i'm stuck wanting to lose hours to rendering an elaborate piece but feeling like i have no compelling ideas for one, nor the hours to lose. i had a stint for a while before where i'd draw something, intending to turn it into a fully rendered finished piece- but i'd only get as far as knowing a character in a pose to draw, not how i wanted the end result to look- and every piece feeling like it would come to a stumbling halt once i got to flatting in the colors because i wouldn't know where to go from there, only that i didn't Want it to end, that it wasn't finished

and i want to make art that's just fun to get back into the swing of it, something simple and low-stakes to shake myself out of the funk, right--but since so much of what's fun isn't what makes entirely finished or rendered pieces--cartoon characters with exaggerated shapes and simple faces--i can only draw so many aimless, random poses on blank backgrounds before i feel like i'm just wasting time and round back to not having any fun at all.

i'm such a character illustrator (and a human character one, at that) that 90% of my arts feel beholden to a degree of realistic anatomy i've held to myself as 'the thing im good at' that isn't fun because even if it's such 'the thing im good at', then why does it look so bad? why can't i draw a line that looks perfectly like a realistic simulation of the fat bundling around the lower thigh when a calf is bent up entirely underneath it? or why can't i draw any fabric that folds and bends around the torso in a way that doesn't look like a shar-pei's face? how many faces have i drawn in how many angles in my life and i still can't get eyes to look like theyre inset inside the sockets of the face and instead just sit weirdly ontop?

it's so frustrating feeling like i know what 'right' looks like and yet i can't draw that no matter how many times i try.

all that said, i rmr reading a post a few months ago- something to the effect of "i realized i was waiting for the day my art looked like i hadn't drawn it" in terms of progression and getting better- and how undefinable and unachievable that is, which is true- and all of this is me being unnecessarily hard on myself, i recognize; art doesn't have 'rules' or 'rights' or anything definitive like that, no, but what i want my art to look like, i have some examples for, or a vague idea of when i start a piece- and all i can see, like many of us can probably relate, is how much the art doesn't look like what i pictured or wanted by the time i get to the end. no, no one else knows what it was 'supposed' to look like--but that doesn't help, because to a degree--i do make my art for me, and if me isn't satisfied or happy with it, and the same lowkey obsessive attitude crops up again and again:

'no no people out there can tell i didn't do it right if they look at it; there's just a vibe about it that looks wrong. i have to draw more and draw again and prove i can do better next time'

i end up tearing down all of my art because when someone says "that looks great!" a loud and wrong part of my mind all but naturally footnotes it with "ohh they think that's the best you can do, which is unintentionally insulting because you can actually see all the ways this thing is 'wrong' or 'bad', and they think all of that's what your art looks like." my kneejerk is a sort of "i dunno its alright- i dont like how it turned out." as if to roundabout-vaguely-reassure the other party "oh, don't worry, i know this isn't the best i can do, let me try again, wait wait, hold on, don't think this is the best i can do or even my usual it's not even good" which is like, not a helpful way to think, and also not a fun or entirely appropriate response to a compliment! and it's also a losing battle or--just, again, too hard on myself; what do i expect, realistically? that every piece, sincerely, is obviously, easily identifiable as being better on a technical level than the last? i don't know. i think it doesn't help that art is such a nonlinear progression of skill; that there are pieces i come away from thinking about how they look good even months or years later- and how frustrating it is that that isn't a result i can recreate consistently, not even a majority of the time.

the last couple of pieces ive tried making, fully rendered or 'simpler' or what- keep also involving backgrounds, which are decidedly just not fun for me, but are such a natural progression to character illustrations--drawing characters doing things, being places, and i do love art of settings; characters in gas stations or convenience stores surrounded by shelves full of things, cityscapes, bedrooms, places they hang out and emotions told in color palettes and the use of light and contrast and all that shit--

but trying to make art that i like seeing being actively also unfun to make is a pretty serious bummer 💔 man.