Crescent Blue

Caption: “Chicago Great Western train #192 has just passed the Ovaltine plant at Villa Park and is approaching the IC diamond at Elmhurst IL, April 1968.”

The following is a slightly retooled repost of a post I made to the Tapas Forums over a year ago, and I wanted to share it here because I feel its an important message to get across.

As artists, we all have shitty days. Sometimes we have moments where he hate our artwork and might compare ourselves to others. This is natural and there’s nothing wrong with that. As long as you’re able to calm yourself down and don’t let your negative emotions control you and your way of thinking, you’ll be okay. 

However, I draw the line at people who constantly bitch and moan about it, ignore any advice and lash out those they’re jealous of.

I had a friend back in 2019 to mid 2021 (for the sake of simplicity, I’ll refer to him by the name ‘Jay’. Its not his real name but as he includes his name in is social media branding, I dont want people sending hate his way since I dont want anything to do with him. I would say I also wouldnt want him finding this rant which I was admittedly afraid of but at this point, I don’t really care) who felt insecure about his art and would show signs of jealousy towards those he thought were better than him. And often times, the targets of Jay’s jealousy would be his friends. The first few times it happened, I refuted his negative thinking and tried to encourage him. He would calm down and be like “you’re right”, only for it to happen again. Eventually, this habit of getting jealous of his friends and lashing out at them would be turned over to me. Jay wanted to draw in the Disney style and didn’t like his current style and thought it was, in his words, “shit”. So when someone like me, who’s style was closer to replicating Disney’s, who was an earshot away…. you can guess where I’m going with this.

I cant count the many times he would lash out at me, or delete art I’d post in a server we were in because he felt insecure, or give me the cold shoulder out of nowhere when I wanted to share a drawing. I’m not going to sit here and say that there was nothing wrong with our friendship prior and that both of us weren’t guilty (In hindsight, I realize there was a lot wrong with Jay that I, for the most part, looked over because we were friends, and which went beyond jealousy but I wont go into those details), but I can safely say that this aspect of his and the moment he turned his aggression onto me was beginning of the end of our friendship. I slowly became fed up with Jay’s behavior but I held out hoping it could get better, because I was the type of bastard who thought deep down everyone had some good in them (Note: I still do despite this situation. I just know now that sometimes, people just refuse to change). It never did, and we stopped being friends come May. In all honesty, I’m surprised I lasted that long but I should’ve left earlier when I had the chance.

Like I said, there were moments where he stopped this bullshit by calming down, drawing ocs and then he was back to liking his art again. But that wouldn’t last for long and he’d usually be back to hating his art and lashing out people again in a few weeks or so. Sometimes days. Again, I’m not saying that jealousy isn’t normal and if you get jealous your a bad person. It’s a natural thing to experience it and heck I’ve been had bits of jealousy countless times. But you can’t let it control you, that’s the thing. You shouldn’t let it control your way of thinking and led cloud your judgement. And you can absolutely the fuck not lash out at people because your mind told you they did you wrong for being better than your or some shit, especially to your friends! Yes, there will be times where you slip up but its on you to not let that shit happen again. That’s what it means to say sorry. It’s “not a get out of jail” free card! You have to actually mean it! You shouldn’t expect your friends to deal with your toxic behavior, because you’re eventually going to push them away. People have breaking points and no one’s going to help you if you’re unwilling to help yourself.

Also if you dont feel your artwork is good enough, spewing your toxic bullshit at people isnt going to help. If you want to be good at anything, you have to put in the effort and work hard at it! You wont get good by being a whiny little shit. I wasn’t going to get anywhere that attitude when I was 14. I wanted to a be a good artist but I wasn’t good drawing. So I spent the past 5 plus years practicing and drawing everyday and it’s payed off. Sure, I’m not perfect and there are people out there who are better artists than me. But I cant let that fact detour me and neither should you. You need to have a positive mindset of wanting improve, wanting to get better at something, wanting to become stronger than you are now. No one’s telling you can’t do it. The only one that’s telling you that you’re not good and that you’ll never improve is you.

And, this may sounds cold, but if you don’t see any improvement despite drawing everyday and get angry about, you should just quit. If drawing art makes you so mad that you lash out at others and tell them to “fuck off” (something he actually said to me during one his episodes) when they genuinely want to help you out, why are you still drawing? Try another hobby that you’re passionate about. If you’re going to have this attitude about drawing, maybe you shouldn’t have started drawing in the first place.

And you know what’s the funny thing about all of this? Jay wasn’t a bad artist. His art was a okay, not terrible nor great, but there was room for improvement. As long as he studied anatomy, perspective, flow, composition, etc, he’ll be a damn good artist. He most likely wont able to draw in the Disney style but that’s something he has to deal with. However, I don’t think that will happen if he doesn’t stop the cycle of inferiority, jealousy, and feeling better by drawing ocs, he’s not going anywhere. I told him something akin to this but I don’t think he listened, so I dont think he will change his ways (I could be, and I hope, Im wrong). If he doesn’t get his behavior under control, its going to catch up with him in a really bad way. At some point, Jay’s going to hit a brick wall and push away all of the remaining people who got fed up with his bullshit. And by that point, drawing his ocs wont save him this time.

The inspiration of this rant came from a situation that happened shortly before the tapas forum post in September 2021. I encountered someone similar to Jay on a discord server who basically had a meltdown about how much his art sucked and lashed out anyone who tried to help.  They ended up getting banned for toxic behavior and rightfully so.