What drives me as an artist?

Do you ever feel like you're not taken seriously as an artist (regardless if you're an amateur or professional)? You're proud of your work and yet others (including fellow artists) aren't willing to recognize it because it's not mainstream?

This is my first blog (ever!) and I thought I'd address a topic that's concerned me ever since I decided to invest more time into improving my art style...maybe there are other artists out there that have experienced similar things when it comes to developing their own style. It's scary and exciting the first time you decide to show people your own work. If only all the people that view and comment on art would be mindful and try to give artists a chance, rather than simply writing them off for different reasons. The reason I'm saying this is because a lot of people fall victim to the mainstream series/themes and therefore find it hard to look at other genres or styles that don't fall into the category they're used to...

I think my personal need to produce creative work rarely has to do with what others expect of me or whether what I create will appeal to anyone at all...I do it because it's for me. I hope that through being truthful to myself and sticking to what I love will attract audiences with more open-minded mentalities. It's sad to see fellow artists who desperately try to please everyone around them in order to get the attention they seek.

I'll be honest and say that during my teen years, I was fascinated by Japanese art, particularly manga. I imitated it, tried to achieve those large eyes, funny facial expressions and other typical characteristics. But at some point I stopped copying the mainstream styles I loved and decided to take what I learnt through those experiences into a new direction. It's not a bad think to imitate an art style, but I do feel that one needs to let go of those perfect imitations of very popular themes and try to evolve one's own personal style. You'll notice my characters from today have manga influences, but at the same time I avoid the clichées and for eg. draw more realistic body proportions that people can identify with.

It's amazing when someone comes up to you and says: "Your style is different! I like it". It's because they're not associating your work with what they've seen so often before. That's one of the main things that drives me! So my advice is to just allow yourself to be inspired by different genres, but then try and develop your own personal style that you can be proud of! If you stick to it, you'll attract the kind of people you want to notice your work and not the ones who have stubborn views on what's "cool" and what's not.

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