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i took a long break from posting art here and i finally decided i needed to lock in for artfight i guess? but somewhere in this speedpaint i realized i was drawing to mimic others instead of drawing in a way that felt good to me, in a way that felt like myself. ive been doing that for a long time ever since i started drawing in the first place. i picked up art because i wanted to be able to make drawings that looked like what a classmate of mine was able to make. i improved my linework and my proportions and my coloring style to mimic other artists, to mimic shows i liked watching, to mimic visual similarities that were considered to be "good" and things that were praised. art where characters are smiling and looking at the camera is what a lot of people draw, is what i thought when i opened this canvas, and so i tried drawing a smiling yugi. and it felt inauthentic. i didn't want to smile in that moment, i hadn't had a good week. so why was i forcing myself to do that? I didn't WANT to do clean linework or muted cohesive colors. i didn't WANT something clean and palatable. i didn't WANT to draw his hands in ways that make perfect anatomical sense.