#as much as I wanna do it myself my art skills still suck so I wouldn’t do this meme justice

[an-theduckin]

Why am I not good at anything I do :(

[pickedpiper]

I cannot do this enough justice, can someone please redraw this with Batter and Zacharie

[dr-spectre]

WE DID IT!!!!!!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH EVERYONE!!!!! This is such a big milestone. Halfway until 1000 followers... that's absolutely insane!!

This will be the last follower update until we reach 1000. But, I wanna share something special with you all and get rather personal...

So, about a year ago, I wanted to learn how to draw because I was feeling depressed about "not being productive enough." Basically I got sucked into the bullshit productivity self help stuff that wants to turn your life into a cold calculated work obsessed nightmare, rather than living in the moment due to fear mongering about the future and how "if you don't grind now you WILL be a failure and die alone and get no pussy." (No wonder I picked Team Present for the Grand Fest...)

Plus I dropped out of uni at the time and welp, to put it lightly, I was feeling fucking god awful and I was scared into basically "putting in the hard work" by all these self help channels and other bullshit online. Whatever the FUCK that vague shit means, my autistic brain still doesn't get it.

It was BY FAR the worst period of my life, but, at least I tried to do SOMETHING. And I wanna show you all some of the things that I drew last year....

This was between October 2023 to February 2024. I stopped drawing due to it causing me much frustration and anger.

So yeah! Uh... enjoy?

So.... not the best work you've seen, right? HAHAHAHAHA!

Would you freak out if I told you that I got upset and damaged a book and a fan because I got so mad at myself over not being able to draw or do anything right?...

I feel like this ain't for me, and you know what? That's okay! I've learnt that it's okay to try new things, it's okay to experiment and if shit doesn't work then it doesn't work. Plain and simple. It's perfectly fine to give up and try something else.

You are not a robot, you are a human being. Don't feel like you "gotta do something everyday otherwise you'll die alone and you'll be broke and you'll never be successful and you'll be forgotten!!"

Do feel pressured to feel like you have to "find your thing" or "be productive" or whatever kind of... heh.... BRAINWASHING you hear online.

I wanted to draw because I was jealous of others, including my friends who are skilled artists... and I did it for the wrong reasons which is why I stopped in February.

I am very happy that I've decided to actually focus on what i like doing and what gives me energy. A quote that has stuck with me for years now is a quote by Jordan Peele from an interview, and it's basically this-

"Follow the fun." And you know what? He's right. Following what gives you that good good boost of dopamine while also feeling like you're accomplishing something is one of the best feelings EVER!!!! Whether it's art, writing, modelling, sculpting, architecture, making music, acting, clay sculptures, etc. FOLLOW THE FUN!! FOLLOW THE SHIT THAT EXCITES YOU!!! I literally always have multiple projects spiralling around in my head all the time and cycling between them at every given moment.

I'm not even saying do only what makes you comfortable or be lazy either, do shit that makes you go "BRING IT ON!!!! I WANNA DO THIS!!!" Get that blood pumping!!! Challenge yourself fairly!!!! There's healthy and unhealthy stress. Healthy stress should make you feel like a fucking PREDATOR!!! AN ANIMAL ON THE HUNT!!! While unhealthy stress makes you feels like you're the prey, the one who's being chased by an unknown force that's out to get you!!

I feel like I'm kinda rambling... anyways!!! ENOUGH WITH THE INSPIRATIONAL BULLSHIT!!! THANK YOU ALL!!!!!! 99% of you have been awesome and incredible!!!

It's also been an honor to get to know so many people who feel the same way as I do about a certain squid lady and her best friends.... before I went onto tumblr I genuinely felt so alone and so insane. I felt isolated, I felt like no one saw these characters the way that I do... I thought my perspective of a certain squid lady and her rebel phase was invalided and false... But now I know that I have people who have my back and understand what I'm trying to express...

One final time, thank you. I'll keep going.

STAY FRESH!!!!!!!!!!

[pokituu]

I’m so impressed with how many styles you have and that you use them regularly (realistic, semi realistic, 2d, and 2d, 3d & pixel animation)! How did you learn to balance this many and get so good in all of them?

