Not Every Artist Is Meant To Paint Or Draw Masterpieces

I follow mostly artists on my Instagram feeds. The majority of them are ultra talented portrait artists working with charcoal, drawing pencils or soft pastels. One minute they are scribbling circles and lines on the paper and 3 minutes later a fabulous hyper-realistic portrait is done using only drawing utensils and finger smudges.

Their talent is undeniable. Not a hair out of place, each eye perfectly symmetrical with the other. Teeth and lips proportional to the beholder and  complexion,….flawless.

Then there’s the caricature artists who know exactly how to interpret body parts that will accentuate the subject.

And what about the painter or pastel artist,…I could go on but the result is the same. Someone who has not only mastered their tools but, “how to” create masterpieces in whatever themed art style they desired.

For these outstanding artists, their talent is not my tale….and I’m finally ok with it.

I use to think that drawing or painting like them was the greatest way I could express my artistic style. Everyone adored their skill. Everyone follows them on social media, purchases their art, buys their  books or signs up for their courses. All I needed to do was duplicate what they were doing. After all, it was working for them.

Had I continued doing art after college I’m sure I would have jumped on that hamster wheel of imitation continually listening to the latest and greatest trends just to keep up.

Now in my 60’s I’ve finally realized what type of artist I want to be. What type of illustrations I want to draw. What style makes me,…happy.

I am not the artist who spends hundreds of hours creating a flawless portrait where every pore, wrinkle, or strand of hair is perfectly rendered. I admire those artists tremendously, but that’s not the creative spark that motivates me.

What excites me is the idea.

I love taking two things that have absolutely no business belonging together and finding a way to make them work. A windsurfer riding on a giant Coca-Cola fizz. An ordinary object transformed into something unexpected. A scene that makes someone stop scrolling and ask, “How did they come up with that?”

 The challenge for me isn’t  recreating reality. It’s reimagining  it.

I’ve come to realize that one of my favorite parts of the artistic process happens long before the pencil touches the paper. It begins with observing the world around me. A pose. A color combination. An object sitting on a table. A random moment that most people would overlook. Somewhere in those ordinary moments, an unusual connection forms and an illustration begins to take shape.

For years I thought artistic success meant mastering the same skills as the artists I admired online. I thought if I could just draw like them, paint like them, or build an audience like them, I would finally become the artist I wanted to be.

What I didn’t understand was that I was trying to borrow someone else’s artistic voice.

The older I’ve become, the more I’ve learned that art isn’t about becoming a copy of your favorite artist. It’s about discovering what naturally flows out of you.   

My illustrations may never be mistaken for museum-quality realism. They may not demonstrate the technical mastery of artists who have devoted decades to perfecting a single style. But when I create a whimsical scene that makes someone smile, laugh, or wonder how such a strange idea came into existence, I feel something that no amount of imitation ever provided.

And after decades away from drawing, that may be the greatest artistic discovery I’ve made yet.