One Step Back

  Trying to figure out your future is a stressful thing, as most people know.
     For me, the hard part is now, trying to decide which of several paths to take. The destination, though, is not the problem. I've known exactly where I'm heading to for quite some time. Illustration.
That being said, I definitely do my share of doubting and worrying. Doubting whether I can stand up to the competition, worrying that I'm not good enough, or will never be good enough.
   But what I'm doing today is taking a deep breath and a step back, taking a stroll down memory lane.

These first two are probably my very first real drawings of children, done way before the idea of illustration ever occured to me.

I guess my mind was playing around here with the idea of an innocent imagination 

and wild, dangerous monsters.

I think this was it...

Somewhere between these lines, I realized that I wanted to be an illustrator.

 Maybe it's the innocence that
       comes through in the details.

  Or the ability to let my imagination go on

 paper where only children dare to go.

  Or maybe it's the chance to make others
smile with just a pencil and paper. 

I fell in love reading picture books, and dreaming up my own.

These next few pictures are from the first book I illustrated, which for some time I was so unhappy with, I didn't even remember what the pictures looked like.

 But now, after taking another look today, I have no words to describe the feeling of seeing your own individual drawings turn into something so much more.

I can even feel proud now of that very first drawing, of an anatomically challenged little girl in a pink dress, proving to me that all the work I put in through the past few years was worth something.

After all, how many beginning art school applicants can say that they've already illustrated a book?

And I even managed to draw the figures somewhat anatomically correct! That's practice for you...

 Now that I'm done with this little flashback of self evaluation...well, I'm not entirely sure how to sum this up.

But, MAN, that was therapeutic!