Make Comics Not Excuses

Not with that attitude you won’t. And in this line of work attitude is everything.

I’m serious, in a line of work in which no one is born able to do, your attitude will determine how successful you are.  Naturally your attitude alone doesn’t make you a good artist, nor does your attitude solely make you a success.  But your attitude will influence your determination. Your determination will influence your work ethic.  Your work ethic will determine you how well you draw (or write, or whatever you’re trying to do.) How well you draw will determine how successful you are.  So when you go in saying “I’ll never be good enough.” you pull the rug out from under that tower of success and purposely sabotage yourself.  That is unacceptable, and you know the saying here. We don’t make excuses, we make comics.

So lets go back to the beginning where I said “…in a line of work in which no one’s born able to do…”  What does that mean?  Well it’s simple.  We, as human beings, are born with our bodies purposely designed to do certain things. For instance: walking upright, speaking, eating both meat and plants, and performing precise tasks with our hands. However, even with out bodies specifically designed to perform these tasks we still have to learn how to walk, and talk, and how to do things with our hands.

So if these things humans are designed to do have to be learned, what makes you think non essential things to life, like drawing or writing, is something that doesn’t have to also be learned?  What makes you think writing or drawing is a natural born talent?  It’s not.  It’s a skill that is learned, and practiced, and improved on, and every single breathing person alive first started off as the worst ever.

I want you to take solace in that.  Your favorite artists, the ones you look up to,  the ones that are so good it makes you feel like crap, well when they first started they were TERRIBLE.  I guarantee it.  Every artist has a humble beginning and terrible art that starts off their career.  The difference between them and you however is that they said, “I’m going to be great.” Then worked very very hard to become great. If they had said “I’ll never be good enough,” chances are you wouldn’t know their name right now.

I like to use another analogy for this sort of thing.  And thats the speech President John F Kennedy gave about going to the moon.  He said two things that were important to my point in his speech.  First: “We choose to go to the moon, in this decade…” He didn’t say “We might go to the moon sometime soon.” or “We’ll try to go but I don’t know if we can do it.”  Not “We’ll go, when we have more time.”  He said we’re going, and we’ll be there by the end of the decade.  And in 1969 human beings were standing on the moon.  The second thing in the speech he said was “…not because they are easy but because they are hard.”

I want you to take that to heart, because it’s this attitude that will help you reach the goals.  If you think “I’ll  never be good enough.” your right, you never will be.  But if you have that determined spirit to do this and the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, then success won’t be too far behind.

So shoot for the moon, stop making excuses, and start making comics.

Tomorrow I’m going to tell you about a deal I’m running on digital ink sketch commissions.  In the mean time check me out around the web:

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And if you love my artwork don’t forget to pick up my comics!

And remember: Make Comics! Not Excuses!