Hey. As a kid, I showed great interest in drawing over the walls, toys, or anything I could get my pencils on. I was an artist.
My passion grew stronger as I grew older.
As anyone who ever drew anything will tell you, it’s not all about talent but about practice and determination. I had it all. When I was a kid I prospered my gift at a local after school art school program. I went there for 6 years even usually it takes 7 to graduate. Not to brag but I skipped one year and was able to take class with older students.
What I loved about this art school the most was that they offered us everything we needed:
- topic – Our teacher came up with a specific topic every lesson, they gave us the idea and left the rest for our imagination
- guideline – firstly we made sketches of what we wanted our piece to be like and showed them to the teacher, they told us what to do better or what to reduce
- means – we could try whatever drawing technique we could think of and they showed us ones we didn’t know about before, we had everything from paper to colors and everything in between
- appreciation – after every lesson we would lay down our works and evaluate them all together, what we liked about each work and what we didn’t
For me, it was a great time and it allowed me to grow, try new techniques, find what I enjoyed the most, find my style. It also taught me self refection and being critical of myself – way too critical most of the time.
When reality knocked at my door I chickened out. I stood between the choice of a lifetime at way too young age of 15. I was supposed to decide where to study next. Art was always an inseparable part of me growing up.
But what about the future?
I kept hearing everyone I know doubt my living as an artist. How hard it would be to find a job and pay for simple adulthood. I would not make enough money for living by simple drawing.
My mum is a pharmacy assistant and I spend a lot of my youth in pharmacy with her. I liked chemistry and biology, and working in a pharmacy is such a clean, responsible, and most importantly well-paid job. Truth is I would earn much more money working there than by my art.
I told myself I could be the pharmacist who draws, but it would be illegal if I was an artist who sells drugs.
It was a pharmacy since then. It doesn’t change anything if I’m stuck in regret of my life choices now. Of course, I wonder what would my life be like if I decided to go on an artistic way instead, but I just can’t take it back now.
The truth is I’m not a pharmacist who draws. I didn’t have proper time to do my art since I started high school.
Now I’m at university and I might have some more free time than before but I lack the courage to do art. I haven’t done proper drawing in so long. I lost my practice. Still, I try to do something with the talent I’ve been given and I want to share with you some of my artworks and styles I managed to practice over my busy depressing years. Here are 10 styles that describe my artwork.
1.Depressing and creepy style
I cannot stress enough that I went through a really hard time for me and I kind of reflected it into my drawings. The technique I used could be described as “what I bought last”.
If I got new chalk I would draw with just chalk for few months straight, new watercolors = all watercolor works, and so on.
The main theme of my work was creepy images that popped into my mind combined with as much color as possible.
Ghosts, monsters, splashes, eyes, and just shapes.
Again this was a very bad time for me and this was not one of my best works. It helped me went a lot though and I never showed it to anyone from my friends or family. I only share it online and none of my family really cares about the online stuff I do.
I tried a few in just black and white style and I liked them the most:
As you can see I loved to play with the patterns, arrange them in some sort of repeat. The creeper the better. I used a black pen and pencil for the last ones. The top colorful ones was a combination of water colors, oil colors, temper colors, colored pencils, pens, dry pastel, and duck tape in different variations.
2. Realistic pencil drawings
I firstly learn and tried this technique at an art school lessons and I knew right away that this was what I want to do a lot. The first work I ever did like this was Marylin Monroe :
My teacher printed out a photo of Marylin from the internet and I created a small square net all over it and recreated the same squares net on bigger paper, tripled the size of each square, and then drew everything I saw in a small square to the big squares inadequate position. It was so simple and the result was just as the original. This was my first work I was ever proud of.
This way I recreated so many photos I printed out mostly my favorite musicians, actors YouTubers, or even my own photo:
I’ve got a bunch of this in my drawer with other pictures I ever made as I don’t want to trash them but at the same time, I don’t want to display them anywhere. I have no use for them anymore. Each of these photo recreation took me around 3-5 hours to make.
3. Not so creepy colors
On my better days, I was able to make something that won’t make you question my sanity. (just so you know I’m getting better)
Luckily not all of them are stuck in my drawer as my friend took some of them and actually hand them in her room.
4. Ballpoint pen drawing in a book
Once I purchased this old book from an antique shop for a special project I was working on with my classmate for a school where we needed 2 pages from the book. I kept the rest and used it as a sketchbook. I apologize for every book lover, I am one too and I would never hurt a book like this, but this book was dead long before I decided to draw on it.
Then I put it in my library and never drew to it anymore.
5. Anime
Simple and easy. You can actually see which are my favorite shows. Usually, I would just remake some image I saw online on paper and put it in my drawer.
6. Chalk
…and anything I could draw with it. Mostly I just try to draw someone I saw in the magazine for inspiration.
