What Makes True Art
This is the third of a three-part story I originally wrote to welcome new subscribers to my Studio Letters.
In these letters, I share how I lost touch with art, what brought me back, and the deeper meaning I’ve found through my creative journey. If you’d like to receive artistic insights and creative reflections like this directly in your inbox, you’re warmly invited to sign up for my Studio Letters.
I hope this message finds you well.
In my last letter, I told what made me lose my will to create—and how I returned to art.
Today, I want to share the most important part of my story with you.
If you're just getting into (or getting back to) art, I hope it helps you avoid some of the self-doubt that we all go through as artists. Learning the skills is only the start of the journey, creating our own art is when it gets harder.
But there is one thing that makes all the difference for me, and that’s what I want to give you.
When I Dedicated Myself to Art
Learning art is difficult; but the decision to fully dedicate myself to art was easy. I still remember the moment it happened.
At the start of 2023, after difficult personal and professional events, I got back to art. I was slowly reconnecting with this part of me, one sketch at a time, when a simple conversation changed everything.
I was talking about it with a friend who also enjoys drawing as a hobby, and we were talking about drawing hands–saying it’s one of the most difficult things to draw…
She asked, as a joke:
“But who has the patience and dedication it takes to draw hundreds of hands to get good at it?”
That’s when it clicked for me: I do.
From this moment, I decided to fully dedicate myself to art, learn it seriously, no matter what it would take.
Sketchbook page from 2024.
I started watching a lot of YouTube content, buying books, and practicing.
In April, a few weeks after that conversation, I enrolled in a three-day academic drawing workshop to try out a local art school. I had considered evening classes there, but instead, in May, I joined New Masters Academyand began their structured curriculum.
In July, I published my first video on my current YouTube channel: I decided to be an artist.
Learning the craft has taken far more time and effort than I imagined—and I’m far from done—but today I can finally say that I have the tools to express myself through art.
But finding what to express—that was another difficulty.
Photos from my workshop at the school Émile Cohl.
Art Is a Language
Early in my training, I heard a quote that stayed with me:
Art is a language. We can teach you the language, but what you want to say is up to you.
It’s a powerful metaphor. Just like with any language, we can’t express ideas we don’t yet have the words for. In art, our tools—skills, techniques, structure—are our vocabulary.
And far from restricting us, every technical skill we develop expands our ability to express something meaningful.
But learning also takes humility—and often, we have to let go of parts of ourselves to grow. With every class I took, I put aside the way I had been drawing to fully embrace the methods being taught. I focused so hard on learning that I stopped creating personal work.
At some point, I even wondered if it would come back—if I had anything to say at all.
Here’s what I wish someone had told me: you do. You already do. Ideas don’t come when you’re ready—they come when you make space for them.
These designs are when I finally found my voice.
You Have Something to Say
The moment I stopped drawing only for assignments and started studying the art I love, ideas began to return—enriched by the skill and knowledge I’d been building for the past two years.
Not knowing what you want to say doesn’t mean you have nothing to say.
You don’t have to figure everything out before you begin. Your voice, your style, your identity as an artist—these aren’t things you’re handed fully formed. They’re built, discovered, and shaped as you go.
But we sometimes feel lost. When I do, there is one thing that helps me find my way back to myself.
What Makes True Art
In my previous message, I mentioned struggling with social anxiety.
I know it may sound weird coming from a content creator, but at some point in my life I was unable to leave the house. Part of it was because I was constantly performing. I was wearing a mask, trying to live up to what I thought others expected of me.
But I realised I was losing on all fronts.
Trying to be someone else was making me miserable: if people didn’t love me with the mask, that was a lost opportunity to be loved for who I truly am. And if they did love me with the mask, I’d have to keep pretending—forever.
The solution was to be myself–even when I didn’t know who I was. I realised that what makes me the most vulnerable is also where I could find the greatest strength.
When you accept yourself, there’s nothing to be afraid anymore: no bad performance, no crack in the mask. You don’t have to be anything more, or less, than you.
We must be authentic, not because it’s the moral thing to do, but because we owe it to ourselves.
And it is the same with art.
If you don’t know yet what you want to create with your art, embrace your current truth. You don’t need to have it all figured out, no one does.
Don’t pretend to be another artist.
Become the artist only you can be.
What to Expect From These Letters
Thank you for reading this far—I’ve poured my heart into these letters, and I truly hope they’ve resonated with you and offered something meaningful.
In future letters, I will keep sharing artistic and creative insights with you, with monthly or bi-monthly updates on my artistic journey. If you ever want to share your own creative thoughts, I would love to read them.
I wish you all the best, and as always,
Stay creative,
Julie
