So my husband’s new work iPad arrived last night and I decided to have a play around. We got the iPad to help us with our design work that we do (both for clients and my husband’s business), so my husband also bought the Procreate app. We use the Affinity suite on the desktop (cheaper and MUCH easier to use that Adobe), but he thought he’d try something different since Procreate was on sale.

Now, over the past six months or so, I’ve been becoming more interested in digital art, but I’ve never done anything with it. Mainly because it looks hard AF and I’m not an artist – I’m a writer. But last night after my husband (who is an artist, despite what he may tell you otherwise) had had a go, I decided to have a play around too.

Aaaaaand this is the result:

Guys, meet Fred the fancy bulldog.

I was laughing so hard when I finished – it’s so bad. I’d like to say it was getting late and I was tired (which is true), but the reality is that I was getting super frustrated and I couldn’t be bothered to work out where anything was anymore.

BUT…I have decided not to give up. When I told my husband this morning that I was gonna have a play around again, he said something that really made me think. He asked me how long it would take me to write 1000 words, and I said around an hour? He said that apparently a picture is worth 1000 words, so I had to spend at least an hour on whatever I chose to draw. He also said that practice makes perfect, and that no one starts out as an amazing artist.

Which did make me think. I wasn’t born with the ability to string sentences and stories together – I practiced. Without even thinking about it, I practiced for years; writing half-finished novels that will never see the light of day, making up dramatic and overly complicated storylines for my sims, playing make believe in fantasy lands while running around the farm. I’ve never really stopped practising or working at it – it’s something I do every day, consciously or not.

Since writing takes priority in my life (bar obviously, the Little Terror, Big Terror and general family life), I doubt I’ll be able to devote the same kind of energy to art that I do to my writing. But you know what, this is just supposed to a fun hobby that I’d like to get better at, so does it really matter if I don’t do it every day? The most important thing is that I don’t give up when it gets hard and I can’t figure something out. Otherwise we might end up with a shitload more Freds in the world.

Poor Fred.

Z x