I drew this one after the one above to try another lip style. Shading is so tricky with ink pens, and I’m never sure how much I should do. Sometimes I go too far and everything looks too dark. Sometimes I don’t do enough.
Art is a process of learning what works and doesn’t work. I’m always trying to catch up to my own taste in art, and that is good, it makes me work harder and keep at it.
I know for me the more professional artist I see the more I see my own lack, or even a good inspection of the real thing I’m trying to draw will expose my flaws in art.
This is very similar to a Christian’s relationship with Jesus. When I see his life and his perfect combination of love, care, faith, anger, restraint, mercy, judgment, sacrifice, patience it exposes my own weaknesses. The more time I spend with Jesus the more I see my flaws, but I can’t stay discouraged long because the more time I spend with Jesus the more I become like him.
So when I see my flaws in art I do not stay discouraged long, I see it as the opportunity for growth and practice. Study the best.
I can’t be afraid to see and recognize my own flaws. I imitate the best and learn from them, I can’t be too proud to accept helpful critique.
There is a greater hope though with Jesus then with becoming a fantastic artist. When we have a relationship with Jesus, and we learn from him, we have a guarantee to someday be exactly like he is. And the news gets better, we don’t have to achieve perfection ourselves, he has achieved it for us. He lived a flawless life and took our flaw filled lives and exchanged them. He took every flaw and became those flaws, so we could have his perfection and be seen as flawless before a perfect, loving God.
We have this promise that he who began the work of faith in Jesus, in us, is faithful to bring it to completion. Our effort is faith (and all real faith is followed by an actual action) and that faith was planted by God in us, so we have every reason to be encouraged!
If you don’t know Jesus and don’t have this hope and want it or don’t know why someone would want to be like Jesus a great place to start is the New Testament in the Bible, the book of John is one of my favorites. If you prefer listening, Pastor John Piper at Desiring God, has a fantastic podcast and free materials to learn about Jesus.
Well, I wasn’t planning on writing all this. I was just going to post the photo and say I struggled, lol, so I’m going to trust that someone needed to read this and leave it up, even though it is not perfect God uses our imperfections to accomplish his loving will!