"You don't have to be unique to do what you like." @sono.una.05.complessata

Dear Diary,

I'm Denise, 19, from Italy!

I was always drawn to art as a kid, the idea of creating was pretty much the core of my childhood. At first my drawings were mostly just considered as scribbles; but as time went by I noticed I wanted to be more serious with my art. 

Credit: Denise (Instagram @sono.una.05.complessata)

I had this problem where I could never pinpoint a style I’d consider mine so I started just copying — just simple drawings or scenes from cartoons using the squares method which I then went further on and even tried realism. The downside of this is I never actually connected with the art I was creating; that is, until when I was in middle school and I got gifted a drawing tablet, I immediately jumped on the opportunity and started drawing on Gimp which I proceeded to use for quite some years. That was fulfilling only for a limited time until I knew it still wasn't what I was meant to do because the core problem of not always being able to correct mistakes was still there. 

This is when I discovered Illustrator sometime during high school in which everything changed; I could finally correct mistakes made in the first draft of the work without having to restart, no problem in finding a style I could call mine because I could just use styles that existed already and I finally feel the passion in doing what I do.

Credit: Denise (Instagram @sono.una.05.complessata)

I started posting years ago but couldn't keep up with social media most of the time because I can't really go on if I don't get any validation from the artworks I make. My other drawings also almost didn't get any comments / likes at all. However, when I started putting more focus on this journey and actually tried understanding the power of connections on the internet, my interactions skyrocketed and I couldn't be happier about it. To simply put, social media didn't change my art but it helped me understand that what I was doing wasn't actually the path I wanted to take. 

Given my autism, I'm a very pragmatic person. I don't really get joy randomly if not for hyperfixations and I just don't like the idea of drawing only one thing for a certain period of time. Thus, I simply have a tight schedule of posts I put out every week that don't really align with what's absorbing me right now.

My advice? "You don't have to be unique to do what you like". 

That’s it for now!

Until then,

Denise