This is a version of a similar post I wrote at Intuitive Designs. I was talking about how sometimes in life we mistake the purposes of the things we do and we confuse the means with the end. I was having a conversation with Naomi the other week while we were walking in the mountains and I was telling her that I don’t think art is the ultimate purpose and reason why I am an illustrator. I think that doing illustration work is only a path for deeper purposes in life. After all, our work affects who and what we are in more ways than the values that society uses to measure our success. For example, in terms such as money and reputation.

To be very sincere, probably the biggest issue I’ve ever had in my life as a person is having to deal with my lack of self-confidence. It’s a handicap that comes from family issues and the way I’ve been raised, but looking for guilty parties and complaining abut it doesn’t solve anything. That’s why I feel that one of my main missions in life is to get rid of this lack of self-confidence and to learn to love and accept myself better as a person. It is just part of my own path in this school of life in order to be a free human being and be in tune with life. But it’s a hard task.

Art becomes a wonderful tool that I must use. When I was a kid I was extremely insecure, but because of my drawings I became one of the most popular kids in school and won many art prizes and contests. I feel very grateful because this allowed me to find a spot were I could fit in the society as an artist and I found a way to communicate with other kids. Without my drawings I really don’t know what would have become of me.

People like me often work very hard to please other people just to be accepted. It never works because they are never really accepting us but someone else we pretend to be. That happens all of the time in art. It takes maturity for an artist to forget about everyone else’s opinions and just be oneself. Sometimes we are not self-confident and we try to adopt other people’s styles instead of standing up for who we really are. This is very often tagged as “lack of originality” but I believe is just lack of self-confidence.

The funny thing is, that if you listen to the words from some of the most renowned artists, painters, musicians, actors, etc… they will tell you very often that they dislike themselves. Many of the most acclaimed actors don’t ever watch their movies because they hate to hear their own voice and look at their own face; singers never listen to their most acclaimed albums because they don’t like to hear their own voice, and so on. The difference between them and the artists who never get any recognition is probably that they just place their ego apart and do their work the best they can because they realize they have a gift to make other people happy and on top of that, they can make a living with it.

So, even if they won’t watch the bloody movie in their life, they just do it and try to get the most they can from the experience. And they do it just being themselves with all of the consequences. You ask any of these reputed artists for an advice to young artists and most of them will tell you the same: “be yourself”.

How do I know I’m being myself as an artist? For me, you can tell when things come naturally. When we try to be someone else things get hard, tedious, and frustrating. Imagine that you do a wonderful imitation of someone else’s work. If people had to choose between your copy and the original they would pick the real one, no matter how good the copy is. Just because it has the original spirit and you can sense it!

On the other hand, sometimes we refuse to use the things that come easy and in a natural way just because they don’t fit our expectations of what the work should be after looking at someone else’s style or doing some specific work. Then, we end up trashing the best from ourselves and we don’t realize that probably that’s exactly what people really want to see. It’s not a matter of being commercial. It just has to do with letting your inner self come out in a natural way because that is always going to be what will connect with the rest of the people. They won’t like it more or less because it was easy, but because it came easy from you. It flowed. They can tell there’s something really personal there that came from your true self.

Of all the advices I have ever received from other artists, this is the one I always try to keep in mind: “Be yourself, no matter what they say”.