It was sunny and I had nowhere to be.

Something that has stood out to me when I've learned about artists is how they start out mimicking other artists' styles (or the prevailing style of the day) before they finally find their own paint-equivalent-of-a-voice.  (This reminds me of the sentiment that "good artists borrow, great artists steal"[for which I haven't found a reliable attribution].  It seems that every artist has to steal from another to start out.)

I introduced you before to Emily Martin, also known as The Black Apple, and her marvelous art.  I've tried painting girls' portraits of my own (girls' faces have been a primary subject for doodling over the years), but I've realized that if I want to eventually sell my art and become an established artist, how can I sell a product that someone else creates better?  Perhaps it would be cheaper, but it would be a knock-off.  My goal right now is to continue imitating other artists (including ones I find on the magical internet) with my own personal twists until I find a unique style of my own.  To do that, I have to just keep practicing and copying and practicing and copying and starting over and painting over other pictures.

This whole subject also reminds me of this thought, which apparently Ira Glass said (I am highly suspicious of internet attributions):

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Whoever said it, I like it, and I agree.  There is also this picture, which I am posting even though it says 'your' instead of 'you're' and gratuitously ends a sentence with 'at':

I've realized that a pretty cool way to make a living would be to sell handmade things on etsy, as some select highly talented and successful people have done—I would get to do something I enjoy and would do anyway and make money from it!  (Tacked on sentence that is sort of related: Another possibly enjoyable way to make a living for me would be in a currently expanding teaching niche: Teaching foreign language(s) in immersion classrooms.)