THANK YOUUUU this compliment means so much to me because so often i feel so worried I will stagnate since I basically like to draw the same subject matter over and over again 😳 but I do like to periodically try new things that I'll become invested in for chunks of time.

i guess advice more than just 'practice' is to be willing to try out new things that you have an interest in, even if it doesn't work out at first and is frustrating. you gotta be persistent to learn something new BUT if you get bored then just move on! if it sucks hit da bricks.... I really like this bjork quote abt creativity

idk throughout my life in art i just try to learn about stuff i'm interested in and practice what i wanna practice. like i wanted to get good at pixeling when i was like 14 so i kept practicing and trying new ways to go about it until i started to figure it out. same with digital painting when i was 15 and i just kept trying again and again until it clicked, even though i was frustrated a lot, i never actually lost the interest when i saw people's pretty paintings and that feeling of 'man i wish i could do that!'.... so i literally couldn't stop myself from trying over and over at painting. it goes beyond just drawing too. planet earth is fun because ANYTHING u are interested in you can try........ i make fursuit heads and other crafts to see if i can! this year i started making my own songs and also learned leather-working because i saw a cool craft and wanted to try :3

part of it is letting yourself age too because as you get older you will grow interested in new things. i am 27!! i've been drawing since i could hold a pencil. that's a long time to encounter a lot of stuff to get obsessed about and wanna try out for myself. SUCCESS TIP!: i typically pursue things that are adjacent to other skills i already have invested in, like drawing to 3d sculpture to digital modeling, or start blending them like sculpture + coding skills = 3d animation rigging. The reason is because a lot of these skills are transferable and make it easier to pick up. like a skill tree in a video game... and you'll end up in weird places like sculpture to sewing to leathercraft. It's nice to have creative hobbies you can be sorta be mediocre at without attaching your self worth to it, but other people still often find it impressive anyways because it's stuff they've never tried to do. It's really healing and easier to like what you create And yourself by extension when you're just having fun and learning without having to worry about the end product being "good". Anything you try is not a waste because you are learning new skills and more often than not, something you've learned is transferable to some other area of your life!!!!!!!!! nothing is ever a waste of time.

this is also the secret cure to art block btw well actually there are two secret cures. a) is you have to embrace the art block and go get obsessed with some other creative thing for a bit. either that or b) go absorb other people's creativity to a bit and watch some shows and read books or talk to people. c) is a mix of both. eventually you'll return to art again feeling fresh and motivated if you're willing to give it a few months. I think art block really just means you're bored and need a change of scenery one way or another 🤔 that's just my onion though

TL;DR have fun pursuing things just because you like them. as you keep doing it you'll just get better at it through practice whether you really intend to or not.

[ganondoodle]

I just wanna say firstly that i adore your artwork and takes6on Zelda in general! Secondly, much as I wish you never had to deal with the frustrations of creating (especially when you tack on the stress of being on any kind of social platform), I'm glad you talk about your struggle. I've heard people talk about art block every day since I learned what Art was, but nobody ever mentioned "painting oneself into a corner". It's such an apt description that is so infuriatingly relatable that I had to stop eating to thank you for putting it into words. I really appreciate that you're willing to talk about your setbacks in a place like Tumblr, and still share your arts and thoughts. All the best from US of hellscape A, i hope you're doing well.

Thank you!

i used to call it artblock as well, its the most normalized term i guess; i randomly started calling it painting myself into a corner when i got stuck or frustrated on a painting bc welll, it sure feels like it, you painted the walls all around you and dont know how to get out now

it usually happens when i stop having fun and just draw what i want and instead keep subconsciously forcing myself into arbitrary rules; in my case its usually trying to be too perfect, i try to adhere to the sketch, i try to make every block of color have a perfectly clean edge, separate the drawing into way too many layers and am afraid to delete or erase anything, i tense up my whole body as frustration builds bc of impatience as this method of painting does not work for me at all and in the end lose motivation on it all and my nerves are stretched thin (i work best when i think as little as possible, just kinda loosely letting my hand do what it wants on few layers and no specific plan, after losing that its hard to get it back)

having those low moments with your art is normal as your skill grows, but even knowing so, and having gone through it countless times, it never stops making you feel like shit, and its especially frustrating when it happens when you just got enough time to work on stuff or have alot of ideas but you cant get it to work

(and funnily enough it also tends to happen after another work of mine got more attention than i thought .. even worse when it was just a sketch bc now i got the pressure on me to actually finish it and the fear of it doing worse once done looms over the whole thing- which doesnt mean i dont want people to interact with my wips, bc that also has an extremely demotivating factor to it bc it makes me think no one cares or it sucks and doesnt deserve the time i would need to spend on finishing it; also .. alot of my wips stay wips forever, which is fine, but like .. you cant always expect a finished tm version to happen)

i do find it a little funny you praise me for talking openly about it bc i am notoriously unable to shut up ever and only recently got better at NOT talking as much about it when i feel as shitty as this bc it doesnt really help anyone and gets annoying really fast xD (im also notoriously unable to not post absolutely everything bc i got no one to show it to and otherwise it will just collect dust on my harddrive so i might as well throw it out there no matter how much i might hate it, someone else might still enjoy it anyway)

and greetings back from the -not really much less of a hellscape- that is germany o/

[peaches2217]

I’m sick to death of being talentless in the field of visual arts. I’m also sick to death of wallowing in self-pity. I wanna start drawing again!

