Greatness & Purpose in Art: A Reflection

Sometimes I wonder to myself, how does one get so good at drawing? If art were as simple as we’d like to think, well then everyone would be an artist. And perhaps everyone does have that potential to be an artist in their very own way. But I struggle with this idea at times. I’m an art major. I chose this out of all the subjects in the world. Although sometimes I am not so certain of the reasons behind what I do and why I do it. Most other subjects require a lot of reading and memorization of information. But art is that one subject that you can’t really study for. There are many things an artist can read to get some guidance in the matter. Although for the most part art is about “seeing and doing.” It is a hands-on type of study that requires continual practice.

When I see some of my peers create amazing things that perhaps I would not have thought of or could have done, I wonder how can an artist become successful above others? Though there are many factors that motivate an artist, I can imagine many of us do want to be successful in sharing our ideas with the world. It has occurred to me that the only way to get really good at something is to constantly practice our skills. By effectively communicating our ideas through our own unique means of expression, we can perhaps shine in our own way. Effective communication requires that an artist target an audience. Art that no one can relate to is useless--mere aesthetic decoration. A successful drawing depicts a theme, showcases the artist’s skills, and does so in an interesting way that a viewer can understand and be affected by. I think this is important because many of us, including myself, sometimes just draw things for the sake of drawing things. In other words, though we may be given a theme, or have an initial idea for a composition, we just quickly draw whatever we think of first.

I believe this is why many of my studio classes stress taking time to formulate a process or at least a preparation before working on a project. To be most successful in art, it seems we must reflect upon every aspect of our work, from the composition, to the message or objective, and to the different techniques we use. In doing so, we are not just creating pretty pictures; we are making something that relates a visual message in a unique way. We become valuable to society in this ability we have to design pictorial statements. At this point I realize that art is important because everything we see from graphics, consumer products, entertainment, history, science, is possible because someone drew it. Therefore, I believe that our jobs as artists are just as influential as other careers. We draw to practice, so we can be great...and we do it because we can.