I am getting more and more dissatisfied with my artwork
3 years ago
General
I have been thinking of writing this for long and i am not still sure if it's a good idea. But i will try. Maybe it will help.
I am going to be honest here. I am really getting more and more dissatisfied with my recent artwork output and by that i mean for over last year. Sometimes it makes me feel really frustrated and jelaous. Not really because i don't think that i draw bad, but because it feels like i have stopped improving my skills for some time, like i am really stuck and the entire world is now passing me by. Not every piece you are going is going to be a masterpiece for sure and some of your pieces won't be really good but in my honest opinion last 12 month have been really bad for me. I truly believe some of the pictures i have drawn recently are even way below even my current skills.
And i can see that even when i look at my artwork's statistics over time. I am not following them very close, but i could see over the years how much my gallery was growing with views, faves, watches, comments. It was slow, yes, but it was still there. For me it's an important sign of improvement- more people want to see and enjoy your works. Now recent months show pretty much a stagnation in these areas.
And it makes me really sad, or jelaous, or mad, or all of them in diferent proportions depending on the mood. I spend almost every day on drawing or sketching somenthing for even as little as 30 minutes whenever i can and i have full time job and from that perspective this stagnation really hurts. I am trully afraid that i might have (again) reached a hard border of improving my skills by myself and to breach that, i might need a help from outside.
Seriously, since almost all of comments under my pictures are praising them, i don't really see anything critical about them. Maybe you can see some problem(s) that i can't notice, that more or less are plaguing my art (if they really do)?
Colours?
Characters?
Anatomy?
Composition?
Subjects?
Poses?
Media?
Technique?
Something else?
Or there are also some things that i constantly do quite right and don't need that much improvement?
Or maybe you might have some ideas of what i could try to draw in the future?
(Yeah, i know that i might stick way too long with colour pencils, but it's a little bit unfortunate- most of the time it's like the only medium that i can freely use without time restrictions or lenghty preparations or drying times)
It all might sound that i am that worried, because i really am. I still believe that i can do better and i want to stay with traditional media, they are just way too unique and worth preserving. And for your information, i don't really have aspirations to become a furry artwork star-artist, i don't think i have a personality to handle that.
So far i have recently signed up to a local art workshops, they will take 2h per week and require another 1h total of commute unortunately, but i hope they will help me. I also hope that you might provide some interesting insight. That's why i am asking you to be honest, even when that means being harsh.
PS. Commissions are going to be made on time, so don't worry about them.
I am going to be honest here. I am really getting more and more dissatisfied with my recent artwork output and by that i mean for over last year. Sometimes it makes me feel really frustrated and jelaous. Not really because i don't think that i draw bad, but because it feels like i have stopped improving my skills for some time, like i am really stuck and the entire world is now passing me by. Not every piece you are going is going to be a masterpiece for sure and some of your pieces won't be really good but in my honest opinion last 12 month have been really bad for me. I truly believe some of the pictures i have drawn recently are even way below even my current skills.
And i can see that even when i look at my artwork's statistics over time. I am not following them very close, but i could see over the years how much my gallery was growing with views, faves, watches, comments. It was slow, yes, but it was still there. For me it's an important sign of improvement- more people want to see and enjoy your works. Now recent months show pretty much a stagnation in these areas.
And it makes me really sad, or jelaous, or mad, or all of them in diferent proportions depending on the mood. I spend almost every day on drawing or sketching somenthing for even as little as 30 minutes whenever i can and i have full time job and from that perspective this stagnation really hurts. I am trully afraid that i might have (again) reached a hard border of improving my skills by myself and to breach that, i might need a help from outside.
Seriously, since almost all of comments under my pictures are praising them, i don't really see anything critical about them. Maybe you can see some problem(s) that i can't notice, that more or less are plaguing my art (if they really do)?
Colours?
Characters?
Anatomy?
Composition?
Subjects?
Poses?
Media?
Technique?
Something else?
Or there are also some things that i constantly do quite right and don't need that much improvement?
Or maybe you might have some ideas of what i could try to draw in the future?
(Yeah, i know that i might stick way too long with colour pencils, but it's a little bit unfortunate- most of the time it's like the only medium that i can freely use without time restrictions or lenghty preparations or drying times)
It all might sound that i am that worried, because i really am. I still believe that i can do better and i want to stay with traditional media, they are just way too unique and worth preserving. And for your information, i don't really have aspirations to become a furry artwork star-artist, i don't think i have a personality to handle that.
So far i have recently signed up to a local art workshops, they will take 2h per week and require another 1h total of commute unortunately, but i hope they will help me. I also hope that you might provide some interesting insight. That's why i am asking you to be honest, even when that means being harsh.
PS. Commissions are going to be made on time, so don't worry about them.
