Hi there,
I'm Audrey. I started my account a few days ago and I thought I'd make a journal entry.

Lately, I've been feeling a bit...Blah. About my drawings and paintings and photos and...everything.
I'm applying to go to an art college soon. It looks so good. It's small and independently run. The courses sound fantastic. I've heard so much good stuff about it. It's expensive but it's something I want. I'm trying to put together a portfolio and it's hard. I can't tell if all the good stuff I've done has disappeared or if I've never done anything good. Or if its good 'in it's own way'. Basically, the experience has taken my confidence down several notches.
I'm not a creative person. I don't come up with great ideas. I can barely even make the ideas of other look good. I've never been able to achieve the same levels of realism in my art as people with the same amount of practice. I tend to get impatient and finish things off before they're really...properly finished. A lot of my stuff is the same. I do faces, half faces, pictures of hands, pictures of eyes, pictures of lips. Girls with oddly coloured skin, due to the fact that I don't know what to mix to get flesh tones, on blurred, drippy backgrounds (though this is mainly because I've been using a lot of watercolours lately). With minimal detail because I simply don't know what I would do. Or I do the detail in marker, which I feel can look good, but kind of takes away from it a little.
My dad is talented. He painted pictures of me when I was little and he did these wonderful abstract pictures...He did a huge portrait of me which lives under my bed in a tube because I've no idea as to where I should keep it. He also makes jewelery and short films.
So yeah, I've always had this influence and all these inspiring things and reasons to want to paint, to want to draw, to want to create things with my hands.
But I don't think it's something that's really in me. I don't have that thing inside of me saying 'THIS. THIS is what you should do. This is what it should look like, how it should turn out.'
Instead, I have 'get out the paint and some canvas and do something. You need to do something. I don't care what it is, just do something.'
I don't get ideas. I rarely know what I'm doing. I make it up as I go along, unless I have some kind of photo or something I am referencing.
It, along with my general lack of skill or attention to detail makes me think I am not cut out for this. I shouldn't go to art college and I should go do some business course.
And be unhappy.
And I've spent so much time trying to figure out why I shouldn't do that, why I should keep going where I am going, and I only just realised that it's because this is what I love. I love charcoal, I love how messy it is. I love how it calms me down when I use it. I love when I get charcoal or paint or dust from pastels on my fingers and an hour later when I catch sight of myself in a mirror, I have lines of paint across my cheeks or my nose and I didn't realise. I love that more than there are words for. I love the way my paintings looked when I was still making them. With that bright, shiny, wet colour and details missing. All of the beautiful lines from the brush. The idea of creating my own image. I love doing these things so much. Photography isn't really my thing. I like taking pictures but that's for different reasons. I understand why people love it, but it's not for me.
Anyway, I don't do this because I have grand ideas and plans for things. I do this because I LOVE this. I love the end results, I love the process...I love this. The reason I have chosen to stay home and paint and draw every day (and also look after my brother) instead of getting a job is because when I look at jobs, I feel lost. I've been trying to figure out why and what I am going to do and I finally figured it out. I want to learn to be better at what I've been doing, because it's what I want to keep doing. I know I'll never be able to turn it into something that will make me a lot of money or anything, but I don't think I could feel...complete without it. And I think I need to take some time for it. I'll do all the normal things later.

Anyway, that was kind of rambly and badly written, but I needed to get all that out.

I have eaten a lot of pizza and I'm really tired.