I just… don’t know how that’s gonna go. I drew daily and religiously from the seventh grade to my freshman year of college and really didn’t improve much at all. Like, I definitely improved, but I never became good. And that’s what’s stopped me from trying again all this time later: the fear that what little improvement I attained has been lost to time and my ability to improve moving forward is just an unattainable pipe dream. When I say my art is bad, I mean my art is bad. And what’s the point in taking up a hobby if everything you turn out is cringe-inducing and makes you wanna hide in embarrassment?

I don’t know. I’m good at exactly two things, writing and music, and I still wouldn’t consider myself exceptionally skilled at either; anything outside of that I’m destined to fail in, and that’s just something I have to come to terms with. Now the trick is being okay with doing something poorly. But I don’t wanna draw poorly; I wanna become a good artist! It’s just not something that’s possible for me. And thus the vicious cycle of “It’s okay to suck!/But I don’t WANT to suck!” continues.

Hhhhhhhh acknowledgement is the first step! I acknowledge my lack of skills and my desire to improve, and I acknowledge that, while I don’t hold the capacity for skill, I still hold the capacity for improvement. The next step is just… learning to be okay with it.

So wish me luck, because God knows I’ll need plenty of it if I ever wanna draw again. 😅

[mangobot700]

just hit 500 followers and i wanna say TYYY

heres a lil rant below about me & art rn

this is like, a milestone i never saw myself reaching really, it's the largest following i've ever gotten on any of my art accounts since i started posting in 2017🥺

but it feels WEIRD. i don't feel like ive earned it in a way bc i haven't been drawing or enjoying making art as much lately. I got into an art university a year ago and now it's just made me question like WHY am i doing all this... i draw silly fanart and that isnt really something that ive felt like doing anymore bc it feels embarrassing now!!!!!! and it sucks!!!! and i can tell that like i don't know what im doing or ive just like lost confidence in my skills bc ive been drawing less and less

tumblr has been great though, bc even shit i drew during lockdown still gets shared around and ppl like it. i go through the tags and it makes me happy when people really fw what i made (im lookin at u animal crossing new leaf drawing mwah🫶🫶)

but then sometimes it feels like i have to spend like more and more time on my illustrations for me to feel accomplished with them, and it gets just like tiring in that way..

i would draw all the time. in highschool especially and then during lockdown. now im old (22) and so many things get in the way. at school ppl throw around like the term "my artistic practice" and idk school has made me feel like im not artist enough.

but anyways shoutout to u followers old or new, and u mfers in the tags i love u smoochsmooch💖💖💖💖💖

[gio-goose]

Can you give me a few art tips i want to be able to draw sin kiske too

I am not the greatest at explaining things or giving advice. These tips are just what many artists have already said and points that *I* personally agree with or have helped *me*. The reason why I am putting emphasis on myself is because everyone is different so what helps *me* might not help you. These things you will have to figure out yourself, BUT there are many MANY art tutorials from different artists with different styles so maybe you can find something there! Anyways moving on-

Don‘t think too much and just DOODLE DOODLE AND MORE DOODLING

I am serious, turn that brain off and start doodling. I had this mental barrier for sometime (that I am still struggling with) where I just didn‘t feel confident in my art and didn‘t even wanna START drawing, bc I felt like everything sucked ass. But just turning that brain off and mindlessly doodling is so SO great because it doesn‘t have to be perfect or anything AND through the repeating motions of sketching you‘re training your hand to become better at making nice smooth strokes. Sketching mindlessly is honestly very theraputic for me, cuz I just get to have silly fun. There‘s no pressure in doing things. AND sometimes doodling mindlessly can lead to great ideas.

Tracing/Referencing

Ik there‘s lots of discourse about tracing and referencing in the art community, but I can only tell you that this has been extremely helpful for me and getting my anatomy right. While tracing helps getting the placements of body parts and lines right, referencing really helps train your eyes what to look for. You‘ll start to recognize familiar shapes that are prevalent in almost all body types or certain things that are almost always there in nature. Tracing can also help you get more familiar in the way that you draw certain things. These techniques are all about familiarizing yourself with whatever you‘re trying to draw (bodies, faces, landscapes etc) and engraving it into your mind. Ofc if you decide to post something where you traced or referenced something it‘s always good to show your sources, but this is mostly something to do in private.