FA+

They say that an artist's worst critic is themself, but I don't see many other artists with your skill level using traditional media. Are you comparing yourself to any of them?
https://www.furaffinity.net/user/ewgengster/
https://www.furaffinity.net/user/lirietrai/
https://www.furaffinity.net/user/snowsnow11/
Because when i found them, i thought we were on similar level.
If you feel you need to improve with workshop, then that's for you. This is your art, and your lifestyle and habits, if it doesn't feel right, quit that.
If you want some constructive words, eyes.
Why are they all looking not ahead?
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/49541247/
However, her intended target is clear here:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/46722351/
And i don't know what to say about your art since i have never seen it. And to be honest i have actually enjoyed many times some arts that haven't been drawn technically speaking good, but they had so fun ideas or emotions behind them that they made love them.
I am worried it might be related to my internal problem as an artist in a way how i see the world- not so emotionally but much more technically. For this reason i have never had problems with linear perspective, and on the other hand when i was looking for a solution for certain colour problem (warm lights, cold shadows) i understood it better when it was explained in the language of physics!
Even my sketchbook is much more full of generic body shots than faces. To me the face is an equal part of the body as feet, arms, belly. Pretty commom for introverted people.
I think you’ve got a really great level of style and proportion and it can be hard to find major improvements once you reach that level of accuracy, but I do still see things getting better in your work as time goes on.
Side note as a whole I think people are drained and tired and aren’t favouriting or commenting as much because they lack the energy. I’ve noticed a decrease for most artists I follow, and my own as well! They’re probably still enjoying your work, but they’re just doing it in the way they can at current and that’s okay!
And yes, i am really catious about proportions, to me they are the key elements that makes many characters and various objects look good.
As for your sidenote, is it actually much more common that people on this site are commenting and faving pictures less and less in general? Maybe they are moving somewhere else?
That makes sense!
In some cases yeah! Accounts go inactive all the time and sometimes more than other times. There’s still lots of new people joining so the numbers remain about the same, but it’s possible some of your watchers are on hiatus or left. Or life got in the way
maybe work on faces - give them more depth. you tend to make faces very flat and 2-dimensional, not much depth via shading
example: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/49927332/ - its quite hard to see that the snout and her cheek fluff are supposed to be pointing in different directions
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/49927332/ - has some shading around the edges, bit if you consider the "front facing" parts of her face (snout, left cheek) then they look quite flat and uni-dimensional
you do the same in a lot of your artwork where character faces are shown from the side: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/49062510/ - her face looks totally flat.
I think interactions are down for a lot of folks here. I'm not getting the traffic I used to from commissions I share here, I know that.
Do really other artists suffer from decrease of their viewer traffic?
Will try to find some time in the weekend for it but I can't give you any serious critique off the top of my head without looking properly through your gallery again. Your technique is generally very good, so I wouldn't think that would be a main issue exactly... This is kind of boiled down, but with my own stuff, I find that the stuff that has most interest is often within certain themes. If I deviate a bit from those popular themes, the interest in my art varies a lot. Like some personal pieces get like 1 fave, even with 400+ watchers; I got used to it and have adjusted my expectations a bit when posting certain ideas.
Sticking to traditional media is fine. If it's important to you to work with colour pencils or some other traditional media, then do; people don't seem to very picky about our choice of media when the major themes are of general interest to them. Like you, I also don't like the idea of trying to just do what people want to see from me for being a "star-artist", because I want to do ideas I want to do. If we just wanted followers I guess it'd be "easy" to just do the stuff that some "popular" artists do.
About wanting help from outside, yeah I totally get that. That was a big reason I fell away from trying to improve my art some ten years ago. Unfortunately I let my demotivation win at that time and I had reached a plateau point similar to the point I'm feeling at now (which is what I feel is partly the main problem you're facing here?), and I didn't stick to just continuing to make art, because I felt lost and I didn't know anybody who could or who wanted to help me with my art. Hopefully the local art workshops might help you with this.
Actually, there is a thing that still forces me to keep drawing. It's consistency. I always try to have at least 2 or 3 pics to post each month in my gallery, sometimes at the cost of it's quality as it seems. Sometimes i feel very guilty if don't draw anything for few days.
Honestly haven't seen much nicer fox girls than you draw.
(also, still waiting for you to draw me an ref sheet of sorts for mine. <3)
That workshop sounds like a good thing to try! Additionally, maybe you could find some inspiration to your own art by making studies on the styles of other artists you enjoy. Or make single things in your art process and technique different. Like have you considered touching up colour pencil drawings by highlighting lines with ink?
And i have alreeady been inking edges, especially few years ago. Actually other artists from Berlin advised me to not do that anymore.
