Thoughts on Drawing

I've always enjoyed drawing. For as long as I can remember I have had a pencil and sketchpad in my hand, drawing the world as I saw it. I really loved to draw, as it allowed me to express how I was feeling. It was nice for a while, As I only paid attention to what my drawings looked like and how I felt about them. However, eventually I began to notice the drawings of those around me.

Even though to my friends I was known as one of the people you went to when there was a drawing assignment in class, I still began to develop doubts about my skill. I would look around at my classmates whom I thought were head and shoulders above me and feel embarrassed about my drawings. In my eyes, the drawings done by my classmates seemed to be much more worthy of praise in comparison to mine. This caused me to hide my drawings, as I didn't want people to judge me on them.

I was mostly scared of how my friends and other people who wanted to see my drawings would react when they saw things that weren't necessarily the typical drawings that one usually expects. My style is rather cartoonish and exaggerated, and sometimes people don't expect or understand that. A lot of times, people would ask things like 'why are their eyes so big' and 'that doesn't look proportional', which added on to the self-doubt that I had about my drawings.

It actually took a while for me to regain confidence in my skills. Even now, I feel awkward and unsure about showing my drawings to others. Sometimes I even look back on the drawings that people have seen, and I cringe because they were so bad in comparison to what I do now. Although in comparison to a year ago my skills have improved drastically, I still feel like there is so much more that I can do. I know that I probably won't ever be satisfied with my work, but I feel like that is what drives me to continue to work at it.