Brace yourself, my friend! This will be a long post (and I can't promise it will be worth your time xD).
My passion for drawing started when I was a child (like first grade or something). I started off simple of course - drawing small stuff like a tree or a house. Then I continued with the advanced works - a tree AND a house (sometimes the Sun too but it was way too hard for me). Okay I'll stop joking around. I actually started the real passion for drawing when I was in 7th grade. I would just get home after school and do nothing else. Just drawing and drawing until bedtime. Don't think I was good right away. I drew mostly anime characters from Yu-Gi-Oh! (not kidding). I will always be grateful to that anime (it's not really that good) because of this. I honestly think that if it wasn't for it I wouldn't be that good and I would've probably never even picked drawing back up. Never mind. After the Yu-Gi-Oh! phase I started drawing some characters from fighting games like Street Fighter and Guilty Gear. This time I decided to put in some shading (never done it before).
Here are two examples:
and this one of Sol Badguy
"WOW YOU'RE SO GOOD!!!" No, I'm not. At least not yet.
So the story continues with the real struggle. I decided I should step up my game and went immediately for the hard stuff - portraits. For those of you who think drawing realistic portraits is not that hard (without any lessons on drawing whatsoever) - I dare you to pick up a pencil or a pen and draw one. I must have had at least twenty completely failed attempts (I'm serious) until I finally succeeded with a really simple portrait of Kirsten Prout (an actress from a TV show I was watching back then).
Here it is:
I was so pleased that I finally got one. I was so hyped! I immediately went for another portrait (like three days later LoL). This time I went big - Angelina Jolie.
This could've been a lot better but I was really not skilled yet and did not have the patience that I have at the moment. Nevertheless you can see that I'm already more serious about drawing. I even went ahead and made a little logo that I use to this day for my traditional works (back then I wasn't going with Grinjaw yet and I simply used my initials JC). I started drawing portraits of random (and not so random) people and I couldn't get enough of it. With every new one I learned something new and developed a new personal shading technique (as I said earlier I had no drawing lessons in my life and probably never will).
Here are some other portraits that I won't talk about:
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Don't expect me to show you my best work right away. Okay here's another one:
The hair on this one was a real challenge (and no this is not my best either).
I still wasn't happy with my results. I wanted more. I think that we should always want more and strive for exceeding our limits. For those of you who are just now picking up drawing - my advice is to never give up. Patience is key. Patience is the thing I was lacking until I didn't. One day I decided I will go slow and do something better. That's the day I really stepped up my game in portrait drawing and went only forward afterwards. Here they are:
It's a good thing I'm stubborn and did not give up when I was close to doing it. Nowadays people say "wow you're so talented" and things like that. I kinda hate it. It's like saying that it's easy for me. No, it's not! Don't get me wrong. It's nice to hear that but the meaning of it ignores the hard work I went through. None of these people knows how much practice and hard work an artist has to overcome in order to improve his skills. In my opinion "talent" has nothing to do with mastering drawing techniques - it's practice, practice, practice, practice. "Talent" is actually something entirely else. "Talent" is the skill to come up with great ideas, not their execution. Execution of the ideas need work and a lot of it. Drawing is a skill and as such it's only natural to be improved by practice. All I'm saying is DON'T EVER GIVE UP! If you find something you like doing just keep doing it. I promise you that you will get better and better. Don't make the mistake of watching the works of people that are better than you and think that you suck. You might not be as good as them but that's just for the moment. Keep working and always aim higher and higher! Be patient and stubborn! That's what got me to be able to draw this one here:
This one will be in one of my other posts for sure. Stay tuned!
Sorry for the long post (there will be no potato).
'Till next time, Steemians! BE WELL!!!
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