"There's always a room for improvement."
As an artist, I always remember how and when did I start to draw portrait. Now, I will tell you a brief story on how I start doing portraits.
When I was a kid, specifically when I was 6 six years old, my father taught me how to draw. He gave me Gospel article with anime characters as my references. That time, I draw using a freehand method but sadly, results are not the same as the references. But, even that things happened, I still practiced to draw. When my drawing looks good, I started to put some colors on it using crayons and it looks much better. But an unexpected thing happened, when I was grade three, symptoms of color blindness attacks me. Like, hating the smell of a crayon because my head aches when I smelled it. My parents does not panic about my situation because I just inherited my color blindness from my grandfather (mother's side). As life goes on, I continue making some drawings and sometimes, I join poster making contest when I was in high school. I even memorized the colors at home I will be using at the competition and its hard for me.
I started doing portrait when I was in 4th year high school. I became interested on it when I first saw my sister's boyfriend doing such things. It was February 3, 2015 when I started to draw a portrait. My sister's boyfriend saw my portrait and give me some tips on how to improve my portrait. After he gave me tips, I repeat my artwork using the same reference at February 6, 2015 (3 days after) and I'm so happy that it looked better. By that time, my classmates also saw my artwork and they asked me to draw them with a payment. I started doing commission portrait at that time even I don't do too good. It was around 30 portraits that I did, since the first time I do portrait. I only do that as a sideline if I don't have something to do or projects to do. When I started my first year college, my commissioned portrait lessen. I still made some portraits but as a practice only. After 2 years in college, I decided to stop from schooling for one year for personal reason. By that time, I taught of practicing and focus on doing portraits as a hobby since I'm not busy. I started to focus doing portrait last September 2017 until now. Last week, I tried to compare my first portrait to my latest portrait. I'm so happy to see how much I improved. I just said to myself, "It's true that a long practice made your artworks looks good"