Take breaks, treat yourself with something nice :)

Art can be tiring, so be sure to always ALWAYS take breaks when you feel like its about to get frustrating and maybe eat something, do something else to replenish that art juice, yeah? Breaks can last however long you want. Whats most important is that you won‘t start hating the process cuz this shit can be mentally taxing so breaks are super important. Even if the break takes a year or something, art can always wait and its not like you‘ll immediately forget all your skills that you have gained yk? Maybe you‘ll get rusty but muscle memory is one hell of a thing. You‘ll get the hang of it in no time!

Get shiggy wiggy with it

What I mean by this is to just have fun. Art is supposed to be enjoyable, so I say go crazy, go stupid with it. Like who gives a shit if its stupid or cringe? Just have fun! Don‘t let someone ruin the fun in art for you, okay? These people stink anyway smh my head… they just don‘t understand the joy of creating a beautiful art piece about ur favourite charaters doing dumb shit or kissing each other. (Just uh… don‘t get illegal with it)

Get obsessed with something. I am very serious about this

Unironically, getting obsessed with a character or franchise has helped me a lot to keep being motivated to draw. Like a character that just makes you so so happy that you just keep drawing them (I mean, look at me ���), which goes back to the first point. Being obsessed with something can keep you drawing something for a long time. And it gives you a big ass serotonin boost. However-

Try something new!

Drawing the same thing over and over again is great, but it can get stagnant really quick. So sometimes you have to try something new, stuff that might be difficult or things you aren‘t really confident yet (like hands. Yeah I know, its a nightmare). Doing this will make your skillset much bigger and may deepen your understanding on how stuff works cuz this art stuff is really interconected. Like, if you know one thing then maybe you can also do the other.

Take it slow. Be easy on yourself

There is ALWAYS this constant need to improve. Especially on social media, where artists are expected to improve in lightning speeds or post the perfect art pieces (and tbh some of these might be self imposed too). But you really, you don‘t. Just enjoy it at your own pace, be proud of the stuff you made. Save it, keep it and look back on it to see how much you‘ve improved. Don‘t view art as something you need to be perfect at, but just as something that makes you happy. An outlet for your feelings. Something to do when you‘re bored. Or stuff like that, cuz it‘s really not that serious UNLESS you want it to be like a job or something. So be patient, because art is a marathon, not a sprint. There is no need to hurry.

Aannddd if you wanna be able to draw Sin specifically then channel your inner whimsical creature, become jolly, be silly and get shiggy wiggy with it :)))

[natsmagi]

Do you ever feel bad about your art? I've tried drawing before, but it never looked good so I just quit

OUGH SOMETIMES TBH....... though id kinda say thats part of the drawing process 💔💔

for me theres two types of "feeling bad" abt my art; the first being more imposter syndrome-y where i just kinda feel guilty over the amount of recognition i get when theres so many artists that i think are better and deserve it more than i do and other things along that line

the second one (and probably more universal) is, ofc, the feeling that ur art kinda sucks sometimes. honestly its very rare for a drawing to turn out the way i had originally envisioned because i simply do not have the skills to pull it off, which sucks!! and honestly, alot of the time i just try pushing through despite me hating the way the drawing looks. usually ill still post it even if i hate it, because in a way i think its kinda important to let myself be bad at art, and my blog was never meant to be used as a portfolio anyway, so why not post the things im less proud of aswell? especially since the communities im part of are rather niche, and i feel as though even if the quality is bad, someone might still be happy to see it!

so i let myself not be perfect with my art, as i feel being stuck on the same piece is only going to stagnate my growth and make me frustrated. not to mention the drawing usually only ends up looking Worse the more i try to fix it, and me posting a drawing is basically me putting a full stop to working on the drawing, forcing me to move on to something else and try again

art doesnt always look good!! and it most DEFINITELY is never perfect, but i also kinda find beauty in that yknow?? especially when uve been drawing for a while, its always fun to look back and see ur progress! its fun to see ur missteps and how u managed to improve! ive mentioned it before, but the sole reason i even created this account was so that i Would improve my art. i didnt really have much going on so i thought id genuinely try my hands at art again, which i had grown less passionate about the years prior. this blog is me sharing what ive created, no matter how amateurish it is, no matter my ups and downs, because i believe that will help me grow in the end! ive posted numerous attempts at various styles (moreso rendering styles) to see what i think suits me and what i find most pleasure in, aswell as my art style in general being rather stylized (the simplistic faces for example), figuring out what ways of drawing made me happy and what didnt through trial and error!

the first step is always the hardest, but its better than no step at all! so if you wanna draw, just go for it! its ok for it to look bad! keep trying various styles and methods until you find one that makes you happy!! its ok to be inconsistent!!

