I was feeling a bit grumpy the other day while looking over my folder of current works in progress. I've been doodling nonstop ever since my mom's funeral, remembering when she bought me my first dA subscription for Christmas years ago and said I really had potential (this was incredibly high praise coming from her; at the time, she had thought being an artist was just a fantasy all the Zimmerman children entertained, and I just about cried when she told me she thought I was talented). But lately nothing I've done seemed to come out right. It always seems like I start to love a piece, finish it, and then promptly begin finding a million things wrong with it. I sit there wondering why I even bother, especially when I never seem to improve.

Well, I was in for quite a bit of a surprise when I happened to look through the older drawings that I had banished to the scraps folder. I had completely forgotten the first picture I had ever drawn of Bailey, a character I had created for a fiction class during my freshman year of college. (It was a little difficult to go back to that story; I made her father die of cancer, and at the time I felt grateful that I would never have to deal with something like that. I had spoken a little too soon). I had been quite proud of the picture at the time, but looking at it now made me want to hide under a blanket in shame at my own lack of artistic talent.

Of course, perspective was definitely put in it's place when I compared it to the picture of her that I drew last night.




I still feel like I have a long way to go, but in seeing the sheer amount of previously-ignored (and denied) progress made in three years, I'm definitely going to practice more! I'm excited to see how things look in another three years!