Ask yourself-Are you an Artist?

“BEFORE I STARTED, I DID NOT KNOW IF I WAS AN ARTIST”

As a child, back in school, I remember drawing and having that deep affection towards drawing and painting. But I knew nothing about creating artworks.All I had was the love  to draw portraits and hence, I drew portraits of my grandfather, my brother, friends, myself and portraits of other people. I used to draw using a grid technique, which I learnt in a two months course during the school vacation back in 9th grade. It always gave me immense pleasure to draw faces.(Check out my class’ ANYONE CAN PORTRAIT’ on Skillshare to learn an easy technique through tracing to create portraits). As a college student, I loved fashion illustration and I was a fan of the world-famous fashion Illustrator Arturo Elena. But the funny thing was that I didn’t even realize that I had looked to him as an inspiration until I met Anna (a story I will share with you soon). I did not know that I could look up to someone like that for inspiration either and this realization took me almost 7 to 8 years until someone told me that. I never found books interesting unless I found good pictures in them. I was a visual person. Can you connect with me on that? My Acha (dad) bought me books as a child but I had not developed a habit for reading and never found them interesting except Harry Potter. The deep dark magical story of JK Rowling always inspired me to read her books and to watch her movies.

Books became interesting to me after I found a meaning to read them, when I found Art in them. I love to read and look at illustrated books. I just love to buy & own them. I am learning about new people through them, new artists, new creatives, new authors. I now find books  interesting to read and learn as I have finally found my reason to read them. Art, illustration, and design are the topics that interest me from the bottom of my heart and help me to broaden my imagination.

My Mom, Amma, used to tell me, “You have beautiful skills. Why don’t you create paintings and teach others? You keep searching everywhere for an answer like the Musk deer who searches the woods for a beautiful smell only to find that it comes from its own body”. Amma was right. We all are like musk deer. We keep searching for an answer without focusing on our strong skills which are deeply rooted inside us and without knowing the Artist in us.

If you are an Artist, if you can create paintings, create strokes, create photographs, create music, if you like to act, if you can sculpt, dance, write, sing,what else can you think of? If you are a creator, then you are an Artist!

Exercise:

1)So answer these questions.

  • What do you want to be in life?
  • What do you want to do in life?
  •  Why do you want to do it?

My answers would look like this

  •  I want to be a successful Surface Pattern Designer and an Online Educator,helping women internationally, specially stay at home mothers to create artworks and designs, thereby creating a career for myself and helping others to do the same.
  •  I want to create artworks, turn them into designs for products, teach women how to create artworks and designs, and work with clients internationally.
  • Through which I want to build a career, have consistent income, be financially stable, bring my dreams to a reality and be able to take care of my parents and my family.

What do your answers look like? Write them down one by one.

2) Draw or paint one artwork that speaks to you about what you want to become or related to what you want to do in your life

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