Talent and practice

Hi all! It's Friday again, that means yet another newsletter issue from me. :)

This issue will be different from the previous ones, and this is not the issue #8 of Untitled as the life. As this was a week without any significant improvements on my comic book project, I will take this opportunity to talk a bit about talent and practice, and do some sort of retrospective along to way, trying to prove a point. If anything, this issue is a reminder to myself.

PS.: This issue contains a lot of images, for a better reading experience I highly recommend opening this email on a desktop or tablet.

Talent and practice

I don't believe a 100% in talent. Of course, some people find it easier to perform certain tasks (like drawing or painting) and we can call that as some sort of talent.

However, I genuinely believe that people can do wonders with practice, not talent. Even if someone doesn't have the so-called talent for X, they still can produce high-quality stuff, maybe not as fast as the "talented" people, but they can.

I'm not gonna lie; I don't feel comfortable when someone says, "oh, you are so talented!" because I know I'm not. All the art I do is probably 66% stubbornness, 66% passion, and 25% practice. As you can tell, I also lack "talent" in math.

Back story

By the end of 2018, after a long break, I decided to get back to my passion; art. Below are some of my drawings from that December:

By early 2019, after practing more and more, I managed to improve:

And as I felt more confident with my skills, I started diving into digital art, and for that I bought an iPad Pro. It's funny how tools improve your work, but sometimes I think that's not the tool itself, it's just the newness factor. It's almost like looking a something with a different perpective, or flipping the canvas.

I still remember my first experience using the iPad with Procreate; I was in awe of the infinite possibilities at my disposal.

I shared my first drawing using my new tool on Twitter, check the thread below as well the final result.

And so, a new journey began. I was drawing and painting every day, enjoying the process a lot.

Navigating through unknown waters

Feeling more confident with my skills, I decided to add a bit of stress to my life, and so I "enrolled" myself into Inktober 2019, but I chose not to follow their prompt list. So my goal was to do 31 random "inks" in 31 days (October has 31 days). I guess I don't need to explain how stressful that was.

But anyways, I managed to accomplish my goal! I won't share all the 31 drawings here, but you can see them all at my Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/e0oXYb

Below are my favorite ones:

The #meds50heads challenge

I was so damn tired after Inktober 2019 that I thought I wouldn't want to participate in challenges for a long time. That last 16 days, until Ahmed Aldoori posted the following video:

The goal: draw 50 heads in 10 days. 😂

At first I was like; hell no!

But...

Well, of course, I enter this rabbit hole. I learned a lot, but as you can see, the results don't look super polished, and maybe that's because I was tired from Inktober 2019. Or maybe I was just lacking talent.

But I tried. :)

Damn, now I want to take this challenge again. Send help!

2020 and onwards

Ah, 2020. What a year. I don't need to tell you what happened, but I kept practicing. :)

Wrapping up

In conclusion, I don't think it is talent, nor practice. It's more like stubbornness. Sometimes you just need to push yourself into discomfort, and of course, keep practicing. :)

If you have any thoughts, comments, suggestions, feel free to email me at agtlucas@hey.com, or ping me on Twitter: @_agtlucas.

Cheers! 👋

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