Planning a self portrait. Starting with a smaller scale drawing for a rough idea.
Kate Drwęcka 🦇
@thisiskatedee.bsky.social
248 followers 212 following 527 posts
Cartoonist | Designer | She/Her. Queer 🏳️🌈 opinions are my own. www.katedee.com
Cartoonist | Designer | She/Her. Queer 🏳️🌈 opinions are my own. www.katedee.com
![TALENT. Don't bother about whether or not you have it. Just assume you do, and then please forget about it. Talent is merely one of those convenient words (like gifted or endowed), that we use after someone has become accomplished. There is simply no way to detect it before the fact, or when someone is still grappling with the learning process. It is impossible to predict when or if mastery will click into place. The only time we can be comfortably sure about high skill is when we finally go to Carnegie Hall and hear our little cousin Charlie play the Mendelssohn violin concerto for the second time. (The first time might have been an accident.)
The exceptional skill we label as talent is not a single capability. It is a complex mixture of motive, curiosity, receptivity, intelligence, perception, sensitivity, expert teaching, perseverance, problem-solving skills, timing, sheer luck, and countless other things. If any part of it is genetic, divinely endowed, the result of astrological fiddle-faddle, fate, or destiny, that part is not the sole determining factor. All the other ingredients must be present in the right combination-and no one knows the exact recipe.
Artistic skill the ability to draw well and make paint behave is not a natural endowment like big blue eyes or great legs
Nor is it a special knack you simply have or do not have, like a "green thumb," a "natural sense of rhythm," or "surgeon's hands." (Those things are nonsense too.)[…]
You can learn the skills required for painting in the same way that you can learn anything else you are strongly drawn to.
I don't mean to understate the difficulties, however. The great painters devoted their lives to their art, often to the point of total obsession. Serious painting is not something that can be learned casually. You must be willing to sacrifice many other things. So don't waste time worrying if you are talented and don't blame any failures on the lack of it-that is the ultimate cop-out.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:yhuszvwbyrtsxxpjab3sy5ps/bafkreib2ximjwpjd6yl2pzwhrqbf2iz6nnzgvioqguam52qrrd6ag2cgda)