7. Bands geek
If I discover a new band I liked there is a 99% chance I would draw them again from a photo I would find on the internet.
8. My art school finals
As my finals, I was supposed to do 3 artworks.
The first one needed to contain culture and patterns and I choose this japan (as a huge anime fan at that time) with simple patterns of my choice (flowers and leaves). I used just 3 colors for this work and it was all made of ink and pencil.
Next one needed to have a quote from a children’s book. It was a Slovak quote and it could be translated as “cat had fallen of loft” – so I drew a cat and filled it up with text.
The third one was up to me. I choose to do my best work of Marylin Monroe in mosaic technique. It took me several weeks to finish and I’m very pleased to hear that they have it displayed on school walls to this day.
I don’t have the photo of my final work but this summer I decided to recreate my best work and place it on my new room wall:
9. Sculpture
I tried to make some statues a few times. This is my best but arm-less result of slender lady. (I had a thing for faceless creatures at that time)
10. The rest
everything that doesn’t fit any of the categories listed above. It contains different techniques I tried, my poor attempt to study heart anatomy and ending up drawing it instead, slender family or my first legal drawing on the wall at our balcony. Enjoy:
There are 10 categories I would sum up my artis career into. I have a bunch of others at home but I didn’t take pictures or they are simply not worth sharing on the internet.
I try to tell myself that I didn’t waste my artist talent, that I simply transferred it into my everyday life and to my blogs. It takes talent, practice, determination, and creativity for this kind of job too.
Thank you for your attention
xo Natalia
I enjoyed reading your story Natalia. I am a biologist who discovered his artistic side only in his 40s.
Author
Thank you ! I’m so happy to hear that. I hope that one day i’ll return to my art properly
Your art is beautiful! I can’t draw to save my life 🙂
Author
Haha thank you ^^
Great post and love your art work
Author
Thank you I appreciate it a lot
Nice variety of art!
There’s some really great work in that!
Author
Thank you ^^
Maybe your should showcase some of the work in individual posts and tell us the story of the work. I imagine some of them have greater meaning than others. ☺️
Author
Thank you that’s great suggestion 🙂
Always willing to help ☺️
What a great variety. That was a fun browse. Keep it up!
Don’t let fear hold you back. You have some wonderful pieces that you’ve done. If art is your passion, you will find a way to have it in your life. There are so many possibilities. Best of luck to you!
Author
❤️ thank you so much
Truly awesome post. This is very inspiring. Thank you for sharing this with us.
These are great! My wife is an artist as well. It’s always made me a little jealous. 😃😃
Dear Natalia,
Beautiful post,…thanks a lot for sharing it with all of us. Good luck and best regards from Sarajevo,
Amela
You have a wonderful talent. Don’t get discouraged and let it go. I love your wordy cat! 😻
What a great story and you have such beautiful art! Even those pieces you think aren’t that great blew me away! Instant follower and fan right here! Keep doing your art! It’s really amazing! You got it girl! You got mad talent!
Wow so amazing, i wish i could draw like that. i really liked the depressing and creepy cycle.
Enjoyed reading your post and your art is inspirational. Thank you for sharing.
I love the ballpoint drawings you’ve done in books. What a brilliant way to disrupt the text! I’ve been doing some redacted texts recently, but your works takes it to a whole new level. Thanks for sharing it with me.
Julie Mellor
You’ve got talent–keep going 🙂
Glad you enjoyed my post – there will be more about that topic. You have a lot of life and many opportunities to look forward to. Your understanding that talent and hard work are both necessary means that you WILL succeed at whatever you really want to do. Do lots of things. I have been doing lots for 83 years and I haven’t stopped yet.
You have hardly begun.
Your art is amazing, all of it. The others category specifically the staircase was superb.
Hi Natalia,
As you know, I really like your ballpoint drawings in books. I have two pamphlets of poetry published by Smith/Doorstop, an independent poetry publisher of some standing in the UK. I’d love to send you a copy of my latest pamphlet for you to do some art work in (if you felt inspired by it).
My email is:
jdmellor@talktalk.net
There’s no obligation of course, but I’d love to see the results on your blog.
Stay in touch.
Julie
Author
I would love to ! i send you email 🙂
I love the artworks. You’re really talented.
♥️
I love your art – so talented.
Great artwork. I am new to WordPress I saw that you liked my post, so I thought why not peek around and I came across this great artistic work. Keep it up.
I urge you to continue to cultivate your art talents. You are strong in pencil drawing. Besides my cartoon artwork I enjoy creating Dia de los muertos art and simple arts and crafts things too.
