Practice Makes Improvement.

Every pro was once an amateur and let's not underestimate the power of little progress.

Someone told me before that I'm a jack of all trades and there's a saying that "a jack of all trade is a master of none", but for me, it's always better than a master of one lol.

I have so many things that I want to do, that I want to learn especially when it comes to art. Having some talent in drawing runs in our blood, in my mother's side. My older sister is more creative and artsier than me especially during our high school days. She's good at pastel colors and lettering. Growing up, she influenced me to practice art but art materials were pricey before, even now actually, but we have a lot of options now unlike before. So I wasn't able to practice and I don't want to waste her pastel colors or maybe it's just my excuse not to hone my skills back then? hahaha.

When I was in college, I stopped with arts because of my busy schedule, but we had a subject, Advertising Arts, supposedly it should be a digital one but our professor was old and his art skills were traditional. That's the first time that I used a pencil again, at first it was so difficult that I even complained most of the time because we're not fine arts students hahaha but he was teaching us how to draw an AD poster by hand,, but thinking about it, I'm so thankful coz that was my first time drawing a real person. I can draw when I was a kid but only some kind of anime-like drawings. I practice a lot, but because portrait is not my thing and I want to explore digital arts, I did practice again. I'm a self-taught artist, after class, I always went to a computer shop to practice vexel arts.

While organizing my files, I saw my old artworks and just I laugh lol. Sharing with you my vexel arts. These photos are some of my artwork from 2010 up to 2020. I want to make as many as I can but my schedule doesn't permit it. I'm always full load. Monday to Saturday work schedule, always over time. Full of stress that you just want to rest once you go home. And I start to love traveling and mountaineering on Sundays so I almost forgot how to do vexel art. But when I decided to leave the corporate world, my love for it came back. It's not easy. I had to spend 4-5 hours depends on the material and most of the time I'm doing it slowly, the longest time that I spent in one portrait was two months haha. I really want to finish it but I had tight schedule at work, it was Kim Hyun-joong, the one I made, year 2014.

These are my improved version of vexel over the years. I'm so happy that I saved my old files so I can see my improvements to color, shadow, color blending and even the strands of hair. In 2010, I did many vexels of different people coz I really want to practice that much, but my first and second were those picture of mine. Not so good but during those time I'm proud with myself because I thought it's amazing lol.

I stopped doing vexel now and my last one was Lee Min Ho from his drama, The King: Eternal Monarch. Vexeling is really time-consuming. Being an adult and one-man team entrepreneur, I need to work and hustle 5x more. And I'm the time of person that when it comes to art, I want to focus only on art because distractions affect my creativity. To be honest, I'm more focused while doing arts than work lol.(I'm still working on it though), maybe because arts help me relax unlike at work, kinda exhausted sometimes. Aside from being busy, I started to create my own characters, I just want to have my own style while making an illustration, but then again I stopped hahaha, coz I wanted to learn more on traditional painting using gouache paint and watercolor. When I feel that I'm okay with watercolor, I will try to draw again in digital, because any skill you're not practicing is wasting away. We have to keep on practicing to maintain and improve so we don't have to back to start.

That's what happened when I failed to play my guitar. The last time I used it was 2018, and now that I'm back to practicing again I have to go learn again, and in guitar, no pain, no gain. My fingers got calluses again, the first 2 days are painful lol. Actually, I only know the basics ever since, I'm not good at playing guitar, I just knew few songs and I just love guitar haha. My sister and I are frustrated musicians, we even have organ keyboards. I really just want to learn something new plus I'm a music lover too.

They say that I'm a jack of all trades, master of none. No, I mastered graphic designs coz that was my career, and I still need it in my business. I just don't settle in one skill I guess. Before graphic design, I'm into video editing, I had a video editing sideline before, they paid me, and learning it indeed worth it, I only have basic knowledge about video editing though. (another basic knowledge haha) I just want to explore and learn at the same time.

Practice indeed makes improvement as long as you put your heart into it. It's not easy yes, sometimes it's so frustrating coz you're not contented with the output, just continue improving your skills, patience is the key. You'll get there and you'll be happier that you didn't give up. Life is short, do what makes you happy. Keep on learning. Small progress is still progress.

Thank you for dropping by. Stay safe