#and in the speedpaint they drew like a sphere and lines at angles for like perspective reference

[lorillee]

one thing that continually astounds me i feel like many many people who arent engineers or engineering majors or whatever genuinely do not get that engineering Well has a lot of math. Like a pretty notable amount of mathematics. which sounds pretty intuitive when you think about it for like a second but many out there do not

[pengosolvent]

really frightened that i am lacking something essential and will never be able to be a skilled or creative artist no matter how hard i try. equally frightened that i have sabotaged my own progress in various ways and have wasted years backsliding and will never “get back” any skill i did previously exhibit. do you have any suggestions for how to continue to produce art and improve even when constantly suffocated by fear

anon this is a common but unfortunate occurrencei feel this a lot too this is a very long reply because i think about this kinda stuff often, so there’s a readmore

i’ve got some advice for you, though i’m sure you’ve probably already heard some if not all of this before, so i don’t mean to talk to you like this is new magic info, but just reiterating stuff that i try to keep in mind that might work for you tooalso i want to point out that i’m not a professional remotely, so the things i’m stating are completely from my own personal experiences ….. and also i struggle with perfectionism and other things so while i give this advice i also still have trouble with the problems noted and also i use a lot of examples and comparisons when i talk because its easier for me to understand things that way

anyway:

1- you are the person who sees your art the mostthis is a very obvious thing, to state but it ties directly into a lot of what you’ve statedyou feel you lack something essential, you feel you’ve backslid and lost previous skills, and youre afraidbut think about the other art you seeyou ONLY see the end result of what everyone posts… or even if people do post in-progress pictures or speedpaints, you’re not really seeing the “scope” of it with in-progress pictures, you don’t know how much changed or how much was erased how much time was spent how much etc with speedpaints, you see all the progress but its sped up and it’s easy to feel like all of that was done faster than it really was even if youre aware its sped up

and even if you watched a realtime video of someone drawing… theres thousands of hours outside of that video of this person doodling, and even THINKING about their art that you havent seen it makes other peoples art feel a lot more.. confident? secure?

for your own art however, you are fully aware of the struggle of every line because you’re the one doing it and thinking about itit might make you feel like you’re trying so hard when everyone else has just Got it

2- experiencing art as a consumer vs a creator is a different feelingthis is directly tied to the previous idea but it’s easy to feel like you lack something essential when, instead of consuming the art, you are the one producing it 

here’s an example: i love horror contentnot all of it of course, but i love horror that really makes me think and makes me see a characters motivations and really digs in deep psychologically and sticks with you even after you’re done experiencing the media

however it is very very hard for me to make anything that is strictly horror. for a long time i thought i was just bad at it, but i realized later that i’m not missing something that helps to write/draw horror … i just experience horror different based on if i’m consuming it vs making it part of the horror appeal to me is the MYSTERYif i am writing/drawing horror, there is NO mystery! i know everything there is to know about the situation i am making! i know all the character’s motivations, i know everything there is to know about every tiny detail and even if i am writing something where i don’t know what happens so it’s a purposeful mystery (such as in this comic where i don’t know what happens if you take off the tinier beak) it sometimes feels less Cool Mystery for me and more like “oh no i don’t know this thing, oh god, i’m a bad writer”i’ve gotten over that little by little, but it’s still hard to shake that i’m “missing” something with work that ISN’T mine its easy to put meaning that may not have been totally intended and THINK that the person meant it, and thus feel like that thing is more thought-out than it actually is

you might be experiencing something similar with art… where it feels like when you see OTHER art, you feel happy or like theres a meaning there etc but with your own art, you can’t capture that same feeling… it could literally be because you know what youre going for and what youre doing because youre the one doing it

3a- old art feels better sometimes because it is more removed from youyou know better than i do in this regard if this is true to you, because sometimes people can genuinely get rusty and lose but for the most part older art tends to feel better due to the fact it is becoming more and more removed from your current state and mindsetold art starts to slowly get treated the way you read Other people’s art because you’re not staring at it constantly and you start to forget the process and effort behind the old art

sometimes you can’t see well if your new art is “better” or not because it is too current on your mind and you know how hard it is to make and if it does or doesnt match what you were going for or etc etcmeanwhile your old art starts to be viewed more objectively because you dont remember every difficult line with it, and you can see it as a bit better because you’re not bogged by the negativity

3b- even if you fell off, you can regain the skill

even if you DID get worse over time… you did it once before and you can do it againyou can learn from your old works, but also try to learn from your old mentality a lot of my old stuff was more expressive and emotivei could learn to do that again mechanically, imitating my old stuff, but a big part of why my art was that way was because my mentality was different back then i was louder, more open, etc etcthink about what’s changed within you to see reasons for things changed in your art

