Self-taught, and proud of it

I never went to art college. Everything I know I learned by doing it wrong first — usually several times. There's a stack of canvases in the shed that will never see daylight, and I'm grateful for every one of them.

Being self-taught means you develop your own shortcuts and your own stubbornness. Nobody told me the 'right' way to paint chrome, so I worked it out by staring at exhaust pipes until it made sense. That's a real education, just not the kind with a certificate.

If you're teaching yourself too: keep going. The gap between what you can see in your head and what your hand can do is the worst part, and it does close. Slowly, but it closes.