CW this is a huge ramble but this is a blogging platform so I’m just going to ADHD my thoughts everywhere

I've been thinking a lot about 'artistic talent' recently and what it means to me.

As a kid, I don't know; I wasn't what I'd call naturally gifted with art? Right from age 5 up to my early teens - I loved art, I drew constantly, I wanted so badly to be good at art. I grew up without a computer or art programs for the most part, partly because of how old I am and partly because we didn't have a lot of money. My parents could afford paper and cheap art materials, but that was about it - definitely no time or money for any kind of formal training.

There were kids in my first art classes with way better technical skills, better knowledge of anatomy and proportions, lighting etc etc. But I never got the impression they were as passionate about it as I was.

My first art teacher only seemed to have time for his male students that had those technical skills. I remember very vividly watching him enthuse over my male friends work, holding it up for the rest of the class to see - and me just sitting opposite him, drawing my heart out desperately, producing and producing and trying my best just desperately craving that same attention.

But he never had much time for me despite how obviously enthusiastic I was. Even when I assertively asked for his feedback, he was overly critical and just seemed frustrated by what I interpreted as this lack of innate talent some of my peers had. He never actually taught me much.

My disabilities held me back too - my undiagnosed ADHD made art tutorials I found online dull and difficult to follow. My perfectionism made creating even more frustrating (any other ADHDers with the irony of also being a perfectionist as you miss out glaring details as you’re rushing to finish something?). As online communities became more accessible I tried to join them and befriend other artists; but my skills were juvenile and frankly, I was super young and super annoying, so I didn’t get much of the creative community and feedback I craved a lot. When we did have a computer at home I could use, we couldn’t afford any digital art programs or tools, I just drew with a mouse in MSPaint and did so for a long long time. If I wanted to do lineart, eventually I started sketching on paper, scanning it in, and then painstakingly cleaned it up by erasing with a mouse so I could colour it.

I did befriend one artist eventually, who is still my friend today - she’s a little older than me and is incredibly technically talented. Her dad had art skills himself and taught her, and these days she’s won awards for her wildlife illustrations. She tried to help me and taught me more in one lesson on lighting and shading than my art teacher had done in 2 years. But comparison is the thief of joy and I just felt mournful comparing my art to hers. What was the point in trying to be an artist if I was never going to reach that level of skill?

Now I’m older I realise more where my friends skill came from. Her dad never had much time for her - but he would spend time with her and talk to her about her art. He was very overly critical to his own child and she so badly wanted to get his approval and spend time with him that she channelled absolutely everything into her art. But that never occurred to me when I was younger - I didn’t think about the lack of opportunities I’d had, or the circumstances of the artists I envied for being so much better than I was. I just felt so incredibly hopeless, disappointed and frustrated at myself.

Eventually that all stopped me from creating art entirely, for years. I just gave up. I didn’t start trying to create art again until very recently, a few years ago; after I finally managed to escape an abusive relationship and used my creative skills to help me work through what I now know was the beginning of my PTSD.

I guess the point of me writing this other than just wanting to purge my thoughts, is the hope that maybe somebody else might read this and see their own fraught experience with creating reflected in my own journey, and feel a little less alone. Sometimes it’s easy to think other creatives have a journey of sunshine and rainbows, but mine has been anything but.

I still struggle with a lot of these feelings - I still feel as though I’m lacking some magical spark of illusive 🌟tALEnt✨. It’s all been made worse by the many, many years where I just didn’t draw at all out of hopelessness and shame, and therefore fell even further behind where I feel I should be by now. But I managed to get that passion back and I use that to keep myself going; I remind myself all the time of how much I lost in those years where I just gave up. I constantly drive myself to improve and try to ignore how small my follower count and notes are. It’s still frustrating, still disheartening at times. But I’ve come so far and intend to keep going further ♥