A girl and her pencils.....The Painted Lady

A very happy Sunday to everyone. I hope that you have had an amazing weekend. I have been drawing like crazy. I have a new project started which l am dying to share with you, but first l have to share this little butterfly.
After struggling with the last Eagle Owl, l felt that l needed a little fun and colour and certainly something a little easier. I know l have said so often that drawing should be fun and enjoyable and that if you are not enjoying it, put it down, do something else and come back to it. I should have taken my own advice! It is certainly the advice that lots of lovely Instagram friends gave to me.
l do not know if it was because l struggled so much with that piece, but l really had a confidence crisis in my ability .... it is still a bit wobbly. I was surprised when l mentioned it in my Instagram post just how many of us go through those feelings of not being good enough. It is hard to look at your own work as others do. You see every detail that you are not happy with, everything you wish that you could have done better. We are far more harsh with ourselves than with others.

So l want to remind everyone (and especially myself) that this is all about learning. We will all improve if we just keep practising. There is a very fine balance between seeing where we would like to improve and beating ourselves up because we do not improve fast enough. Seeing where we could improve is a good thing, after all if we think we can't improve, we certainly won't. And absolutely everyone can improve, even the best in the world. But we can tip too far into negative thinking and lose our joy in what we are doing.

What l really wanted to say to everyone today is to just enjoy what you are drawing, find satisfaction in seeing how you have progressed and see what you would like to improve as a motivating force.
​I certainly found that my joy came back with this butterfly. The bright colors and fine detail picked me up from my gloom, and whilst l still can't say that my drawing is as good as l would like it to be, l can say that l see it getting better and l am loving it again and that is really what matters.
So to all of you out there struggling with not feeling good enough, just get your pencils out and draw what you love and the improvement will come. Happy drawing to you all.

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