Wonderful artworks there. So colourful, dark and dreamy and alive. I sometimes return to making art after spending years before learning, practising, exhibiting and selling a few times.I agree with you that keeping a blog can be just as creative. I go with whatever fire is strongest at the time – writing, drawing, music, poems, photographs… Thanks for sharing your images and thank you for stopping by my blog 🙂
Those drawings and paintings are amazing. You are so talented. Determining career choice is never easy. Some one once said to me when I asked what would be a good career in Japan, the person said “artist”. That was a surprising to me.
Never stop.
My favourite is the cat…. somehow it appears to be a thinking cat. You clearly have some talent and at some point in your life you may well get back to doing more art work. I hope you will.
Your story about your art journey was very well written. It seems art is not your only talent.
Natalia, thank you for liking my blogpost on #becometheartistyouare. I LOVE this one of yours. So full of surprises!
Natalia.. your art is really beautiful! and thanks for liking my blog post.
Will you forgive a bit of advice? I’m 70, so every now and then I get to pretend I actually know something about life. Let go of the regret. You can’t know where life would’ve taken you if you’d chosen art as a career. Maybe it would’ve been wonderful and maybe it wouldn’t have been. The road we didn’t take always looks more appealing. When you have more than one gift, or are drawn in more than one direction, you have to make choices. You’ve made one. See where it takes you. If it turns out to be a choice you can’t live with, you haven’t closed the door on art forever.
Very interesting mix of styles, colours and concepts. It would not be a problem being an artist and pharmacist. Keep practicing and display your works of art.
You have lots of time. And hopefully in time time will tell what will be your full-time career.
I love your top drawing even if it is a bit creepy. May I display it on my blog with a link to your page?
Author
Thank you so much 🙂 sure that would be great
[“I could be a pharmacist that draws, not an artist that sells drugs.”]
I got a good laugh out of that. A great observation, and sensible thinking.
No matter what you do for making money, your art will stay with you always.
Sometimes it may hide in the background, and on the right day will peek out, and you’ll embrace it again.
p.s.: Pharmacists (and millwrights and teachers and miners and truck drivers) can afford more art supplies than starving artists.
Seek peace,
Paz
You can do it, Natalia! 🙂 Sending you many blessings for your artistic gifts. Thank you and you have a lot of courage & Talent.
Debbie
Greeting Natalia, that is a great talent you have. I do hope you take every opportunity to create more artwork when you can. You have a broad range of techniques which is impressive. Thanks for the recent visit and like on my blog. I guess my Porg Lightsaber design could be seen as a form of artwork! I shall make a point of visiting your blog again in future.
Author and undercover artist here, new to the scene. It’s amazing how a talent or passion can turn into an incredibly rewarding outlet during times of sickness/depression, isn’t it? Keep up the creativity 😉
You have a good selection of artwork. Thanks for visiting and liking Eat, Drink, and be Buried.
Wow, what a great selection of artwork! I think it’s very interesting that you have such a big variety of concepts and colors – good job! 🙂
My gosh, this is simply awesome. I mean, each and every sketch and painting look awesome. U r supremely talented. The only problem is that does this art pay something.
I too have been an artist – more of sketch, have done couple of posters, ball-pen, charcoal sketches, HB range of pencil and many others.
But somehow I did not take it professionally.
Would appreciate you going through one my blog and share your thoughts –
https://fodyssey.com/2008/11/06/my-creations/
It will be nice to be in touch. Pls do connect via fb.
All the best to you 🙂
LOVE your artwork SO much!!!
I hope you keep up with your art! It’s never too late to be an artist.
nice work, interestingly out of the box
I like! 🙂
Amazing 🙂
Wow! You are very talented. These are beautiful.
This is simply amazing. The attention to detail is what defines your immaculate power of perception. Then I suppose your memory is pretty good as well. When you put pencil to paper it’s like printing. Wouldn’t make a difference even if you used a pen because I don’t think you really ever need an eraser. Bravo! You must be great with graffiti art.
Wow it’s amazing!!!!😍😍😍❤
Hello there. Thank you so much for taking a look at my post. Love your web site. I am now a follower. Take care.
All of these are wonderful.
I like your style.
Versatile, colourful and organic.
Realism in a schism of surreal symbolism.
Keep on creating.
“As a kid I showed great interest in drawing over the walls, toys or anything I could get my pencils on.”
I identify with that statement.
This is just outstanding work.
Love the drawings in the books
your work is quite good
Wow great I like. it, especially the eyelids hanging with colors. I also like to draw or rather I used to draw before I entered Highschool and then University (goodbye free time!^^’) but I admire the patience that one must acquire through this activity because nothing is perfect in the first time !
Never thought of making some T-shirts with it?
😉
Brilliant! I love your art and your use of colour.
Don’t sell yourself short. You are an artist and you are expressing yourself they way you want to express yourself.
Thank you for sharing your art and yourself with us.
Cool Stuff!! Great sketches. Love the color in your art work!!
Oh, well done. The cat picture, for example, could easily be from a published book.