by Renee Morgan

Created on: June 08, 2008   Last Updated: August 11, 2009

Artistic skills are both learned and natural. When you naturally have a skill, you will always be learning ways to enhance the skills which you were born with; this would mean that artistic skills are a combination of the two.

I am a person who was born with the natural skills, but I learnt other enhancements to my skills. I have been able to write me name since I could hold a pencil, in kindergarten, the teacher asked my mom if she could get me to stop writing and just print until maybe the first grade and the world do not need to know her answer! When I entered the first grade I begun to enter into any art contest I could. At that time Kellogg cereal use to run a drawing contest, you had to draw one of the different box characters and I would faithfully enter as many times as I could, I would always win a kite. Then Kellogg sent me a letter saying that the drawings which I submitted was not that of child and should not send in pictures any more, again you do not want to know what my mother had to say about this!

I was almost not allowed to draw at school, by the 3rd grade, The teachers didn't understand how to explain to the other children that everyone can't do the same things and some of the parents didn't believe that much of my work was done by me a child. Yet all this done was to start me to doing family portrait in front of people just to prove I could draw. Then I started to draw everything and re-designing the pictures that I drew, I started meeting other children with some of the same skills and by the time I was in 4th or 5th grade and by seventh and eighth grade I met two or three more. Then I soon learnt to use other things like clay, wood, wire and different types of paints.

Back to the subject of learned or natural artistic, mines was natural but I constantly wanted to learn more. The thing about learned skills is that you have to learn to keep you own personally as you learn. I learned very early that if you have learned skills there are sometimes traits of the person who taught you. I believe that in this case it is not your skill but theirs, but if you can learn to enhance your skills and keep your own traits then it is your skill.

This will hold true with any artistic skills, like when being taught by the same voice or singing coach, some of the coaches' vocals lay will sometimes carry into others and the same with dancing, acting and even the skill of fashion. When the skill is learnt you have some of the personality traits of the person who taught you. A natural skill is that which you were born.

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