At play school I'd make the best paintings using potatoes or, my favourite, a few marbles under a cup.
At primary school my self portrait used for the annual school tea cloth looks the most like a person and has the right amount of fingers and eyes.
During secondary school art was the lesson I looked forward to the most and, despite doing ridiculously badly at it in my A-Levels (all the best artists do) it was still the only 2 hours of my day that I came close to enjoying.
Art has been something I have always, always done. Usually quite well.
All that seems to have changed, now, apparently.
I didn't realise it until recently but none of my ads actually have that many pictures in them. I've been told this is an issue. It's no coincidence that every time my work is looked at I get the same response; "Good idea, nice copy, shame about the art direction." It got to a point where I almost felt like I didn't need to turn up, such was the predictability of what would be said.
The worst thing was that I knew it and yet despite how hard I tried to correct it the same thing kept happening. My artistic ability had vanished.
It was nice to be hearing nice things about my writing, given how it's the career I wish to pursue, but I ain't paying several thousand pounds to end up with a half decent degree.
If better art direction is what was needed, better art direction is what I shall do my utmost to achieve.
I woke up today somewhat later than planned and after consuming breakfast at lunch time I set about making things look pretty. I had a plan in mind, which is always a good place for plans to begin, and with a cup of tea by my side I began the tiresome task of trying to get Adobe Illustrator to do what I wanted it to do.
A couple of hours of cursing and a few more cups of tea later I sat back to take in what I had produced.
It looked like I'd thrown up on the screen.
Kettle on.
Back to work.
After lots more tweaking and foul mouthed abuse I finally had something that looked sort of like I'd meant it to happen, an event which is rare amongst the chance successes in my life. I even thought I might be happy with it, an even rarer occurrence, so before my laptop could blow up I saved the file in as many different formats as I could think of and congratulated my tea on a job sort of well done.
The good mood lasted a few seconds before I realised I had a tonne more still left to do, only this bunch involved the use of a camera. As high tech as this sounds I'm actually alright at photography, with a shiny new DSLR being promised in my direction for my impending 21st birthday. Before any pictures could be taken I had to produce what it was the camera would be capturing and decided the best way to do this would be to use my laptop as a light box. This technique has been used for yonks by smarter people than I, so the revelation of how well it worked should not have been so much of a surprise for me. It was.
I then took photos and did stuff with them to make them look less like they'd been taken in my grubby house as a spur of the moment sort of thing and more like someone had planned them out way in advance because that's what the pros do. It probably didn't work, but at the time I was pretty satisfied. I still am, which is weird. Usually I do something that seems like a good idea at the time but fairly quickly I realise it was an awful mistake and many innocent people will likely die as a consequence.
Not today though. Today, looking at them now, I can only see the following words being said upon their viewing tomorrow; "Excellent idea, fantastic copy, beautifully art directed. Here, have a 1st."
It's a lovely bubble I live in. If tomorrow it is popped (it definitely will be) then expect a much less optimistic blog post in retaliation.