Botanical Kick and Other Thoughts

I've kind of been on a botanical kick lately, which I find funny since I don't have a really green thumb! I do love plants though. I have a houseful, but they are the "hard to kill" variety. :) Using some of the books in my collection, I've been practicing doing homages to the scientific illustrators of days gone by, using colored pencils and china markers. I'm not interested in being super detailed and "botanically accurate," per se, but working to get the shapes and design down and maybe give it a little twist. It's been surprisingly fun and, best of all, NO PRESSURE. It's what I tell myself every evening when I slip upstairs to work in the studio for a bit.

No pressure.

I've always been a perfectionist. I want to do things perfectly and not only that, I want to do them perfectly the first time and continue doing them perfectly every time I do them. Anything else defaults, in my head, to "wasting time." I feel like... as I get older.... these thoughts/tendencies have gotten worse and worse. It got to the point that the past few years I've seriously thought about giving up drawing and painting because "I just can't do anything right anymore" 

"This is never going to look like what's in my head."

"I'll never be as successful as XYZ."

"My style is boring and has no life."

"I am a creative failure."

The past few months I've been trying to allow myself more grace. Permission to explore. Take risks. Fail, even. I took my website down for awhile. I'm doodling in sketchbooks. I'm trying to work without pressure.

It's hard to beat those intrinsic personality traits, the perfectionism.

It's one small step at a time.

Jen