My friend and coworker, Susie offered up her painting as a post on this blog. She is a very talented artist. I love this painting.

We had a conversation about self criticism. She was an art major and finds it hard sometimes to do art because she is very critical of herself. I totally get this. I feel this way about writing because I was a literature major. For me writing is very difficult and not necessarily fun, but when I write something I am happy with I probably get the most fulfillment from it than  any other creative outlet.

She asked me about my thoughts on self criticism and whether I experience this with drawing. At this stage in my drawing, I don’t, really. I think there have been times in the past when I suffered from self criticism when it comes to drawing because my mom and my brother are so incredibly talented and it has been hard to follow in their footsteps. But in the past few years I have basically just started from this place of, “Yes I suck.” And I am totally ok with sucking. I give myself permission to suck. And from this place of “I totally suck” I can be free to just have fun and draw whatever the hell I want and not care what the critic inside thinks.