aslovefromlies

I basically stopped drawing a few years ago in part because of this. Life got lifey and my art was bringing me stress because I felt that pressure of not being good enough, of not progressing quick enough, of not posting enough and I just... stopped.

As a result my tolerance for the bad stuff got tiny. I was stuck in a cycle of wanting to draw -> drawing something shitty -> getting frustrated that my first attempt in months was not on level with where it "should" be -> not drawing. A LOT of it was comparing myself with an older version of myself that drew more frequently, not just comparing myself to other artists. I basically had impostor syndrome against myself.

Last year I looked through my backups of all my old art files and I noticed that a vast majority of what I used to draw was on that same "shitty" level, I just liked drawing enough that I didn't care. I kept on drawing anyways. Back then I wasn't trying to make things good, I was just drawing to draw. Every once in a while I made something that I got lost in, and those usually became the things I posted(aside from commissions). Every artist I see that talks about this says something to the effect of "artists only really post their best work", but it hadn't emotionally sunk in that the things that those artists don't post are things they think are shitty. It's the exact same emotion.

Eventually I realized that what I was seeking wasn't the feeling of having made something "good", it was the feeling of looking up at the clock and realizing I'd been drawing for five hours straight. It was the feeling of putting a line down and the sensation that I was reaching through the canvas into a different world to sculpt something with that line. I usually ended up thinking those drawings were good, but that was incidental, it was a consequence of letting myself get lost in drawing. My impostor syndrome and lack of tolerance for my "bad" art was really the only thing that was stopping me from getting to that feeling again.

tbh I'm still not fully out of the funk, but the big thing that let me pick pick the stylus again was at least partially letting go of the idea that my art has to be good. Hell, a lot of the things I really love in other art styles are things that I find myself critiquing in my own art when I get into that mentality. It's all bullshit.

Right now the goal I have when I sit down to draw isn't to make something of any quality (great or good or okay or bad), it's to let myself get lost in the act of drawing. If I'm not vibing with something then I'll draw something else until I eventually hit on something that lets me get lost. Learning to tolerate the shitty art, being okay with the idea that I will make stuff I don't like. Sometimes I'll go back to an old sketch and pick it up again, sometimes those sketches just get abandoned and that's fine.

Aaah thank you so much! I have a lot of fun going in and rereading scenes to try to get the details and the vibes right.