[starlightwonders05]

I think I’m gonna start using tumbler to share my thoughts and progress as an artist so this will be the start of that. I’ve finally decided how to format my favorite story. I’ve been devoloping that story with my friends for two year now. And we settled on a comic format where its kinda like “everything is not as it seems” where it kinda starts off as sorta normal but i lowkey cant fully do that ofc because our story involves being in a purgatory. So I Geuss its more just like? I don’t really reveal everything at first but just set the tone that this place is kinda important? I started writing the script for the first page and surprisingly its like doing a very detailed roleplay. Honestly? Im more scared of drawing backgrounds then anything lol I’ve been tooo hyper focused on my human skill that I’ve neglected literally everything else lol.

I also am just very scared to be a content creator in general I’ve been putting it off for a very long time I wanted to start a lot younger but I wasn’t confident in my skills but now im confident in my skills im just not sure WHT to do im even confident i can still do something good with the eras where my skills are underdeveloped. I Geuss I’ve just put so much weight on trying to wait for the “right time” to do things and waiting until i get this or that or wait until thie happens. I’ve lowkey been stalling for like two years. I struggle with even taking care of myself on a daily basis so doing art on a daily basis is kinda like hard? I used to go through sketchbooks in like a month lols. But i just have less motivation i have more ideas then ever i just am tired and scared? I just Geus a part of me just deep down feels like.. what if i put myself out there and no one wants to read my story? And love my ocs? I’ve been working so hard on these things for years so what if i show it to the world and no one even cares? I would have wasted my time and just like..i wanna be an artist and i wanna be a creator that people can love i wanna be known for it and do big things because of it and i just deep down feel like its not gonna happen for me. Im not gonna get lucky. And my efforts are for nothing..

I’ve been SO inspired by things like Undertale black butler and just artist creators. I also feel like my efforts arent enough i hear stories of others posting when they are young and slowly getting recognition or just lucking out with connections and i feel like that kind of things wont happen to me. Im black and trans and I was severely neglected as a child. No one really encourged me. No one ever really believed in me. So I barely believed in myself. It took be until my mid teens to learn basic ass things. Because I was academically smart and could speak very intelligently no one believed i needed help. No one helped me. They told me that i was smart and can figure it out myself. That’s devasting to hear. When youre drowning and know that anyone else can do this. Everyone else is better than me. I may like doing art and am passionate about it but i know everyone else is better. They arent as scared. They were encourged. It sucks. Because this has been my life story and i can’t even be good at the one thing im passionate about doing. And I’ve put all my cards into art. I’ve sacrificed a lot. I’ve worked SO hard. But i feel like it’s not enough. I feel like it’s never gonna be enough. Im gonna end up one of those sad lonely people who were so passionate when they were young but gave it up cause it never worked out. And im scared of that. I WANT art to be my thing i want content creation to be my thing i really do but as the days pass it feels like im wasting my time. No ones ever gonna like my stuff. No ones ever gonna see me. No one cares. It feel so suffocating. Doing art has become a very heavy burden on my shoulders. Something that used to save me is now weighing me down. Im not good at anything else. I ahve no other choice. And im very afraid. I dont wanna will this into existence but there’s no denying my fears. They scream at me everyday. I cant help but listen? It try I’ve tried so hard to be positive to keep pushing but i jsut need to get all this off my chest. It’s hard. Im sorry this turned into something this wasn’t supposed to be but i suppose it’s good for me to let it out. No ones really listening anyways.

[texasthegreatdestroyer]

Creating Animated Wallpapers with 3D parallax (Gyroscopic parallax) Like Apofiss. (Adroid)

