Growing up, I admired other children and people that could draw. All I could really accomplish were stick figures. Or so I thought. It honestly just wasn't something that was encouraged in my household. I was only told that I needed to go to school no matter what and make good grades. My imagination and creative skills were not deemed important.
Fastfoward to age 23, I was introduced to actual paint, paintbrushes and a canvas for the first time ever. It was an interesting experience, but it definitely offcially piqued my interest and tapped into my creative skills. Although I did not pick up this hobby individually, I did continue it from my own interest. I wanted to create beautiful things and experiment with having total creative freedom.
However, it did not go as smoothly or easy as I thought it would. I believe that we can all create art and beauty, and beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder, but the type of images that I wanted to emulate, I had yet to learn how to do so. So I watched tons of videos, tried certain methods over and over until I was satisfied, tried different products. I also gave up sometimes, compared myself to other artists, got frustrated and disappointed in my lack of skills, and downright doubted myself sometimes.
All in all, being a self-taught artist taught me patience, persistence, and practice.
Patience was, and still is, probably the biggest lesson I learned. Because I was not taught any art skills as a child or encouraged to learn any, I had to start from scratch. What frustrated me the most was the fact that my imagination was so vivd and clear on what I wanted to create, but translating that through my hands didn't match up AT ALL. I would look at other artists' creations that were similar to what I wanted to emulate and wonder "Why can't I get mine to look like that?' Little did I know that it was very likely that they too, started from minimal art skills. There are definitely natural artists out there, but not every artist is so fortunate. It didn't occur to me that, just like any other skill, practice makes you better.
I knew I had to practice if I wanted to get better. Not just doing it more than once, but actually paying attention to the details of what and how I was doing what I was doing. I had to try different methods, different tools, different mediums, to intentionally make my way to what I had in mind. Watching and following instructional videos and literally tracing images until I could draw freehand was an important foundation of me being able to translate my imagination to a canvas. I eventually got to a point where, if I had an idea, I'd look for references if I didn't already have the knowledge. Getting used to repetition but adding something different everytime to explore different results is great practice.
Not only practice, but persistence. You can practice but not be persistent. Anytime you attempt something more than once, that is practice. But you may put it down and not pick it back up very often at all. Being persistent is making the effort to keep at something and refusing to give up until you either reach your goal, or accept that you have done all you can. As an artist, I feel something different or more can always be done, even if you do reach your goal. Once you reach that goal, sometimes you become eager to go even further and do even better. But being persistent enough to reach that one or few goals and be done is more than enough. What persistence often teaches you, if you're persistent enough to keep going, is that IT GETS EASIER. Eventually. They don't say "practice makes perfect" for no reason. It really does. Once you do something enough times, it becomes muscle memory. It becomes a skill.
And that is why after only 8 years of practicing, having patience with the process and progress, and being persistent, I consider myself an artist and visual arts to be a skill that I have. I earned that! Don't get me wrong, these lessons are still being taught to me in deeper ways, but I made it through the first wave of challenges.
What I want you to take away from this is that, "life imitates art". (That's only part of that quote, the whole quote is, "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life" - Oscar WIlde.) In the same way art taught me patience, practice, and persistence, everyday life can teach us these lessons in it's own big and small ways. Instead of getting frustrated with ourselves and others, we can be patient and give grace to the situation. Instead of accepting that we just can't do it, we can reflect on what went wrong, and try a different method next time. Instead of giving up when it STILL hasn't comeout right, we can KEEP TRYING until it does or we have nothing else to try.
You are the artist of your own life.
Keep creating until it looks like what you imagined it'd be.