4a- fear only works if you’re afraid of being badit is important to be able to see ways you can improve… but it’s also important not to fear that you have areas that CAN improveif you view “making something bad” as a punishment/negative outcome your fear directs itself through all your art

the easiest point fear can attack is starting to draw at allbefore you start drawing its very easy for your mind to go “why do this? why try if it’s just going to be stressful” and all through out the process that ramps up like “see it’s just stressful why do it”

your fear seemingly offers you something to gain if you don’t even try: avoiding the pain of art altogether

but what if you were unphased by that pain? if you don’t care about making something bad, that fear can’t manifest

some artists start their day by drawing the shittiest thing they can to shake off rust and have fun doing it … drawing a cartoon character from memory, drawing and overly rendered shitpost etc now i’m not saying not to care about your quality and take a ton of shortcuts and blablait’s still good to want to learn and improve it’s just that you have to start rearranging your perspective on your steps to achieve that

4b- no-stakes neutral is no problemhow do you get rid of that fear? how do you stop feeling being bad is.. bad?

try to view arts range as neutral to positive (as opposed to negative to postive) because at it’s base that’s exactly what art is what i mean by that is…let’s say you’re trying to draw a cat (and it’s not a commission or anything). your first attempt does not look anything like a cat this is not a “bad” thing though it may feel that way your failed attempt at a cat has not stabbed you or taken money or food from you or in any way truly inconvenienced you

the base idea is that you drew something and it wasn’t what you wanted this is completely neutral.. it’s like going to look for a new shirt. if you see shirts you don’t care for, you move past them until you get to the shirt you want.your “bad art” is just that. a bunch of shirts you don’t want til you find the one you’re looking for… you don’t have to pay anything for those “bad” attemptssure they take a bit of time and if you don’t have a lot of energy you might feel bad to use it on a drawing that you don’t enjoy and it can be frustrating if you keep trying to no avail, but all in all it’s not a stark negative

art isn’t a straight pathit’s winding, it’s really confusing , and it can be tiringbut if you go down a path that’s a dead end, you just try another pathdon’t fear reaching dead ends, there are always more paths

chuck jones (an iconic animator) said he had to draw multiple drafts to get expressions just right failure is in the eye of the beholder… he felt the first drafts for those expressions did not fit what he wanted, but he didn’t fear failure because of that even if the art was not by his standards, he continued until he got the one he felt was appropriate

it takes patience to get to where you wantif you stay patient you will eventually arrive there

5- drawing and thinking go hand in handart is a blend of being able to draw and being able to problem solve through what you already knowwhen i get stressed with art it’s usually because i don’t know what the hell i’m doing with no way to check myself if i’m close to what i want or not with me it tends to happen with backgrounds or animalsthis is why ppl typically suggest learning to draw cubes, cylinders and spheres from any angle because then you can transfer that base knowledge into other objectslike, cubes can be used to draw rooms, boxes, screens, fences, etccylinders can be pipes, water bottles, arms and legs, etc

transfering base knowledge is essential in art and understanding that you can do that, even if only as a base, helps a lotwith learning how to draw a mouse, you have a starting point for learning how to draw a rat (comparing the headshapes, sizes, ears, etc)… then you can use these two as a base point for drawing a squirrel, then a rabbit etc

another example could be maybe you know how to draw claws but not fangs… you can interchange the shape of a curved claw for a curved fang easily

starting with something you know and figuring out how to transfer the knowledge is very important and can help lessen that stress because instead of not even knowing where to start, you can problem solve to figure out what you already know under different termsits just all about knowing what connections you can try and learn, and working “smart”

on that vein… 6- perfecting things doesn’t make perfectit’s very tempting to make every tiny detail as good as you possibly can… but it’s very daunting and time consumingyou should try to work “smart” here too and now what i mean by that is … say i’m making a comic. i can make the comic to the absolute best of my current ability and take forever and become extremely drained Or… i could decide to try but still set a deadline for myself, and not worry TOO much about the smaller details why is the second one better? because i will get it done. if i try very very hard my ABSOLUTE best on a comic, making sure every single line is perfect, in a few months that comic will still be outdated. it will still get old and the amount i learned from it is limitedif i give myself some leeway (still trying of course, still learning and challenging myself) and set a deadline, i learn to be disciplined in my comics, i get a comic finished, AND i learn more because i am finishing more work in general

this is a really helpful video that explains this point more in depth 

this isn’t to say you need to take the easiest routes for art that are availableit’s more like… back to the comic example, let’s say it’s like making a cake i can be a huge perfectionist about my cake, carving everything exact and putting every drop of frosting as exact as i can… but i’m still not a “master” at this i’m still learning the next time i make a cake i’m going to have to do the same situation … take forever to try to make the perfect cake

if i make a cake and still try, but accept when i don’t know how to get the exact result, my first cake is going to be a bit of a mess, but the next cake i make, i’ll be a little closer and in the time it takes Perfectionist Me to make 2 cakes, i might have already made 10 and i’ve sped up the process now and improved because i’ve learned a lot with those 10 cakes

there’s probably more that can be said about art, but i’m hesitant to try to dictate too much about how you experience your art and go about it i hope that this can help you at least a bit though