See this here??? Example Here. Do you wanna make something like this? Skip the colored text if you want to get to the meat of the information. Do you ever just see something really cool on the internet, and go "Hey! I mostly have the skills to do this! All I'm missing is a quick guide on how to achieve certain affects!" And then proceed to spend the next two days scrounging the internet for answers but find absolutely nothing? Yeah... That was me. I only just now figured out how to do it, and that was after giving up on this potential project twice. In my particular case, I saw a neat little wall paper running around by the artist Apofiss. I love this creator's work, and I think they do amazing stuff, but me being me and an artist, I like to put my own personal touches on things, and so instead of just buying a wallpaper, I have to put myself through the pain and misery of incorporating my own art into an animated gyroscopic live wallpaper. Considering if you're here reading this post, you might be like me, and hella annoyed that you've spent hours to even days researching this and haven't found a tutorial that actually helps but instead is a shitty app that barely scratches the surface and doesn't allow you to incorporate animated details into your images that you intend to use a parallax on, and it's likely also because much like myself, you may have been using improper terminology and not scraping far enough down into search engine as a result. What Apofiss created, and what you're trying to pull off is an animated wall paper with a Gyroscopic Parallax. It's not something that requires complex coding, but instead requires a third party app called KLWP (Not sure what the letters stand for, but I find it easy to remember the order they're in because they look like a condensed down spelling of Kool Whip.) Download App Here. This is the only app that I've found that will allow you to include gifs and videos into as layers to your gyroscopic parallax. Here's the video Tutorial I found that teaches you how to set up that animation. Video Here.

Also keep in mind that if you've reached timestamp 1:35 of the video, the video tutorial is 7 years old, so it likely has not been updated to allow animations at the time that person filmed the video, but I can assure you that it is an option. This is my own screen as of 11/5/2023 showing that you can add animated images, you just simply need look for it in the prompt when you go to add items.

This^^^ is the same settings as this vvv

Make sure that as you follow the tutorial, you use a gif instead of a regular images for one of the items that way you can see how the thing operates, and when you preview it, have fun tilting around your phone to watch that small little glimmer of hope flare up in your fragile, already broken little heart. Trust me. It's fullfilling. I can answer questions, but I'm still fairly new at this myself. I just wanted to put these resources out here, because it is hard to find a decent tutorial. Your best bet is just going to be to play around with the app yourself and see what you can do. I recommend that you do one of two things to help others who may be struggling with this as I have. 1. Spread it around to people who have asked these same questions and never got answers. 2. If this post sucks and you can make a better, more cohesive tutorial, make one and spread that around. This is Tex, yall have a wonderful rest of your day, and happy live wall paper making.

[reejindeed]

I’ve been seeing you get a lot of Asks about your art so sorry if this is getting repetitive but I wanted to ask how you went about developing your personal style? Do you have any particular inspirations or other artists you tried to emulate with how you draw? And is there anything you’d want to change/improve on with the way you currently draw?

Don't be sorry! I actually really prefer talking about it... It gets me thinking about things I don't normally get to think about, and I also really love sharing information about how I do what I do because I really believe in making all info as accessible as possible when it comes to art!

I am gonna put this under a break tho since it got pretty long;;

1. To me, building a style is about so many different, miniscule conscious and subconscious choices. A huge part of it has to do with the act of drawing itself... Like, how heavy handed I am, how I hold my pen, what lines physically feel good for me to make. Drawing is a stim for me, so all that stuff really matters. It made drawing a very physical thing. I like doing heavy-handed lines and ink splatters and grungy ink work because it feels good to do in real life, and also it looks cool. I can also replicate it on a tablet.

This is why even though my style might change slightly depending on what I'm drawing, there are still certain things that are consistent throughout:

So as well as using elements of things I liked in other people's styles (things like eye shapes, face shapes, etc.), being able to figure out how I liked drawing traditionally and experimenting with lots of different kinds of art supplies and methods of making art really helped a lot.

2. I spent a few months trying to draw like Gerald Scarfe in college... Though before that it was Egon Schiele... And in 6th grade I tried to draw like Jhonen Vazquez... And in 5th grade I tried to draw like Jamie Hewlett....

...

I think I'm pretty happy finally being able to draw mostly like myself, now.

Not that I don't get inspiration from artists of course... I'm still inspired by all those styles, as well as other artists I see on Twitter or Tumblr or while I'm around vending. I think it's important to surround yourself with the things that inspire you, especially if those things are coming from other artists. I just don't find myself emulating as much as I used to.

3. YEAH there's TONS of stuff I wanna get better at. I know I said this before but backgrounds and colors are two big ones for me. I have my safety color palettes, but I need to find more. Also backgrounds suck and I'm bad at perspective. BUT I'm trying to force myself to draw them more.

...Coloring backgrounds is double hard...

I also want to be able to make more interesting comic pages... and I need to get better at writing comics... and I also need to learn how to flat properly and quickly so I can do it for money.

I'm also slowly trying to get better at drawing stylized animals, but it's not a main focus yet.

Also I'm trying to improve my printmaking skills, since I'm not very good at relief carving yet.

Also I want to learn how to paint someday.

That last one's mostly out of spite tho.

