May 20th, 2014

After my previous blog I got two questions about some of the content.

First was, what those hurdles were that I was talking about. Next people wondered whether I
truly meant it when I wrote: ‘Winning or losing, I’m very happy I participated!’ Wasn’t this just
a way to hide the fear/ chance of upcoming disappointment?

I’ll start with the hurdles, I think explaining those will also answer the second question.
Like I mentioned before, as a child I dreamed of illustrating books but I never made any serious
attempts to pursue this dream. Now I was finally doing it! Exiting but scary.

Instead of illustrating I went to the Academy of Fine Art in Education. Still I can hear the
teacher’s voices echoing in my head: my taste in art was poor, not to mention cliché and so
was my artwork. Even now tiny parts of my brain objected to me illustrating: ‘this wasn’t art
with a capital A!!’
I decided not to care, I was enjoying myself and that’s what matters, right?!

Working on my art I got stuck often. I got scared to continue, scared to ruin things,
scared of expectations. This made me re-think everything. Illustrating for the contest there was
no time for such nonsense. All 3 illustrations needed to be finished well before the 1^st of May. So I had to just ‘do’.

I rediscovered how much I like storytelling, my way. Now when I draw I just ‘do’ and don’t get
stuck that easily. I got closer to what I like doing without being embarrassed about it.
I found new solutions, new materials, new combinations.

During the 20 days of working on my illustrations I had a week of vacation and I caught myself thinking:
‘Oh, I hope I won’t spend my whole vacation drawing!’ And then I thought, wait a minute, I
remember a time when I couldn’t wait for the (school-) vacation to start so I could draw all
week! The moment I realized that, something changed, I couldn’t wait to get to my studio and start drawing.

Doing these 3 illustrations has brought me so much. So when I say that even when I'm losing
I'm winning, I truly mean it.

Below an unfinished detail of the 2nd illustration I did for the Lemniscaat contest.