All posts filed under: Other Mentions

Innate Fears of being an Artist

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I’ve been painting for about 9 months now since reconnecting with the hobby. The best thing I ever did with it is record my journey and progress throughout which you can see on my Instagram. As the journey continues though, I find myself having this tiny innate fear inside of me. It’s a very tiny one but it’s still there. This is the sentiment I’m sharing today. When you’re a fresh new face of an artist, you are daring. You want to do everything and try everything. If you’re lucky, you might even score big and become highly acclaimed, win some awards…you get the picture. But as the journey lengthens and your working portfolio increases, so does your standards (and naturally so). This can be both good and bad. Thoughts like ‘Can this work beat my last work?‘ starts to creep up and before long, the imposter syndrome* is born – a term I’ve only learnt of recently. *Imposter Syndrome is a psychological term used for thinking patterns of doubting your skills, talents or accomplishments, …

Finding Inspiration

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Everyone has their own way of finding inspiration. The most natural way is when the ideas just flow and come to you, when you’re not forcing yourself to find the perfect idea. Because the more you force it, the more you end up getting stuck. There is no right or wrong way to being an artist just as there is no right or wrong way to finding inspiration; however I do think there are positive patterns to follow to reach an enlightening stage. I also think one of the biggest misinterpretations of being an artist (of any kind), is that you must aim to be ‘original’. Originality just doesn’t exist today because our libraries of knowledge have increased so vastly that everything we do and make is an amalgamation of something that we have seen and learnt from someone or something else. Furthermore, we are usually copying from something. (Please do note that this is different to plagiarism). Copying is not bad – it’s how we learn, improve and carve our craft. I’m currently reading …

Learning To Like Your Own Work

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Learning to like your own work doesn’t happen overnight. In fact, it can be a very long process of self-loathing before you get to the stage of self-love and not caring whether others like your work or not. And by ‘very long process’, I by no exaggeration mean years. I’ll mainly be talking from the perspective of being a creative/artist, but feel free to adapt to your own situation. You could be a student, or in a high-stress job or are just a stressful person in general – we’re only human after all. I’ll start by talking about my own experiences first leading up to my present and then I’ll offer some tips on how to reach your highest self when it comes to personal acceptance that your work is good (enough) and that you are good (enough). I think I first started feeling the stress shortly after finishing high school and proceeding on to study A-levels (equivalent to senior year in high school for other countries). Whilst my parents were not the strictest, being …

How To Get Really Creative With Gifting!

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Since the Christmas holidays are coming up and I’ve been super creative these past few months, I thought I would share two projects that I worked on and indeed, gifted. This isn’t an ideas post per se although I do hope you get somewhat inspired by it. It’s more about how original you can be with present-giving although yes – you will need a lot of time and effort and some creative skills which might sound really daunting to some but I hope to prove otherwise! This Christmas will inevitably be very different. There is already a lot of talk about how Christmas will be skimmed back whether it’s buying less from commercial giants and supporting more local businesses; or skimming back on the Christmas food basket overall. Or perhaps not doing Christmas gifting at all except for the children. (I know a friend or two doing this). If you want to be even more original, the present can be entirely digital (see below) or completely handmade so that the person you’re gifting it to, …

Epiphanies, Thoughts and Expression

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If there is one way to see 2020, then see it as a life lesson. Irrespective of Covid, a lot of other crises has occurred this year since it has come into existence; and being one of those people who always think everything happens for a reason, I feel that this year is the greatest life lesson in itself. How can we be more present? How can we enjoy this moment when it’s hard? How can we be more productive with our time, especially when finding so much of it free right now? I got rather anxious at some points of the Covid lockdown…and it was not nice. But sometimes it’s about falling into a pit of bad before you can appreciate the good and finally see the light (even in Covid circumstances). Things get worse before they get better is a phrase I have heard often during this time period…and with Biden having won the American election recently, I think that may be right. Over the past few months, I had a tonne of …