Practice makes perfect

Hello everyone and welcome to my first post ever!

Today I want to talk to you about art. Not in a general view but in the sense of never giving up.

Everyone that has ever taken any sort of art class knows that most of the time things don't go as planned, we get disappointed, fail and give up. It's easy to stop doing something when you feel discouraged because things don't look a certain way. But we aren't born knowing everything and, as a result, we shouldn't expect things to be perfect on the first round. I know it is hard, but the thing is to be persistent and practice.

Did she say practice? I tried! But I have no talent!

I'm sure many of you convinced yourselves of not having any artistic talent and being really bad at doing X. Well, SURPRISE! Talent is overrated. What it really takes is to be persistent, to do not give up and keep trying. Then, after many "punches", take a look back, it will surprise you how much your skills have improved.

That is what happened to me.

When I started clay I wasn't good at it. I tried and tried and nothing came out the way I wanted it to. Shapes were weird, colors were different, ...I even have nightmares with one owl pendant that looks straight from hell and that I only keep to show people how bad I was. But after a year of being stubborn, maybe sometimes too much, things started to look as I wanted them to. It was baby steps at first, getting the shapes right, then the colors, and finally the glaze not running over my things as if the figurines just came out from one of your worst nightmares.

Nightmare owl

As you can see this is definitely not something anyone would want in their collection. It still allowed me to learn about how glazes react and what should I not do.

This year I found in the studio the first figurine I ever did and decided to make it again. Oh boy! You really can see that much improvement right? Who would have thought my skill set would improve so much!

So friends, if you want to try something new, do it! You might not be great at first, but practice makes the master!