Never Fear

All through my art career, until RISD, I have been known for my patience. I still would not do something if I was afraid that it would look bad, but this was a very rare occasion. Some thing happened at RISD, where I lost my art ethic, and realized that, especially there, my effort was nothing and I slowly began to only do mediocure work. Most importantly I lost my ability to focus on a single project for a long period of time, because there you finished no matter how you had to do it. I had gotten use to throwing stuff together and that is just what things looked like.

I even see these fears now, I won't do certain design elements in my projects because I am afraid to, as done at RISD, fill in a window. (side story: 10 hours into a floor plan having to start over because I accidentally filled in a window) RISD was both my saving grace, with all of my improvement in a short period of time, and the thing that has put a crippling wound in my art. My fear of failure also helps in this, and there I learned that my effort was worthless and I haven't been able to get that out of my head. When you spend hours on a project and see a girl through it together during lunch and get a good grade for crap she had "artistic reasons" for, it screws with you.

I have decided I need to do my best to break this. I have no idea how, but I just need to keep reminding myself to take my time. Without my parents, bad sketches are okay, I will learn from them. I see now all those times of the teachers telling me not to be perfect, in the long run, they are right in I need to take chances and if I fail at them it is ok. I need to remember this through my next semester. I have gotten so use to not putting 100% in my work, even though sometimes I feel I do. I am capable of better.

Mrs Gartner was my favorate teacher because of this. She saw my potential and told me I had it, when I didn't hone it she never said anything, but that final project my senior year...I did awesome on it, I didn't win the contest because people liked me, I didn't win it because it was just a good idea. I took a chance, I knew my idea was good and I stuck with it and did the best execution I could. On that day Mrs Gartner was thrilled, telling me this is what she was waiting for, and wished that I had "awoken" sooner.

For some reason that only happend on those days of finals. My competitive side was slightly active, but also my determination of my last chance to be the best at something. My CD design I thought of many ideas, found one imediately and just did it. It was instintual. I didn't not try I just didn't overanalize and fear any ideas that would come...it is this that I miss.

In my sketch book, I was always used to people looking at it. If you have a quick sketch or an unfinished drawing people notice, and sometimes comment. It is because of this that I would not do certain things in my sketch book. I didn't want people thinking that I was a bad artist because of a few bad sketches. It is this semester that I said to Jess "An artist's sketch book is kind of like a journal to us..." I went on about something on how some things we do can say a lot about us, or something like that. I was thinking about it and that is very true. There are some things in my book that I am not ready to show the world, and that is ok.

So things I will work on this semster are my patience and a trust in my artisticness. I know in my heart I am a designer, though I may be an illustrator for a while (which I still can't do until I get over these thing). I am breaking down many walls in my life, because I feel now is the time to better myself. As Kristen has said since RISD, I need to find that little girl that sat in front of a motorcycle and drew it for two hours.