We, humans tend to procrastinate and blame it on something else, or as I see it, constantly searching for an excuse to not do our jobs or tasks. the worse part is: we start to believe our own lies about it.
I, for example always dreamed about becoming an artist, a famous one, but for years I found excuses to postponed my start. boiling those excuses to their essence, there was only two of them,
- I don't have time for it
- and I cant afford it
not having time, I will post about at a later time, but the cost, let us see how true it was.
Growing up in a family with five kids. we never had money to spend on anything but bare essentials. bills, food and once a year clothing. trying to survive, something like art wasn't even an option for us.
Living in a country that even to these days, art is considered a hobby that eats your money instead of making some because people don't see it valuable, I never considered becoming an artist, until years after I abandoned school, and had my hands in my own pockets.
Doing manual work for the little money I was making, I always considered paint and canvas too expensive to buy. together with working all the time, I had a set of excuses to not even look into it and see what I would need. After wasting years believing that I can't afford to become an artist, I finally dipped my toe and bought some paper, big ones and a piece of MDF to use as my drawing board. They sat at the corner of my room for months before I decided to buy some paint.
Being an absolute beginner and having no idea what I'm doing, I've bought one brush and a set of oil paint tubes believing I'll paint several paintings with them and sell at least one before I'll need to buy more. I was wrong, I ran out of blue halfway through laying down a sky behind the view I was about to paint...
I did some calculations and reached the conclusion that paint is more expensive than what a painting can be sold around here, plus, that blue is too strong for a sky and I'm running out of white as well. Mounts later I've bought some charcoal to draw with, that didn't go any better either. not realizing that the problem was lack of skill, I tossed everything in a box and abandoned the whole idea.
Years passed and a usable internet finally reached our city after twenty five years delay comparing to the rest of world. Suddenly I had access to the biggest chunk of shared human experience, I've sat and watched more and more videos of people drawing, one after another I realized my mistakes. the biggest one was: I've spent money too early in the learning process. A pen and paper with an optional eraser was all I needed to start with.
I had a stack of fliers I've got on the street, a pencil my brothers friend left in my room and an old pen I keep handy. those would last a long time before I'll have to spend again but I might buy a mechanical pencil for convenience and an eraser because I need one.
long story short: don't repeat my mistakes, learning to draw doesn't need anything more that what you already have lying around. don't procrastinate and just start.
like always, here's the bonus content of what I was up to, study of the mouth because usually it's the mouth that shows most of the expression.
