J.L. Isaacs Art

I think that is a sentiment that a lot of us can agree with. I know I do and I am in art school right now. Drawing is not a skill that I have nurtured through out my life. I used to draw a lot throughout middle school and high school but I had never taken an art class. I was a total band geek. I wasn’t told that I was particularly good and I believed the lie that good art is the only art that is worthy of being seen.

I have drawn here and there throughout my adult life but I never took it that seriously. Obviously, it is a skill that I want to improve on but the blank page is scary. Putting pencil to paper is scary. But the only way to get good at something is to do it.

I am in my thirties now, with a family of my own. Choosing to change my major to art was a huge risk for me. It was and still is a little scary. But the more that I make, the more that I get critiqued, the better I get. But drawing, serious drawing, is something that I keep avoiding. And because I keep avoiding it, I have stagnated.

I took this illustration class because I wanted to get better at drawing. I felt really anxious about taking this class because I knew there there were going to be people who were much better visual artists than I am. I know, I am familiar with some of their work. I feel like a child admidst grownups. But my instructor said something that really eased my apprehension. He said, “don’t run from you limitations, lean into them”. Which is precisely what I did.

Our prompt this week was “A Recipe for Disaster”. I decided to pull from my real life. These illustrations are not particularly good technique wise, but I feel as though they are good at telling a story. When we look at these illustrations, we can visualize what is going to happen next and that was my goal when I drew these. Drawing can be scary and I am interested in the feedback that I will be getting from my instructor and classmates. I am sure I will get some criticism but that is how we grow and become better at what we do.