What You Can Learn From Your Old Art

When I went back to visit my parents house recently, I found myself drawn to this massive plastic storage container that has sat in my bedroom for years. It houses essentially every sketchbook I’ve ever filled up between the ages of 8 and 18-- many of which are filled with things too shameful to put on even the cringiest of DeviantArt accounts. 

I’m currently in school for illustration, and I have been since 2016, so much of my current relationship with art has revolved around class assignments, internships, and how art can get me hired. Even when I’m drawing for fun these days, it always seems to loop back around to what subject matter I can use to get the most social media interaction, or how what I’m making will fit into my portfolio. If we’re talking plainly, it’s been years since I’ve made something for purely my own enjoyment.

In many ways, this constant mental preoccupation has done more harm than good for my practice as an artist, as well as my mental wellbeing. Being hyper-focused on how to be the best, most marketable artist I can be has resulted in me creating less in general, and has also tied many negative emotions to the act of creation as a whole. Yep, I played myself: On a quest to be the best, I ended up completely stunting my artistic growth.

These sketchbooks that I found aren’t full of masterpieces. And, in fact, most of them are full of self-indulgent “bad art”, with wonky anatomy, shaky lines, and finger-smudged mechanical pencil shading. However, as I flipped through them, I couldn’t help but find myself smiling. For all the technical components that the sketchbooks lacked, they were bursting with fun, and personality, and a sense of carelessness that comes with knowing the only person who you’re drawing for is yourself.

Especially with my high school sketchbooks, where I was finally starting to find my own artistic voice and my skill was budding, I noticed that it was much easier for me to put myself into what I was making than it is right now. Those pieces of myself that I managed to cram into all my little doodles, sketches, and concepts gave them so much more vivacity than I feel like all of the technical goodness I currently possess gives to the full-on projects I’ve been making in school and in my professional life.

Without the insight I got from looking at my old stuff, I don’t think I would have realized that I was lacking this part of my artistic voice, and I definitely don’t think I would have realized what a difference it made in the work I produced. It’s difficult to see past the inherent embarrassment of AHH OH, GOD! ART I MADE AT AGE 15!!!, but there’s so much hidden value within things that you create without an overzealous critical eye.