[quaranmine]

since im feeling chatty still tonight i just wanna say how grateful I am for this blog and this fandom and community and my friends on here <333

yesterday when i was with my friend, at one point when we were talking we ended up on a sort of honest conversation about why exactly the pandemic sucked for us, and how we both missed out very important life experiences by basically losing our young adult years to it (her: 19-22, me; 18-21)

but it struck me suddenly mid conversation that it would have been so much worse for me if I didn't have yall? like she was talking about some of the boredom associated with it and while that affected me too, i realized that i still spent the last two years deep in like. media analysis, writing 100k+ words of fanfic, increasing my digital art skills, meeting new people online, etc. she's totally not a fandom person (and I can pretty definitely tell you it's not her thing) so she had none of that.

like it still sucked? yes. And is putting your whole life into online fandom a good thing? Probably not. We've all seen terminally online stan discourse.

but it did like....give me something consistent to do all the time, give me consistent people to interact with, and allow me to keep honing my creative skills in an otherwise blank portion of my life. it's been a lot of fun and i feel i kept myself busy in ways that were actually mildly constructive at times

[videostak]

i think my plan rn to better my life is to maybe VERY VERY SOON just start practicing japanese regularly again. just liek going thru everything i learned in that semester i took i still have all the powerpoint slides n stuff on my computer and will just work thru the book and practice regularly as much as i can and then go back to college. dating apps dont work for me cause it feels like a weird walk of shame like going on an app of ppl meaning to meet ppl who also arent interested in me and i dont mind that cause obv like ppl dont have to be interested in me i just hate that the ones who are are just weirdos who somehow find ways to objectify me more than i objectify myself lol. anyways college is probably the place to meet people. luckily no one of those awful ppl i knew go to the community college i went to and the only one who did stopped going around the same time i stopped too so i wont have to fear running into any of them :P but ya i really need to do SOMETHING ANYTHING to be SOMEWHERE ANYWHERE or i may pass away from not being handled with care ;-; i wanna find a job b4 any of that but honestly at this point beggars cant be choosers so i should just get my japanese studying back on and see what happens first me restudying all of japan 1 or me finding a job. and since i wanna take part time classes i can still job hunt while having classes. just wanna take japan 2 and film studies 2 cause i took film studies 1 and loved it soooo much. dont wanna take anything like art or smthn as much as id love to study art cause id have to waste money on materials that would be expensive and last time i took a beginner art class the teacher had to tell me to drop it cause my skills sucked so much lolll and like doing art stuff on a deadline is the worst for me but like hypothetically in the future id be down to try art classes again if things go well with my other studies

[baladric]

4, 10, 14!! heehee!

ouuuu thank you!!!!

4. How many different styles/medium (e.g., digital art, traditional art, comics, sculpture, paper craft, etc.) did you try this year?

on the diversity of media front, i feel like i stagnated a little! i used to have a lot more breadth, but this year like 98% of my work was done with procreate, and the other 2% were very occasional pencil/pen doodles that i then spruced up in procreate ahaha!! but honestly i'm not too arsed about this, like the sheer volume of art i made this year is so much higher than usual, entirely bc messing around w procreate and the specific hyperfixations i've had this year really inspired me to keep throwing myself at drawings again and again until i got it right—which has translated into a lot of skill growth, which i honestly could not be happier about!!!!!

10. What inspired/motivated you this year?

content-wise, the goblin emperor was my main artistic motivator (specifically my own goddamn au s;alkdfjaow;if), but i'm also really learning how to create my own original works as expressions of various emotional experiences i'm shufflin my way through lately.

also (and i've said this already recently but it bears saying again) literally i looked at @littleowlbub 's concept art for their new comic, prism, and i fell deeply and madly in love with how they draw hands—they're like... so expressive and lovely, but what really sets them apart for me is this sense that there's joy in the simple act of drawing them. their hands are, for me, the visual equivalent of taking that first full breath of fresh air at the start of a hike in the blue ridge mountains ;lakjdfaef like, god, i look at a few of the drawings of spectrum specifically and just feel love and peace in my own existence as a tactile being, idk!!!! this is all a lot of weight to put on the way someone draws hands, but it's WHERE I'M AT and honestly it has really inspired me to find my own ways of creating that feeling with the hands i draw, and i have a long road ahead still but the results are so visible to me, and i'm so so excited about that progress!!!