I did notice in Butterfly for example her eyes are not focused on the butterfly but appear she is looking at something higher up. And in Tigress 16, her eyes are not quite focused on the same thing, the rest of the pose is really well done.
Now in Another night together she is clearly looking at him and in New Chapter she is clearly reading.
For more basics like anatomy, perspective, body proportion and color I think you do those really well. I would say its less a stagnation and more of a personal style. Traditional media might lack the more intense color or pop digital art does, but at the same time it can have a more soft and inviting feel to the image.
As for the classes, I would say take them when ever they interest you and your budget allows. Art is one of those things that you really never stop learning or finding a new techniques.
And if you can really work well, traditional artwork is going to be much more stunning than digital one. Especially oil paintings, since they don't change colours during drying. In anything else it is just matter of skill.
This one.
First, add a variety of complex poses.
Postures that truly show the flexibility of the body (especially the female body).
As example:
https://d.furaffinity.net/art/jumperkit/1633800263/1633706967.jumperkit_2000nudev.png
+ great foot angle (no offense, but you're really good at this).
or this
https://d.furaffinity.net/art/jumperkit/1646079436/1646079436.jumperkit_maple_butterfullnsfwedited2.jpg
Second.
More furry species to draw.
I'm not asking you to draw some kind of fierce exotic, like pangolins or kinkajou ... But, let's say .... Different breeds of dogs.
Rottweilers. Corgi. Dalmatians. Collie. So on.
They all have different body types which will help the art to focus on presenting certain aspects of the aesthetic you would like to show.
Let's say a Rottweiler would have massive athleticism. Corgi - softness and slight fullness, etc...
Third.
Personally, as a perverted bastard, I would like to see characters ... of an unconventional genders, relative to the standard binary system.
Well... girls with penises and boys with vaginas.
Yeah.
I suspect you won't, but at the very least, it would help to show off the aesthetic of contrasts well... and also expand your audience.
Fourth.
Setting.
In order to display the entire artistic palette of images, you can at least sometimes use other types of environments and settings.
Let's say... The nature of Southeast Asia. Arabic-Berber urban ensemble and/or interior. Classic European fantasy. Science fiction.
Put your characters in unusual environments - this will refresh the impression even of old bored ones.
To be honest i am much more stunned by colours in your examples than by poses.
2. I am much more into antropormiphisng wild animals than domestic, but maybe i will go back drawing some breeds that are more wolf-like, like, i don't know, huskies, collies and other.
Also i believe that not every species should be anthropormphised, but it's actually another long story.
3. I am unfortunately very conservative in this subject and hybrid genders have always been a big turn OFF for me. So extremaly unlikely.
4. I am huge on drawing my local area, since not only i live there, but also it has just so unique climate that it's hard to find in every other part of the world. Especially that there are people who visit my gallery just see my furry cityscapes. Just look at my pics with castle and medieval gate, it's an architecture you can find almost only in northern Poland/Germany.
But each is of your proposal is a very good idea.
I am very glad to see that, thank you very much.
And yes, this long post is also about reaching that cap and i might need a help from other artists. But from whom? Since it seems that traditional media is getting more and more niche than ever.
I wonder if there is a scientific term for this. How about ARTISTIAN DISSATISFACTION SYNDROME?
The day I'm dissatisfied with your work I'll delete my watch. I've never done that for any artist, and I like your art well enough to keep watching for a long time.
I have dropped a few artists when their work went to subjects I didn't care for. Then too, I had two artists block me because I was a "cisgender male." (* sigh *)
One suggestion that might help making things feel fresh, is to try and design your characters with different features, for example, if you draw a deer, give them hooves rather than human feet, try different body types, draw unusual species like maybe a giraffe.
Looking at your work I'm assuming (please forgive me if this is incorrect) that you use photos for the poses with an eye more on the contours of these poses. If you approach the references trying to visualize volumes, and breaking the body in its most simple ones at the beginning, the image will have a more solid feeling, and with time, you'll get so used to drawing these volumes that you won't need photo references all that much.
Hope this helps, I'm happy to discuss it further in private if you wish ^^
As for species, what you propose clashes a lot with my idea of anthros, kurzgesagt, i really take care of drawing them in the world that is adapted to them and fuctional and they could live comfortabely in it. That's why i don't anthropomorphise lots of species (there is no anthro horse or deer in my gallery!) or i don't draw hooves or digitgrade feet at all, so my characters could walk and run normally. And i don't really like to draw human feet!
Second part is definetely the most interesting from anything i have seen so far here and it's definetely a good point and it might be really helpful, since that's the way i actually draw lots of things. But on the other hand there are artists who don't see objects they draw in that way and they still do it extremaly well. Here is a gallery of a painter that i was lucxky to meet personally: https://www.furaffinity.net/gallery/scale/
And have seen once his entire proces of pencil sketching an anthro character from real life person. It was pretty much conteour drawing only. The same was for body shadows. He also noticed that i have better 3d vision and visualisation skills than him.
