Over the weekend, my family and I took a road trip to Shenandoah National Park to camp with several other families. My youngest suggested we draw during the drive, so I completed this sketch during the trip.

I mentioned in my last sketch post that I’m at a stage in portrait drawing where the faces I create look like a face, but not quite the face of those whom I’m attempting to draw. The cool thing is that when I’m not drawing myself or someone that the viewer would recognize, I don’t really need the face to replicate real life.

Art isn’t about replication of reality, so you aren’t failing when you miss the mark. Art is about communicating a message and telling a story. Much like Mark Twain retold experiences of his youth through exaggerated characters and adventures in his novels, artists have that same freedom to tell a story loosely based on true events, loosely based on a reference photo. It’s the message that matters.

All this to say: don’t let inability to recreate stop you from creating. So many people are stuck in this trap of taste versus ability–they can’t create something they love, so they don’t create at all. But the essence of being human is to create, much like the essence of an earthworm is to burrow or the essence of a bird is to sing. Create for the sake of it, create because you’re human, create because you can now, and create because the only way you can be better next time is if you have a this time.