As someone who is starting out as an artist, with minimal experience, it can be challenging for me to accept my work as "good". Ever since I was a little girl, I loved coloring, drawing, and painting. When I reached high school, my guidance counselor didn't put me in any art classes for four years because she thought that it was a waste of my time.
So, I had a falling out and lost my interest in art for a while until I started taking classes at SUNY OW. I noticed that I lost some of my artistic abilities but I was slowly rebuilding them. When I took Art Tutorials 1 last semester, it was a bit of a shock to me because I was in a class with many art students who had different artistic styles, and that intimidated me. My thoughts we "they have been doing this so much longer than me", "they are more skilled/better than me". I started believing I was a failure and that is where I had my worker's block. This class was different from all of my other art classes because everyone was creating something of their own and not creating the same thing. I only knew how to imitate somebody else's art. Little by little I worked on my artistic abilities and started creating my own works with some progression. I started experimenting with a new medium, watercolor, not too long ago, and fell in love with it.
I was working on some projects over the summer in attempts to show my support of the Black Lives Matter Movement. It was a very difficult task for me as white person to create something to show that without it coming off as offensive. I had posted one of my drawings on my blog, thinking that it was good at first, but when I had my meeting with Professor Hagen, he told me that it was extremely offensive. I felt dumb once he explained why it was offensive and I had to reevaluate my work. In order to show any progression in my art, I have to work, work work! Practice will make me a better artist and hearing the opinions of other artists/professors will help me think about how I can do better in the future.