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Art... and stuff
3 years ago
I guess it's getting on for almost two months since I mentioned the break thing in my last journal. Since then, I haven't done much art at all, most recently having done a couple of hang-out-doodle sessions with Akorr and apart from that I think maybe a few paper sketches. I will probably be starting to work on art practise again soon because these last few drawings have made me remember just how bad it is to fall out of patterns of practise, which will mean I will get back to posting sketches on Patreon at some point soon too.
Tomorrow or today technically(?), I'll have a macro vent doodle thing to post, from one of those hang-out drawing sessions. Yes, the description will also be a mile long probably... Also, some people might remember a thing about a Tarot deck project and sadly not much has happened there, because life (applies to everything mentioned here), and it's something I'm going to get back to as well if I can, because I was having a lot of fun with that project.
I don't think I'll be going back to commissions very soon yet, not unless there are more than a couple of people wanting them at the same time, partly because I find it easier to work on commissions if there's actually more than a few going on since it lets me rotate between them. While I do like the last few things I did, I have to recognise they were all really long pieces to work on. And that sort of thing eventually becomes difficult to deal with if you're not having an opportunity or reason to alternate with something else; at the time of the last few things I was being really tired at the end of many days and having had unpredictable patterns to said days, I just couldn't dedicate myself to working on any pieces, not mine or anyone's.
Also part of that, is that I've found over the years that working on something while more than just a bit tired is not a good idea if it can be avoided, because for me it often means I make mistakes or overlook things which will later need correction or extra attention, and so the actual choice of moment for when to put in more work into a piece is about as or more important as to how much time is invested into a piece in total. I think most artists, or creators, will understand these nuances innately if they have some experience with creative processes. I am not sure how much people might be interested in these sorts of things with regards to "process", though I feel like this is partly why relatively old tropes/stereotypes like "artist waiting for inspiration" are still a thing, presumably in part because not everyone understands these nuances unless they've had to deal with it themselves or can relate to the process, which varies from one individual to another anyway.
In any case, another thing for me has been that for more than just a while I've been finding it very difficult to find not only motivation, self-confidence but also the willpower to some degree which is required to actually draw and do other creative stuff. I've generally felt quite low for a number of reasons and since the last journal post there have been some other things I wanted to post about, either journals or random scraps that had nothing to do with what I normally post here, and because of these issues, I gnattered away at posts that never saw the light of... anything. Many things in my life often feel imperfect, lacking structure and lacking predictability, and I think my obsessive traits make it difficult to deal with those aspects of my life.
Confidence or self-confidence is such a tricky thing, and my experience of it has always been that you don't realise how much of it you have when it's actually there for you; and when it's missing it's like you're just nobody, a bit of a nothing. And it becomes difficult to even trust your own judgment or to accept that something might not matter quite as much as you might be making it out to be. When thinking about the times when I've felt best and most confident, it just seems like a different person to a degree, though since my teens there has been an element of willpower that has fortunately never really gone away and which I've been able to use to get myself to do a lot of things which I just wouldn't have been able to deal with otherwise, mostly on the physical side of things though.
I could write a short essay (this is a semi-coherent baby sample!) about all these sorts of things and I suppose there's no point really, so I should stop on that here and just end by saying that I do look forward to trying to get myself to draw again in as relaxed a way as possible, and I do kind of miss some of the rougher stuff that used to result from approaching things in a more spontaneous and impromptu, or impulsive, manner.
Tomorrow or today technically(?), I'll have a macro vent doodle thing to post, from one of those hang-out drawing sessions. Yes, the description will also be a mile long probably... Also, some people might remember a thing about a Tarot deck project and sadly not much has happened there, because life (applies to everything mentioned here), and it's something I'm going to get back to as well if I can, because I was having a lot of fun with that project.
I don't think I'll be going back to commissions very soon yet, not unless there are more than a couple of people wanting them at the same time, partly because I find it easier to work on commissions if there's actually more than a few going on since it lets me rotate between them. While I do like the last few things I did, I have to recognise they were all really long pieces to work on. And that sort of thing eventually becomes difficult to deal with if you're not having an opportunity or reason to alternate with something else; at the time of the last few things I was being really tired at the end of many days and having had unpredictable patterns to said days, I just couldn't dedicate myself to working on any pieces, not mine or anyone's.
