Animals on Chairs

​I have been sketching animals like crazy for the last couple of days because, quite frankly, realistic animals are not my strong suit.

Norah Harper has a book about drawing animals that I got her for Christmas last year, and it has all these great little tips and techniques for simplifying them and making them feel more finished. I spent some time looking through it in bed the past few nights, and it made me feel a lot more confident about approaching animals in a way that actually feels natural to me.

Instead of trying so hard to make them realistic, I started thinking about how much more fun it would be to make them cartoonish, funny, exaggerated, and a little weird.

The book showed little things like adding dots and texture to shells and simple ways to make fur, feathers, and other details look more polished. I tried some of those ideas on the crustacean and the bird, and it honestly made me excited to keep going.

That is probably why I enjoyed doing the little painting of Rusty in our hallway so much, with his ridiculously long snout. It was cute, it felt natural, and I had fun doing it. I need to pay attention to that.

I think I have this problem where I want to be able to do everything. If I see a style I like, or something that appeals to me, I immediately want to figure out how to do it too. Sometimes that pushes me to learn, which is great. Other times, it just drives me crazy.

I need to learn when to rein myself in a little and stick closer to the things that come naturally to me.

Don’t get me wrong. I am always going to be adventurous with art. Too many different kinds of art interest me for me to ever settle into one tiny box. I don’t have one particular style that I feel like I have to do forever, and I don’t really want one.

One of the biggest compliments I get from people is that they can always tell when something is mine. I think that is such a good sign. Even when I am making different kinds of pieces or trying different styles, there is still enough of me in them that people recognize it.

I think that is a really important part of establishing yourself as an artist. You can go in a lot of different directions and still leave your fingerprints all over the work.

So no, I am not saying I am going to scale everything back and only make one kind of art. I am just going to stop forcing myself to do things that don’t feel natural and that I don’t even enjoy.

I will never put reins on myself as long as I am having fun and interested in what I’m making. Whether anybody else likes it is kind of beside the point. If I like it, I’m going to make it.

But I am going to stop putting so much pressure on myself to know how to do everything.

I don’t have to be good at everything.

I just have to keep making the things that feel like me.

Xoxo- Jenny