#i have more doodles but im not gonna vomit them all out at once

[bitzi-bee]

Finished svss a few days ago my brain is rotting even more help

[ask-bolthead-crew]

Hey,really out of the blue,sorry,but do you have any tips how to keep drawing when im never even remotely happy with what i draw?I get the urge to draw something all the time but when i have a pencil in hand and a paper in front of me i just freeze,i get so terrified because i know its not gonna come out the way i want it to so i just dont,i dont draw anymore even though i want to,and i want to improve my art and do things but i just cant get over the wall. Sorry to bother, feel free to ignore

// So the first thing to remember is that you are DEFINITELY not the only one.Art is hard, especially when you're not happy with what you're doing. I feel that way a LOT. Another thing to keep in mind is that a bad drawing never killed anyone.Sometimes you have to make a schedule for yourself... one you get past those first couple of hurdles of thinking "this sucks," it becomes a lot easier.I'm not saying you have to be proud of everything you do. In fact, it's the complete opposite. For every good drawing you do, there will be about 100 fuck ups. There's this strange expectation we put on ourselves that everything we do has to be good, and honestly it's an unrealistic expectation.What you CAN do, however, is just get into the habit of forcing yourself to do it... even if it's just a few doodles a week.What I do is I have specific characters I'll doodle as a warmup... they're my go-to guys. Kid, Killer, Heat, and Wire are four of them... But I also have my own character, Muffler, that I'll use.These become go-tos for trying out new things or getting back into the swing of drawing. They're characters/things/whatever that you eventually feel comfortable enough drawing from memory and can draw anywhere.The biggest thing is creating a no-judgement zone for yourself. If you don't feel comfortable drawing, you won't. Simple as that. Once you allow yourself to mess up, or make some bad drawings, it becomes more like second nature. Every drawing you make is a step towards bettering your skill. Think of it as a tool, not a finished product. If you get frustrated, don't tear out the page and throw it away or scribble it out. Turn the page or go to a blank area and start again. Allow each drawing to breathe and exist, even if it looks like crap to you. You never know if it might spark an idea at a later point in time, and even if it doesn't, it becomes a record of how far you've progressed... and trust me, you want those.I understand how difficult letting go of that judgement can be. It's similar to writing- just allow yourself to vomit images onto a page first. Don't go into anything thinking, "This is the end-all-be-all, and will be a completed image." Life doesn't really work that way. I'll sometimes redraw sketches for asks three times before I finally go, "fuck it- good enough."The finished pieces will come later, and chances are you won't even recognize it when it's a solid work of art until like... a week after you force yourself to be done with it... especially because, as artists, we're forced to stare at the damn thing until we drive ourselves crazy.Learning when to call something done was also really difficult for me. What I started doing was, once I got to a point where I would make changes and then immediately erase them/try to fix them, I called it done. I'll leave you with something my mentor told me about a year ago:Art for me is not a passion. I don't LOVE making art. In fact, most of the time I'll look at something I've done and go, "wow this is garbage."Art is an addiction. I don't do it because I like it... I do it because I HAVE to. If I go too long without drawing, I feel physically (and mentally) ill. I get depressed and restless. It's these times when it's even harder to pick it back up again. Sometimes I wish I could be content working at a computer for a company. Unfortunately, that's just not how my brain is programmed.But sometimes you just get the strength to push through that block, and you will make some pretty incredible stuff eventually. It just a lot of mental gymnastics and a WHOLE lot of understanding and allowing yourself to make those 100 bad drawings before you make that one good one.You'll get there, I promise. It sometimes just takes looking at things from a different perspective.