You never know where your happiness is hidden: my story of becoming an artist

Hi, guys!

When I first logged in to Steemit I wrote a post about myself, about how I became an artist as well. Today I decided that it's time to refresh it, to writ it down again how I remember it.

 As it's said in my profile I'm a Kyiv based artist and illustrator. At the moment I work mostly with commissions on illustrations for books and personal commissions on drawings, but at the same time I study digital art to switch to game dev, my goal till next year. 

 I became an artist accidentally. Well, nearly accidentally. It was right before my wedding, about two weeks before it. I must say that I'm a deep introvert and wedding was more stressful then entertaining for me. I was so nervous that I started looking for an opportunity to make my stress level lower somehow, and suddenly drawing came to my mind. Before that time I never actually drew, and never actually thought that one day I will. I was dancing, singing, playing guitar, but never I saw myself as an artist. I was bad in it and I knew it.  

 At school I was attending classes of national Ukrainian painting - Petrikovska painting. And I really always was the lst one to understand at least something.  Than my granddad forbid me to go there, cause my marks at math were really bad. I stopped drawing, but didn't fix my math marks, and only as an adult I understood that I have a kind of numbers dyslexia.  

 I graduated as an art critic, and it was before I started drawing. Though I never worked as a real art critic I spent a year teaching kids history of art at painting school. But still it wasn't what I wanted. As I said before being an introvert I wasn't enjoying talking for eight hours a day and having company of 20-30 children all this time. 

 But everything changed in that nervous pre-wedding weeks. I bought some oil paints and started drawing with no idea, how to do it. My first attempts, of course, were horrible. But well, it was no need in a result for me, only in process. 

 After I started drawing regularly my hubby came to me and said that probably I could turn it into profession. I wasn't quite sure about that, cause after all by that time I even wasn't a self-taught artist, I was only a newbie who can't do anything, can't predict the result of my own creative movements and can't make myself make pictures that I want to, cause I have no skills. 

 Thus I decided that I should go and study. My first studying classes were traditional, meaning - drawing with traditional art supplies. My hubby presented me with good pencils and a set of watercolor and I started my studying journey. From the very beginning I was quite good at graphic, but a complete looser with painting.  

 I hated watercolor. I couldn't deal with it at all, even my teacher said "to stop torment myself" and keep working with graphic materials only. I was close to agree, but one day I decided to try to use this medium not for drawing something realistic, but for something fantasy type. 

 

I chose a frame from one of my favorite cartoons and started drawing it with water. And all of a sudden from most hated this medium transformed to one of my favorites! At the moment I already can use it to draw in realistic technique, but by that time discovering it's fantasy abilities was like meeting Buddha in the hall of your house, asking for a cup of nice tea.

 After I finished traditional art classes (it took me half a year) I received my first graphic tablet, which was Wacom Intuos. At the moment I work on Wacom Cintiq and the difference between them is like difference between a bike and a rocket, but by that time it was OK for me, even more, than OK. And so I started mastering digital art. 

 At the moment I still continue my study. I finish one course, I take another one trying hard to make better art than I do. I must say I have no talent at all, only everyday work brings results for me, but this is already a theme for the third post, where I plan to tell some thoughts about talent in general:)

P.S. All pictures in this post are my original art

See you in the next post!

Love, Inber