“ A person who works with their hands is a laborer, a person who works with their hands and their brain is a craftsman, and a person who works with their hands, their brain, and their heart is an artist” -Marco Pierre White I remmeber seeing a video called “the art of noticing” and it talks about making or doing art in order to express yourself or to enhance the beauty of what you find amusing. i dont consider myself an artist but i love drawing and creating stuff. i think my creations are fairly decent and good but i noticed that i started improving when i started making art in order to express myself. i used to draw and make stuff in order to impress people and it made me feel stuck and think that i dont improve. no matter how many “how to draw for beginners” or “how to color like a pro” videos i watched, nothing seemed to change. i notice that i only started improving the moment i stopped caring of what people thought of my art. the moment i started doing it because it helped me express the kind of person i am. growing up, i had a really artsy and crafty mom. we used to craft together. she would be building something out of old stuff we have that people would probably consider as junk while id be sitting across or beside her drawing. i remember staying up late with her and my brother making paper boats and drawing paper dolls that resemble us. i always thought of crafting as something fun and something i enjoy and love doing. i dont remember exactly what moment made me want to make art to impress people and it was a phase that lead me to give up crafting and drawing entirely. thinking im not good enough or losimg the energy and passion to create new things because someone out there is better than me and i had a weird mindset of wanting to be the best at something by knowimg others arent as good as me. that kind of mindset made me give up making art. i stopped drawing, i stopped crafting, and i started thinking that i suck at these kinds of stuff. it was only pretty recent where i found out that im actually good at this! i remember hearing someone quote something from a book. i domt entirely remmeber the exact words but its from an art book. the author of the book tells the readers that if they make art in order to capture life and for it to be a way or form of slef expression, they are sure to improve. but if the person only wants to learn art in order to impress people, then there is nothing he can do about it.