Generally speaking i don't really like drawing entire poses from photos, i needed that early since it's generally hard to find a good model when you live alone. Except the pose is incredibely interesting like this one: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/41905471/ or this one: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/29610299/
Most of the time i use photos just to see how certain body element behave or are shaded at certain angle since unfortunately it doesn't always work as you imagine it might look like. Hands especially.
Anyway i might send you some quick sketches that i usually do before i start drawing anything significant.
There won't be a one size fits all solution when it comes to improvement, I can only suggest the things that I tried and worked for me, I like testing different processes and tools to see if they add to my learning or not. The problem with this is that it is a rather chaotic way of learning but it gives me a sense of novelty and experimentation that I find very rewarding.
If the exact suggestions I proposed don't strike your fancy, I would still encourage you to try things outside the comfort zone, be it a different tool, style or theme, even if the only thing you take from this experimentation is that you didn't like it, that is still useful knowledge to have =3
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/46049745/
You do A LOT of variations on it throughout your entire gallery. So I'd say focus on more angles and poses if you want to freshen up your work. I'd start with more sources of photo reference from what you using now.
Also, be more bolder with your shadows and shading. The perspective is fine it's just that the lighting is off because the former is too light and it's making your figure work look flat.
Also i have two very specific things that i follow: 1: you must see her head. 2: the entire body should fit in the pic, except tail. I am much calmer when these two requirements are met.
And i am not going to lie, i personally believe that i struggle with colour and shadows. Especially colour shadows.
Core shadows! That's what I was thinking of. Most the work I see has a lack of them. They make a HUGE difference! And don't forget reflected light. Those two work very well together.
Since almost everyone there has provided something interesting, i will try to give a little bit more detailed answers to comments here posted. I have already seen few of them and i needed a little preparation.
Bardzo lubię twój styl i widać, że pozostaje on na dobrym, lecz stałym poziomie. Może powinieneś rzeczywiście nieco poeksperymentować z różnymi stylami i technikami, dodać rysunkom i postaciom więcej ekspresji, rozmaitej kolorystyki (I nie mówię tu wcale o futrze w kolorach tęczy ;) ) Osobiście lubię też rysunki, gdzie nagość nie jest na pierwszym planie, takie z nutką tajemniczości.
Podziwiam cię, że mimo tych przeciwności i rozterek potrafisz tak regularnie wypuszczać coraz to nowe prace. Chciałbym osiągnąć chociaż tyle :) Powodzenia i nie poddawaj się, warto tworzyć dla siebie i chociażby jednej osoby, która w pełni doceni pracę. Nie wpadnijmy w sidła świata, w którym liczy się coraz więcej i więcej "lajków".
Problem wtedy, gdy sam czujesz, że nie wychodzi ci to jak sam chciałeś. Tu jest problem. I o tym jest ogólnie ten post. Wiesz, ogólnie sam uważam, że nie rysuję jakoś tragicznie, tylko od jakiegoś czasu nie idę do przodu. Ja to wszystko traktuję jak poważny sygnał ostrzegawczy, że ludzie mogą być trochę znudzeni niezmiennością mojego stylu. I według mnie, to, jak rysuję teraz, to jeszcze nie jest szczyt moich możliwości.
Miło mi jednak widzieć, że mimo wszystko lubisz moje dzieła pomimo ich problemów. I cały czas chcę być w tym lepszy. Dlatego o tym wszystkim piszę. Spokojnie, sam lubię stonowane światła i naturalne kolory. No coś wymyślę z lisicą i polskim taborem.
Ach, i miło mi bardzo, że pamiętasz o kolei i lisicach!
I po to, by poeksperymentować, zapisałem się na te warsztaty. Bezpieczniej, gdy ktoś to zobaczy swoim fachowym okiem.
And in the past when I've tried it's not worked out. 😕😕😕
Can give it a go with something you've recently posted. Oo.
So I basically have 1 thing critical to say about this, at least I think it's critical.
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/50585405/
I am not a fan of rib showing and it look like her bottom rib is visable. So my advice would be to not do that often. Oo.
If I've done wrong then I apologize. 😞
Please note that I'm not an artist and so I don't have the perspective of one.
You know, when you bend your body forward, your belly might form some sort of groove. And i wanted to show that.
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/20820261/
I had never thought of it as bone covering lung though. It's a new way I can look at it/view it so thank you.
So I misunderstood and I apologize. I screwed up another attempt at giving critical advice. 😞😣
I understand what you're saying about when you bend your body forward.