Also part of that, is that I've found over the years that working on something while more than just a bit tired is not a good idea if it can be avoided, because for me it often means I make mistakes or overlook things which will later need correction or extra attention, and so the actual choice of moment for when to put in more work into a piece is about as or more important as to how much time is invested into a piece in total. I think most artists, or creators, will understand these nuances innately if they have some experience with creative processes. I am not sure how much people might be interested in these sorts of things with regards to "process", though I feel like this is partly why relatively old tropes/stereotypes like "artist waiting for inspiration" are still a thing, presumably in part because not everyone understands these nuances unless they've had to deal with it themselves or can relate to the process, which varies from one individual to another anyway.
In any case, another thing for me has been that for more than just a while I've been finding it very difficult to find not only motivation, self-confidence but also the willpower to some degree which is required to actually draw and do other creative stuff. I've generally felt quite low for a number of reasons and since the last journal post there have been some other things I wanted to post about, either journals or random scraps that had nothing to do with what I normally post here, and because of these issues, I gnattered away at posts that never saw the light of... anything. Many things in my life often feel imperfect, lacking structure and lacking predictability, and I think my obsessive traits make it difficult to deal with those aspects of my life.
Confidence or self-confidence is such a tricky thing, and my experience of it has always been that you don't realise how much of it you have when it's actually there for you; and when it's missing it's like you're just nobody, a bit of a nothing. And it becomes difficult to even trust your own judgment or to accept that something might not matter quite as much as you might be making it out to be. When thinking about the times when I've felt best and most confident, it just seems like a different person to a degree, though since my teens there has been an element of willpower that has fortunately never really gone away and which I've been able to use to get myself to do a lot of things which I just wouldn't have been able to deal with otherwise, mostly on the physical side of things though.
I could write a short essay (this is a semi-coherent baby sample!) about all these sorts of things and I suppose there's no point really, so I should stop on that here and just end by saying that I do look forward to trying to get myself to draw again in as relaxed a way as possible, and I do kind of miss some of the rougher stuff that used to result from approaching things in a more spontaneous and impromptu, or impulsive, manner.
On self-confidence/motivation/whatever, one thing that does amaze me, is how some people just seem to have an ability to kind of *act* more than I do. An example that was on my mind today was how David Bowie got onto TV at 17 for founding a joke political group - not a matter of skill in the usual sense nor or free time, just an ability to "get off the couch", and I suppose enough luck that what he found personally meaningful was also publicly meaningful. I have, more frequently than I'd expect, been in the same chats as people who would be Internet celebrities if anyone cared about them in a personal capacity - the most recent was a developer of a video game mod I played 9 years ago - and I just want to PM them out of the blue and say, "How do you do it????" Feels like I know the answer though - I get ideas, I just don't act on them, sometimes because they feel wild enough that there must be something to make them impossible, other times because it'd take longer to work on beyond the initial pulse of inspiration, etc. Hopefully I will be able to partially take myself out of "loserhood", that's part of larger personal improvement... On top of that and habit/effort/spending the time, you seem to have a burden I don't, that is your tiredness (which I assume is related to your illness), which sounds awful, just judging how things are for me when I don't get enough sleep.
Quite often the works found in some places seem to have a lot to do with how much people have put themselves forward, and how lucky they have or haven't been while doing that. In some cases that recognition doesn't really happen until they've died, which I always find somewhat sad. We also end up finding ourselves with very specific interests which may mean we don't necessarily get recognised for anything at all unless it's posthumous because there's a later surge of interest in the topic.
Unfortunately that bit of not caring about opinions or just going ahead and doing something seems quite complex and I'd guess is probably not solely dependent on the factors that relate to the individual themselves but also factors of environment, and so I guess that's why there's only a smaller percentage of people that are actually like that who manage to get some special type of on-going recognition for it.
