Hello My Loves,
Happy Saturday to you all!! I have absolutely no idea where to even begin with this post. Let's just say I've been thinking about what I've wanted to write for a longtime. Here I am a few weeks into my post-graduate life, sorting through all my thoughts, worries, fears, over what's to come. It's almost as if life came to a screeching halt and decided to plague me with a perpetual question mark dangling over my head. What does an illustrator do when they are no longer in the comfort of school? How do I stay motivated? WHERE DO I EVEN BEGIN?
I've followed so many illustration blogs this past year since becoming a blogger myself, and I could never understand their need for inspiration. As far as I was concerned, inspiration was ample, time was not. But now that I'm out of school with all the time in the world to paint, I really don't even know where to start. What am I supposed to paint? More importantly, how am I supposed to paint it? Do I paint loosely like my warm-up gestures or do I paint how I love to with lots of attention to detail and layers? It's all so complicated I could stop before I begin.
I was lucky enough this semester to be referred to a brilliant illustrator who was looking for a student to mentor. It was and is an amazing opportunity to connect with someone outside the realm of FIT and get a fresh perspective. She advised me numerous times before graduating to start collecting images of things I love and just start to paint. To paraphrase her wisdom "start with what you love, because the most pure version of you will come through." So that's what I've done here with this little series of ice cream cones inspired by Anna Barlow's ceramics.
I've had a lot of people ask me recently if I plan to discontinue my blog and the answer is absolutely NOT!! I may have had a love/hate relationship with my blog and the blog world in general since September but I realize more than ever how happy it makes me. It dawned on me this week when I received an email from my beautiful blogger friend Alessia Landi of The Red Dot. She wrote to me so many words of encouragement and comfort. Someone I've never met managed to bring me back to myself and that's when I know how good this blog life can be.
Anyways, I wish you well and encourage you all to start with what you love. You never know where it will take you.
Meag xx