14. What's one pairing/character/subject/body part/object you want to explore next year?

pairing(s): hrmm honestly i've been eyeballing my internal visualization of evemer and kadou from @ariaste 's A Taste Of Iron and Gold, like i am itchin to draw them a whole whole bunch

characters: it's become a pathological need to figure out how to simplify eddie entertainment munson's dumb face down to a few brush strokes, like i've done so much noodling to try to figure out what it is exactly that makes his face his face—is it the full lips? the angle of his eyes? the sparse eyebrows? the laugh lines? nose, the particular contours of his 3/4 profile?? who the fuck knows!!! but i will figure it out or i will die trying!!!!!!!!

subject: really digging my vent pieces so i fully intend to keep honing that style and the sort of. idk creative muscles that go into funneling big emotions into little eyestrain-y guys

body part: see my tender screeching about hands above. also really working on understanding legs. why are they like that. whose idea was that.

object: man i need to draw more objects. engineered shapes in general suck SO BAD. i wanna get better at musical instruments especially, but one of my broadest goals is to get better at dramatic lighting (light is a huge part of my creative world, which is really apparent in my writing and poetry, but much less so in my art bc i Don't Know How To Do It Yet), and i'm annoyingly aware that the best way to work at that is to, in fact, do a lot of still lives, and probably like. paint more. pls pls, 2023 me, let yourself fuck up with gouache. you love gouache. it's so good for light.

artist wrapped ask meme!

[lukael]

it's venting time baby

tumblr still feels like the only place where I can actually properly vent, I don't wanna do it on my other platforms cause I feel like they're the more likely to get me commissions and I imagine hearing me say how much I fucking hate drawing isn't exactly good for business

and honestly I fucking hate that I can't actually say how I really feel in fear of not getting commissions, makes me feel like a FOOL but anyways

I do not enjoy drawing :)

I don't find it fun, I don't find it fulfilling, and I'm still fighting with myself over that fact, because I've been really happy since quitting my job 2 years ago, so it's easy to feel like it's because drawing makes me happier, but I really think it's just that I hate the idea of doing any other job EVEN MORE.

I don't think I'm good at it, I don't think I'm ever really gonna be great at it, and when Audrey asks me "why do you need to be great at it", I don't really know what to say. I don't have the answer. Trying to do something without being able to is just the most frustrating feeling in the fucking world, and it's something I'm putting myself through daily by pursuing art, like I'm just not good at it lol

so fucking tired of hearing people say "no you're totally good at it omg you're so talented!" like.... I APPRECIATE THAT, I really do, like yeah I can create moderately competent looking images on occasion, to some that's an impressive skill, or that's sufficient, cool. It's not good enough for me lol I would like to either: enjoy the process of drawing (I do not) or to create really great looking art (I do not)

bad enough that I hate it, but I also hate the process of having to constantly be looking for job opportunities with book companies, trying to advertise for commissions, never really getting enough to pay the bills for the month, like.... social medias are only getting more and more shit, so that's not helping, but even before that, I've never found any success online (probably cause the art sucks lol)

some days I'm debating just going to work at Subways or some shit, cause then at least I'd be making minimum wage lol which is a hella lot more than I'm making right now, but doing a student entry level job at 34 wouldn't be great for my morale I think lol plus I would hate that work too, so idk... call me lazy I guess, I just don't wanna work lol

Praying to the fuckin heavens every day that my channel can pick up in traffic so I can monetize it, cause even though I don't think I'm funny or interesting or entertaining in those videos, at least I have fun doing those. Getting to do this stuff full time would literally be a dream come true cause then I wouldn't be forced to fucking draw. I could actually like, maybe just draw for fun and somehow try to reconnect with what it is that led me to start drawing in the first place 30 something years ago

It sucks cause my parents are probably so proud of me when I say "hey guys I'm doing it I'm a freelance illustrator going on 2 years now!" I bet they tell their friends like wow look how my son is doing so well! not really knowing I've lost thousands of dollars of savings in those two years because I'm not making jack shit because I still price my commissions like I was 17 year old just starting in the damn art world

but I can't price comms any higher because A) I wouldn't get any and B) I can't in good conscience charge any higher for this garbage I'm making, I sure as fuck wouldn't pay that amount for the shit I draw. And that's with people not even knowing how much I hate it the whole time lol oh shit that's probably bad for business to say here too huhhhhhhhhh hey guys don't mind me my commissions are open, check my carrd for more info!!! :)

if anyone is unlucky enough to be reading this, probably thinking "luk if you hate drawing so much why not just do some other job" well see thats because I've painted myself into this fucking corner, and in my entire life have been so stubborn about drawing that I haven't amassed any other skill or interest, so there's no other job I could be doing, it just has to be this now, because I need to make money somehow so I can eat and pay rent, so might as well be with this thing I'm kinda sorta okay at even though it's fucking pulling teeth at this point

anyways