Hello, everybody. I've come to introduce myself and re-present myself to the blockchain world. I was here some time ago, but in the middle of the university the time I had and the internet connection didn't allow me to be constant. Now I am a graduate in Integral Design working as a graphic designer in a great design agency in Lechería, Venezuela. And although I like my job, my real goal is to live from illustration.
I had already shown some illustrations here:
And in an instagram account that was supposed to be anonymous I uploaded other things:
None of this, however, really comes close to what I've known for some time that I want to do in my career. The more I made it clear in my mind that I wanted to do more childish, cute and funny things, the more serious, realistic and dark my drawings became, as if I was deliberately trying to get away from what I wanted to pursue professionally.
Then, in between things, I stopped publishing: neither dark nor beautiful, I stopped showing my work. I almost stopped drawing at all. I did a lot of research on illustration styles, though. I wanted to decide what mine would be, how to find my style. I read dozens of articles, saw hundreds of illustrators. In one way or another they all said more or less the same thing: Draw a lot and your style will come to you little by little. And me? And me nothing, I didn't know how to stop being a style hopper. I hoped, in my naivety, that by making one drawing a week something would click in my head, the sky would open up and a voice would tell me "here is your style". Obviously that didn't happen.
Then a friend passed me a video of a Venezuelan illustrator known on instagram as Uh!Caribe talking about how to get your style of illustration. And, among the many things she said, something finally caused me to click: You decide your illustration style. You decide it and then you study it and commit to it for at least 1 year. If after that year you decide that's not it, it's not it. But during that year you're going to draw and draw and draw. Draw seriously, every day, no excuses and no buts. Click!
So that's what I did, I decided, and things are starting to flow. In two weeks, over 25 sketches have come out of me. Some small, some big, all with (more or less) the same style. Not all of them will make it to the final stages, but it doesn't matter: for the first time in a long, long time I feel like I'm drawing again without restrictions, without drowning in anxiety or stress because what I'm doing is good enough. For the first time (maybe in my whole life) I'm going to draw what I want, in a planned way a lot (because I can't stop being me) but I'm not going to self-censor myself. Not for style, not for quality, not for theme. The blockchain is free and so am I.
So here I am:
I have the schedule
I have the ideas
I have a pencil and paper
Saludos querida Celina.
Convencido de que con toda la experiencia adquirida en tus estudios, y con tu talento genético, darás pasos firmes hacia el éxito, no sólo en la red, sino en la vida.
Aprovechó también la bienvenida, para decirte de luces hermosísima en la fotografía.
Welcome to Hive and thanks for sharing your story! I know how you feel being a fellow creative (I make electronic music) and living these same experiences of taking a long time to find out where you want to be!
I'm glad you have found your niche now and have got the creativity flowing again!
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Hello! Thank you for welcoming me to hive. It has always surprised me how some artists seem to be so sure of the direction they want to take (artistically speaking) while others spend years wandering from place to place to decide. Maybe the trick is to realize that nothing you wish for has to be a life sentence... Anyway, I'll take a look at your profile sometime. Cheers!
I think also being open minded and embracing change because life itself is not rigid and we need to move with its flow. You do need to have a goal I'd say but how you get there is forever changing and the journey can be just as exciting as the destination!
Take it easy, see you around 😊
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Thank you very much. I look forward to outlining my goals more clearly in the course of my process.
That is great advice, to draw and draw. I do the same thing with writing. I write and write and write, each day, I force myself to publish a daily blog.