I graduated artschool as an illustrator and at the moment I am trying to live my life as an illustrator. That means to sell my work, being able to live from it and to become better at what I do. Better as a drafstman, better as an illustrator.

As a little kid I remember coping the artwork of those Nintendo games, such as Street Fighter, Dragonball Z. To draw them as precisely as I could, every little detail. From the 5cm characters displayed in those tiny booklets, I copied and scaled them to A4 size. You probably remember those ‘90 rap music album covers or posters like 2pac or bone thugs ‘n harmony? yeah I also copied those. I think a lot of people can recognise themselves in doing this. It is too bad I didn’t keep those drawings though. If people have, please at them in the comments below. It is fun to look at them again!

I never quite drawing throughout my whole life though. I did a lot of other things next to it: sports, gaming, chasing girls, going to school, argue with my brother and sister, test your limits with drinking, all those regular things many of us do. But the one thing I always returned to was drawing: as if it was my home, a place of rest you can say. 

I very often got admired for my drawing talents, so this is the main reason why I never quite drawing. I kinda like the attention, the admiration to it from others. It gave me confident, it still does. But did I ever think about going to art school in all of those years? not really.. I never though of becoming an artist or illustrator, to be honest I didn’t had any perspective in doing anything with art or illustration at all. Why did I choose the art academy? The main reason is the admiration from others toward my drawing talent. They suggested me to go to the art academy, so I decided to go there. I didn’t know anything about what they will teach me at the academy. I thought just to become better at drawing. So that's what I was doing at school. To show teachers that I can draw awesome anime figures… of course they laughted. A lot a teachers were saying: the ones who can draw, will be having a hard time at the academy. 

I'm a do'er, not a thinker. "Why you put this figure here and not there? Why is this line so thin, it is not clear! It will be better if you'd use lines more thick. What does this figure mean? It doesn't communicate! Will it communicate better if you’d put that on the left side in the frame? Why did you choose this colour? Why this material?"

I got tons of questions fired at me and couldn’t answer one of them. It made me crazy, art school made me crazy. Thinking to much about these questions. I didn’t know what I was doing, I just know how to draw and this is why I came here. I'd done it every semester. I failed a lot of times on my exames, unable to defend my work. A lot of other times I tried pleased the tutors in what they would like me to draw. As if they were hopeless in helping me. But trying to please the other is big trap! The more I listened and trying to please the teachers, the more confused and fucked up I became. I did everyting you'd ask me to do! why am I not doing better??

Art school was a total different experience than what I had expected, It wasn’t just about become better at drawing. There is a whole lot of thinking involved, conceptual thinking. It sounds so superficial of me when I reflect on it. The teachers ask you those questions, so that you can reflect on your actions, give reason to the choises you make. They just wanted you to be able to stand your ground, to create what you believed in.

So I learned: You should always do what you please to do, instead of trying to please the other.