About taking hurdles

After my previous blog I got two questions about some of the content.
First was, what those hurdles were that I was talking about. Next people wondered whether I truly meant it when I wrote: ‘Winning or losing, I’m very happy I participated!’ Wasn’t this just a way to hide the fear/ chance of upcoming disappointment?
I’ll start with the hurdles, I think explaining those will also answer the second question.
Like I mentioned before, as a child I dreamed of illustrating books but I never made any serious attempts to pursue this dream. Now I was finally doing it! Exiting but scary.
Instead of illustrating I went to the Academy of Fine Art in Education. Still I can hear the teacher’s voices echoing in my head: my taste in art was poor, not to mention cliché and so was my artwork. Even now tiny parts of my brain objected to me illustrating: ‘this wasn’t art with a capital A!!’ I decided not to care, I was enjoying myself and that’s what matters, right?!
Working on my art I got stuck often. I got scared to continue, scared to ruin things, scared of expectations. This made me re-think everything. Illustrating for the contest there was no time for such nonsense. All 3 illustrations needed to be finished well before the 1^st of May.
So I had to just ‘do’.
I rediscovered how much I like storytelling, my way. Now when I draw I just ‘do’ and don’t get stuck that easily. I got closer to what I like doing without being embarrassed about it. I found new solutions, new materials, new combinations.
During the 20 days of working on my illustrations I had a week of vacation and I caught myself thinking: ‘Oh, I hope I won’t spend my whole vacation drawing!’ And then I thought, wait a minute, I remember a time when I couldn’t wait for the (school-) vacation to start so I could draw all week! The moment I realized that, something changed, I couldn’t wait to get to my studio and start drawing.
Doing these 3 illustrations has brought me so much. So when I say that even when I'm losing I'm winning, I truly mean it.

Below an unfinished detail of the 2nd illustration I did for the Lemniscaat contest.