more? Yes failing more, because you can’t create good art from doing 5 bad drawings a month or 100 in a year. You create masterpieces by doing 1000 bad art. If you want to make 5 masterpieces within a year? Make 5000 bad art. 

And you don’t need to do this within a short amount of time if you are incapable. It doesn’t make you less of an artist. Art is a life long journey.