Christmas With Friends

OK, back from Scotland now. And here's the big picture I was talking about!

Featuring Ashleigh (the one in the middle with the DO NOT WANT face) and Rachel (the unfortunate soul whose back I'm cracking).

I made this picture for quite a few reasons. I wanted to draw my friends again. I wanted to make a strongly themed Christmassy thing. I wanted to try more interesting poses and expressions. I wanted to make something resembling a background. I wanted to push myself to make a picture that I wouldn't instantly hate a few hours later.

I finished this picture two days ago and I still like it.

I mean don't get me wrong, it's not perfect and I can spot a few flaws but I feel I'm on the right track with this. If I keep up to this standard and keep aiming to improve from that, I think I'll get to a point where I won't automatically think what I do is awful.

It's good to be humble feel the need to constantly improve your work. It keeps you going and can help you produce wonderful pieces you didn't think you were capable of. However, there's a thin line between being aware of your artistic flaws with the intention to improve on them or being aware and deciding you and your work will be forever worthless. It's very easy to cross that line, believe me I know. But we need to start giving ourselves more credit than we have been. If everyone gave up feeling that they weren’t good enough, we wouldn’t have many of the fine art pieces, inventions, books, movies and so on that we know and love today.

Just something to think about.