i wish this wasn’t an unpopular opinion but here goes

there’s no such thing as “natural talent”. not in art, not in anything

“prodigies” are just people who started out way younger than the rest

look up László Polgár. he was a chess teacher who said https://twitter.com/arvalis/status/1277332671450894337

“i could turn any baby into a prodigy by training them early enough” so he found and married someone to help him prove it, and they had three daughters. and taught them chess the moment they could hold the pieces

they became the 1st, 2nd, and 6th best female players in the world

he started teaching each of them when they were four. homeschooled and everything just chess 24/7

six months in the oldest daughter waddled into the local chess club filled with veteran players and beat them

still 4 years old, she went 10-0 in her first chess tournament, the Budapest Girls' Under-11 Championship

at age 15 she become the top rated female chess player in the world, “despite restrictions on her freedom to play in international tournaments”

at age 17 she *just* misses

qualifying for what was called the “Men’s World Championship” back then

at 21 she becomes the third woman to receive the title of Grandmaster. that same year, her youngest sister would be the fourth

she played a total of 56 games at the chess olympiad, winning 12 medals without

losing a single game

she’s won many different worldwide woman’s championships, although after being prevented from defending her title by of some total bullsh*t that i won’t get into, she hasn’t played in any more Woman’s World Championship

at age 12 the second daughter placed second in the world under-14 championship and was declared girls under-14 champion

at age 14 she played in a tournament in Rome. She won the tournament, which included several strong grandmasters, with a score of 8½ out of 9. it’s been called

“one of the strongest performances in history”

it is also called the “Sack of Rome”

she becomes the 6th highest ranked woman in the world before changing focus to painting and interior design

by age 5 his third oldest daughter was beating him. a chess professor who wrote a book called “Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games”

losing to a five-year-old

at age 12, in the same month, she became: number 55 on the world chess federations Top 100 Players list

(the youngest to ever make the list)

and the number 1 rated woman in the world. a title she held for 26 years, lost in march 2015, and regained in august 2015

at age 15 she became the youngest person to ever receive the title of Grandmaster, beating the record set by

Bobby Fischer

as of 2005 she is the only woman to qualify for a world championship tournament

she has defeated eleven current or former world champions and is considered the strongest female chess player of all time

now, did this guys just have some super frickin powerful chess genes? did his x-men chess sperm give all three of his daughters incredible natural talent for chess? of course not. they were good at chess because they were raised on chess. while we were watching anime they studied

the blad, and all that. the chess blade. they studied it

and it’s no different with art. there’s no artist that has more or less “natural talent” than you. only artists that have been drawing longer than you. who started younger than you

“but i can’t help that i didn’t start younger!” you wail

“won’t they always be better than me because they started sooner?” you ask

to which i respond by bonking you on the head and reminding you of the words of the eldest daughter:

"My father believes that innate talent is nothing, that [success] is 99 percent hard work."

you’re behind? other artists have had a headstart? it’s too late to start learning how to draw because you’re too old?

if you have time to worry about stuff like that, get back to your

desk and draw, coward!! if someone else has been drawing twice as long as you, then you just have to work twice as hard and catch up!! art is the ultimate meritocracy. there’s nothing you can’t do if you try hard enough!

so i better not catch anyone complaining that they don’t have any “talent” for art. if i here one more of you joke about how they wanted to learn art but they can’t even draw a circle, i’m going to hot-glue a pen to your hand and make you draw circles until it runs out of ink!!

(whoops i forgot to say this)

want an example from the art world?

Michelangelo

one of the greatest artists ever

he was 24 when he finished the Pietà

was he blessed by God? was he truly, as they called him, Il Divino ("the divine one")?

no, dummy, he grew up on a marble quarry and was apprenticed to a master painter when he was 13

so when you look at the Pietà, don’t think about the fact that he was 23

think about the fact that he had 10 years of experience as a professional artist by then

a father who owned a marble quarry. 10 years of apprenticeship to a master. THATS what made the Pietà, not natural talent and not divine intervention

also fun fact. michaelangelo burned most of his drawings. he left no explanation for this but biographers speculate that it was

“so that no one should see the labours he endured and the ways he tested his genius, and lest he should appear less than perfect”

or that he intended

to destroy the “menial and mundane” work that made up his creative process

he actively tried to create the illusion that he was a creative genius and that he just pictured his masterpieces in his head and they came out perfect without even trying

but of course he actually worked meticulously to perfect his works by drawing and doing other... sculptor things idk

no one was supposed to see that preparation “lest anyone see his work as less than perfect”

so it may have been the renaissance equivalent of an artist pretending that they don’t use references

smh mike

regardless, it just goes to show that even the greatest artist who ever lived made art he disliked enough to burn

so as long as you’re not throwing yours in a bonfire you’re doing better than him

personally i feel the opposite way. i want to thoroughly document my journey as an artist because

if a fool like me, who really couldn’t draw to save his life, can get good at art, then anyone, absolutely anyone, can do it

like

you’re not going to find someone who started out worse than i did

you’re just not

so i want to document my growth, to reassure young artists that anyone can do this if they just keep trying