#when artblock doesnt wanna be mean to me

[silvermizuki]

So normal about this comic page I'm making yup mhm yeah

[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/