Learning to Be My Own Teacher
How I’m journaling my art, meeting my inner critic, and rebuilding my skills with portraits.
Hello everyone.
In my last blog post, I shared a bit about my life; the wedding, the new studio, this whole new chapter I’ve stepped into. But there’s still so much I didn’t get to say.
There’s been this massive pile of artwork I’ve wanted to share, but I didn’t know how to bring it all together. It felt messy in my head. So I thought, maybe I’ll start by talking about how I’ve been trying to organise everything.
Organising My Art Practice
I’ve been using Notion app to record my art practice. I was so inspired by The Calm Creative’s YouTube video where she laid out her entire creative schedule on Notion and something about that really clicked for me. So I copied her. In general, she’s a very calm and soothing person to listen to.
Every day, I open a calendar view and log whatever I created that day. Not just what I did, but also what went right, what went wrong, where I struggled, where I surprised myself. It’s like journaling about my art. Because sometimes, it’s hard to see that you’re making progress unless you write it down. And since I identify as a self-taught artist, I have to be my own teacher. That means, I not only have to learn via resources but also keep providing feedback to myself. Just like all colleges do.
Meeting the One Who Whispers, “It’s Not Enough Yet”
But I’ll be honest. For seven days, I didn’t record a single thing. No updates. However, I was practicing. But I’m still new to this record keeping and documenting.
Because I wasn’t writing what I was doing, I thought I’m not doing at all. It’s easy to forget. And I started to feel this heavy, awful guilt. I kept telling myself I wasn’t being disciplined enough. That I was slacking. That maybe I didn’t want it badly enough.
This month, I’ve been really hard on myself. And not the motivational, go-getter kind of hard, the cruel kind. I cursed myself. I spiralled. I couldn’t keep up with everything I wanted to do, and the voice in my head turned mean.
One day, I just broke down. I sat with myself and cried.
I needed to understand where this cruelty was coming from, why I was pushing myself so hard, why I couldn’t give myself a moment of softness. I had such high standards of myself that it was impossible to please myself. I realised that there’s a part of me that’s absolutely terrified of making mistakes and feeling worthless. A part that believes if I’m not constantly improving, constantly producing, constantly perfect, then I don’t deserve to call myself an artist.
That part doesn’t want anyone to see my mistakes. It thinks mistakes will lead to rejection. It wants to protect me. And the only way it knows how is by beating me up from the inside.
It’s young. It doesn’t know any better. But it’s loud.
And yet, there’s also another part of me, the one you’ve probably seen in my past posts that celebrates mistakes. That shares messy work proudly. That believes in being human first.
So I turned to something that’s been part of my inner work for a while: Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. The core idea is that there are no bad parts. Every part of us, even the ones that seem harsh or overwhelming, are just trying to help in the only way they know how. These parts get stuck, and what they really need is to be heard.
IFS has taught me to act from the Self, the part of me that is calm, clear, and compassionate. So instead of pushing that harsh inner voice away, I sat with her. I let her speak. I let her cry too.
And something inside softened.
I still want to be better. I still want to improve. But I want to create from love, not fear. From joy, not guilt. And yes, I want to be disciplined, but in a way that’s sustainable and kind.
That’s where the portraits come in.
When My Skills Couldn’t Catch Up to My Ideas
A little while ago, I had this sudden creative urge. I wanted to paint a woman with an owl. I didn’t know why. I just felt it deeply. I started the painting with all this energy and excitement. It started as something beautiful and powerful
And then the next day, I ruined it. I kept working and working, and somewhere along the way, I lost what I had. The piece fell apart.
And that moment taught me something really important.
I realised how much I needed my skills to catch up with my ideas. I can’t express what I want to express unless I have the tools. I can’t make a face if I don’t know how. That painting needed more from me than I could give.
So I made a quiet promise to myself: for this month, I’ll focus on portraits, drawing and proportions.
Not just drawing for the sake of it, but training. Learning. Observing. Figuring out proportions. Understanding form. Not in a rigid, art-school way. But in a way that still feels like me.
Here’s one drawing piece that I worked on.
This is one of the drawings I’m genuinely proud of. Not because it’s perfect, but because it taught me something I usually struggle with, patience.
I’ve always been a fast, intuitive artist. I like to draw fast, paint fast. Working in acrylics trained me to move quickly, to chase energy rather than precision. But over time, that speed started spilling into everything, even into slower mediums like pencil.
With this piece, I tried something different. Every mark was slow, disciplined, intentional, carefully rendered into the grain of the paper. What started off casually on a local cartridge sheet ended up becoming something I spent a lot of time with and I loved almost every minute of it.
Somewhere in that process, I began to enjoy the slowness. I started noticing more. I saw the mistakes I was making, the things I had overlooked before. And I learned so much, like the way form wraps around planes, the softness of light, the way tone builds depth when you take your time.
It’s not perfect. But it feels honest. And I know the next one will carry all of this forward.
This blog post barely scratches the surface of everything I’ve been working on. So here’s a small glimpse, just a few pieces I’ve created recently that I feel connected to, proud of, or deeply challenged by.
Where I Am Now
I want to keep my uniqueness, my softness, my emotion in my work. But I also want to be good. I want to be skilled.
So that’s where I am right now. Logging portraits and live sketches in Notion. Writing down what worked, what didn’t. Letting myself notice when the eye is off, or the lip is too low, or the forehead’s too wide. Letting that be okay.
And the best part?
At least now, I know when I’ve made a mistake. That’s something. That’s progress.
Thanks for reading this far. Really.
There’s more I want to share, I’ll keep showing up.
One sketch, one day, one honest post at a time.
Happy Creating.