r/innervoice

Saw this design somewhere and wanted to try my own.

I couldn't wait to finish this piece so I could share it with you all 😊 Sometimes I let outside validation get in the way of my creative process, and I need to work on that. But on this day, I am sharing something that I'm really proud of.

https://tanbeliaart.com/products/biscayne-national-park-watercolor-painting-by-tanbelia-copy

I used to love drawing and painting when I was younger. But in my late teens, I hit a plateau. I wasn’t improving, and I couldn’t find any sensible reason why I should keep painting. For praise? Because the world needs yet another amateur study of two plums? So I stopped. Completely.

Ever since, I’ve had this nagging feeling: where would I be now if I had kept going? A kind of guilt that I hadn’t made use of whatever talent I had, so to speak. And the feeling that it was too late.

Then something happened last week. I decided to try anyway. Just to see how it felt, not because it had to lead to anything.

It was scary at first. But I decided not to listen to that critical voice, or to the idea that everything has to result in something. I don’t think I had ever really allowed myself to simply enjoy the calm and curiosity of mixing colors, seeing how the brush moves, and watching how the paint behaves.

Seeing other people’s work and reading your thoughts about the process definitely helped give me the geist to let go and just enjoy it.

Thank you, everyone.

Each drawn with a different fountain pen ink. These are for a blog run by fellow redditor u/paris_pen where they write about fountain pen-related topics

It’s Twos-day. Two tangles only with minimal embellishment, black and white only