I went from this...to this (art and personal challenge)

I saw this challenge here on read.cash. It was done by @kushina and I thought to myself "why not to give it a go". So here's my entry to this challenge. 😊

To make things completely clear, it was only an art challenge, but I decided to add something new to it and because of that I created a 'personal' section too. Now let's go.

Story behind my art progress

Even though today I'd describe myself as a hardcore art enthusiast, don't be fooled, because it was not always like this.

I remember that I kinda hated all art classes up till my 4th or 5th grade in primary school. In these grades teachers finally gave us some freedom and we could draw and paint what we wanted and not only what the teacher told us to. It was around this time when I discovered that I like drawing faces and portraits with pencils.

Now... To be honest it's embarrassing to show you this "art piece" because it's terrible and really child-like, but remember that I was 12 years old back then and only starting. 😂 (it doesn't even look like Taylor Swift lol)

A teen magazine named "Bravo" was popular in my country around this time, and I always got my mum to buy it for me. The posters of celebrities that were inside the magazine were really useful, because I started to use them as a drawing reference. For you to imagine the process:I had the poster in front of me and I was trying to make a drawing of it. Sometimes, in my later drawings, when the paper was thin enough, I even traced it.

I don't longer have the magazines or the posters, I just kept some really pretty ones, but I have all the drawings in a folder to look at them and to remember the days (I think there could be more than 100 A4 pencil drawings).

Over time I naturally became better and art became my passion. I even got accepted to art high school and learned to draw more realistically. Now (2021) I can draw like this:

I'm happy with the progress although I know that some people achieve it in a shorter time period. 😊

To be honest, over the years of learning about art and also creating it, I don't really like (hyper) realistic drawings anymore. Mainly because I feel like they don't have enough personality and character. Yeah, the skill is amazing, but that's about it. Realistic art is no longer the ideal art for me and even though I sometimes draw realistically for my university art projects, the idea behind art and more loose like appearance attracts me much more. (so don't be sad if you can't draw realistically, I'm a fan of you!)

Most of my portraits now look like this:

More flow-like, sketch-like and rough. Half realistic half abstract.

Story behind my personal progress

When I look at these two photos I don't really see much of a difference. Even my face is still the same, I didn't became prettier or anything like that.

The progress I see is more of a background story of these photos.

In my early teen year I was forced to move across my whole country because my mum found a boyfriend that lived there... So my surroundings changed, my school changed and also my friends.

Personally-wise I like to think that I didn't changed at all even though everything around me did, but I can't really say that it's true. I believe that it can only be seen from outside perspective. (Does it make sense?)

I feel like I'm still that awkward, antisocial and geek person with strangely working mind... My university and my boyfriend changed me a little bit - in a sense of fashion (I started to wear skirts and long tigh high socks), my interests (cats, video games, streamers, chess) and stuff like that, but nothing really major.

...

What about you? How did you changed in a last few years? I would love to hear your thoughts 😊

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Take care ❤️