In recent years I have been watching a lot of things, films and series, and when I look into some of the actors I think were great in the things, I find out that it was a one time thing, or that they had other life issues and couldn't keep doing that sort of thing and so on. It's really sad, because nobody seems to ever talk much about this sort of thing. The people who didn't have on-going success or later became unsuccessful or possibly became unaccomplished people in the sense of that career path; nothing is sung or written of them, they just seem to exist like ghosts of any other "normal" person, despite the fact that they did at one point accomplish something that most others might not. To me this seems in line with what you're saying about meeting people in chats who would be (internet) celebrities if anyone cared about them.
Also, I totally get wanting to message someone like that out of the blue like so. I have done that at times, even very recently actually. Sometimes I learn nothing from it, other times I do learn something. Though sometimes even when I do learn something I end up finding out it's actually a bit beyond my league, not because I can't do something but because I'm lacking some sort of foundation that they had, which can be demotivating. Most of the time it doesn't really seem to form any connection though, which is something I often want out of that sort of contact.
Even so, I think it's still worth messaging them. You won't know what they're like or if it's any help until you do. Maybe it'll be a waste of time, maybe not. Maybe they will actually say something that does motivate you.
Everyone has a burden of one kind or another I think. Even if you don't have the problems of my body, that doesn't invalidate your life getting in the way or some part of your psyche not being compliant with what other parts of it need. Some people seem to deal with their issues better than other people would deal with a similar or equal issue, and I suppose it's just part of what makes us different people at the end of the day. Even so, I will admit that I also know I sometimes feel resentful of others because of how I perceive them as being more successful or more free to do their own work or whatever, very often coming from an emotionally biased perception that cannot possibly be fully accurate. And I feel this resentment is sometimes just a mix of a kind of envy and frustration of my own though.
It's true, part of it is about acting on your ideas... The worst however is reaching a point when you could have acted on an idea but you've lost the mental details that at the time of its inception were very clear or obvious. This is why I find it especially important to write down ideas even if I never get around to making them. Because at some point, I may feel able to do them, and I'll need those details, even if they later require revision or change in order for the idea to actually work or make sense. All ideas need to evolve because a complete thing cannot be created in that initial moment, which is possibly what often feels very dissatisfying about creative processes, the fact that you have to work so hard to complete even some of the simplest ideas you've had.
"Don't care about what other people think," in all of the areas it applies, is one of those suggestions that only works because it's pretty much impossible to completely follow. If you follow it in an academic subject there is a 99.9% chance you are a crank; if you follow it in politics you are liable (at least in the US) to be a "racist old person"; I am less enthusiastic to talk about following it in art for fear of embarrassing myself before you, but my impression is that there's at least something to be said for broad and fine criticism. It's only useful because there is a natural push towards caring too much about what people think.
And at any rate even in the case of the wheel inventor there has to be somebody who is affected, if not somebody who has knowledge. If someone writes their memoirs, and beams it into the sky through radio waves, and it stays intact but just echos around outer space forever, it may as well be gone; but if there are aliens or future humans or whatever, then it's different.
It's not really the point you were making, but the thing about lacking foundation reminded me, of something like that kind of cheering me up recently, where I found a Reddit thread where people discussed math that was way beyond my understanding, and I thought that, no, I can't understand it, but there's something about the way they're discussing it that makes me think I could if I wanted to and read enough and put enough time into understanding it. Especially among programmer types (e.g. on the infamous Hacker News) it seems like the Internet likes to take the belief that all successes are the product of the abilities that someone is born with, and go one step further, and claim that everything is (in a vaguely eugenicist way) due to "intelligence", to the detriment of learning and practice. But yeah, more concretely, unless you're doing something like gardening where the end product is nothing more but a way to structure the activity, it can be hard to go "I may be terrible at this now, but if I do it for 2 years I might be kind of good".
Messaging people/introducing myself to them/having enough confidence or little enough care for rejection, is a skill I am slowly improving on, which probably shouldn't be a "skill" any more than breathing is, but after all this is FurAffinity.