"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. "

Scott Adams

Well then, summer has finally settled into my bones and I've become lazy. I am a little upset at myself because I've had plenty of time to keep up with my goal of updating once a week and here I am, almost a month later, not having posted for 3 weeks.

What have I been doing then, if not drawing?
Well, I have been brainstorming. I have been analyzing who I am and what I want to do and how to accomplish it. I have been feeling scared to death that I am not good enough to get into the work I want to. I've been dying at the sight of how much graduate school costs (roughly $68,000 without tax or supplies) and contemplating forgoing the experience. I have also been writing and creating in my head, brewing ideas that will hopefully soon come out into this blog and stop tormenting me!

To make a paragraph short, I've been gathering information over the past few weeks. I think that I've finally gotten enough to begin to create again. The other night, I worked on a piece that might be starting a series. It's more like a prototype because it's not at all how I want the rest to look like and in that I discovered a little better how I want it to work. With all this free time, I want to do finished drawings. I want to build up my portfolio with things outside of my schooling so I can feel better about my own skills and my own creativity.

Thus, this series I want to start is what I'm calling my Cosmic series. I want to anthropomorphize our Sun, Moon, Planets, Major Stars, and maybe even Galaxies. I'm starting with the Sun and the Moon. They'll probably look the most different from the rest of the series, but I think it'll be good.


On a side note, I'm very excited for Anime Expo! It's the one weekend out of the year where me and my boyfriend can geek out together. This will be the first time I'll be participating in a big group "cosplay" (Costume play, or dressing up like a character) and it's going to be great! We don't have any roommates this year so we only have to worry about ourselves. What a nice change.This bout of sewing has sparked a new sense of wanting to do crafts so I have been creating fabric flowers and other hair accessories. Everyone says I should make a bunch and sell them. Maybe. I have to make a bunch first.

I think I'm going to do some chalk drawings today(found a whole bunch of sidewalk chalk yesterday while cleaning the backyard), I'll take pictures and update it by the end of the week. Hopefully Sunday. 

So, I started this thing two weeks ago and have been thinking about what I want to do with it over the summer. I figured It would become a sort of journal and provide motivation for me to keep up with drawing.


So far, It's working. EVerytime I pick up my sketch pad or look at old drawings I think about what I want to draw and show on here.

Without further adieu, I present Hyacinth. One of my many, many role playing characters.

This was inspired by the great Art Nouveau artists Mucha! Also, the pose was grabbed from a vintage nude that I found absolutely stunning and fit this nymph character perfectly. She is holding water hyacinth flowers....they're much easier to draw than normal hyacinth. I am thinking about digitally working into it or something but for right now I enjoy this graphite sketch very, very much!

It’s no mystery the difficulty of the task I have ahead. Trying to break through into an industry that’s currently struggling in its transition from traditional to digital and the over saturation of the market is daunting. With technology so easily available and advancing by the second, it’s hard to feel safe and easy to feel discouraged. I’ve only got a year left of school and that’s only another 365 days to get my style established and come to a decision about what kind of art I want to do. While it’s not set in stone and there are plenty of opportunities to do many different creative things, I find myself scared as heck.

Am I really talented or am I just mediocre and pursing something blindly? Do I have the right skill set to succeed?Am I mentally and emotionally prepared to set forth on this career? Do I have a way to tap into creativity when I need it?

The pressure of working on improving and expanding my skills before graduation is driving me to keep going forward. I don’t feel discouraged when I look at my peer’s art which is more successful than mine, or when I see a professional’s flawless sketches. More often than not I’m driven to figure out what makes it successful and why am I drawn to it. As of late I’ve been researching contemporary artist and how they represent themselves on the web. There have been a few guest speakers at school that stress how important it is to have a website and/or a blog to help promote and represent you, the artist.

So here I am. Ring Around Capozzi is going to be a hard project for me but I must remain on task. With the help of my friends and family as well as critique and comments from you, the viewers, I hope to succeed and begin effectively communicating through the visual arts. It’s time that I begin to introduce myself.

My name is Lauryn Capozzi and I’m an aspiring Illustrator.