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a year ago
It's only barely been two months and this year has not been good for my health; since my last journal I actually developed two new issues, one of which I'm on a waiting list for and the other is pending initial assessment (at the end of this week). It has not been fun even just having a cold as well in the last few days.
One thing has recently improved a little at least: my drawing arm shoulder, which had pretty much been a 24/7 problem for the last 6 years or so. It's not fixed, but it generally aches a lot less. It's also less noisy.
This, plus the fact that I have had motivational help from some close friends, has meant that I have actually started practising very lightly again, both on paper and digitally. My main short-term art goal is to create a new profile picture at the very least. Long-term, I really would like to get back into doing commissions and just doing fuller pieces again.
I don't have a good idea in my head of what I want to do about commissions exactly, I just know that the structure of it will change and I want to have a different approach to certain parts of it all and want to be clearer about what I can do. I have said this before I'm sure, the pricing will change; and I accept that this may mean I won't actually get asked to do them as much. At this point it doesn't bother me, I could never produce enough work to sustain myself from commissions anyway and it's become more important to me for the motivational factors to feel right.
I do know I need to address my Patreon. In the future I do not see myself able to maintain the regularity of uploads I had there, so I might just have to sort of wrap it up or something, as it never had any real amount of interest anyway and at some point it stopped being the effective motivator it had once been for my regular art practise.
(v rambling bit below v)
Surely by now at least one person might have noticed that I have problems with medium/long-term art goals in particular. A third thing that needs investigating, if I ever get the opportunity to actually speak to someone about it, is about this issue.
Between 2020 and 2022 I made, at a low estimate, approximately 2,600 drawings, of which, a very small portion became either commissions or other things I posted here. I can't estimate very well how many of the drawings were pure practise versus ideas/concepts, sometimes the two things overlapped. I have mentioned some of these figures before, the point here is only to illustrate how few of the idea sketches I actually turned into full pieces, despite having a lot of motivation and interest in doing so. There are many ideas I still really want to start as full pieces, let alone finish, and which I simply know I never will.
Over the years I have tried very hard to employ many self-motivation techniques to finish both personal and non-personal works and projects. Even when I really want to finish something, I often don't and I have learned from a friend that this is part of something called "executive dysfunction" and it's affected me my entire life, just never had a name for it; the only real reason I have ever finished literally all commissions (save for one) is because of the strong sense that I have entered into a (somewhat informal) contract with someone and that I must honour my side of it, more particularly if the commissioner's interest remains high and loops back into my own motivation; money is a motivational factor because if I feel financially unrewarded, I'd rather be doing something else I can enjoy more.
Strangely, it only dawned on me after a comment the other day that I almost do not really enjoy making art at all; I enjoy the products of creativity involving myself, and if the motivation is correct, involving a commission or request; my personal pieces mean the most to me though. But, all of my experience with making art is just kind of... Intense, painful and uncomfortable, not to mention often frustrating. Much more than half of my own personal ideas and works never move past an early "post-sketch" phase at best.
TLDR of rambling: I enjoy its products but art is hard for me and hardly enjoyable as an activity.
One thing has recently improved a little at least: my drawing arm shoulder, which had pretty much been a 24/7 problem for the last 6 years or so. It's not fixed, but it generally aches a lot less. It's also less noisy.
This, plus the fact that I have had motivational help from some close friends, has meant that I have actually started practising very lightly again, both on paper and digitally. My main short-term art goal is to create a new profile picture at the very least. Long-term, I really would like to get back into doing commissions and just doing fuller pieces again.
I don't have a good idea in my head of what I want to do about commissions exactly, I just know that the structure of it will change and I want to have a different approach to certain parts of it all and want to be clearer about what I can do. I have said this before I'm sure, the pricing will change; and I accept that this may mean I won't actually get asked to do them as much. At this point it doesn't bother me, I could never produce enough work to sustain myself from commissions anyway and it's become more important to me for the motivational factors to feel right.
I do know I need to address my Patreon. In the future I do not see myself able to maintain the regularity of uploads I had there, so I might just have to sort of wrap it up or something, as it never had any real amount of interest anyway and at some point it stopped being the effective motivator it had once been for my regular art practise.
(v rambling bit below v)
Surely by now at least one person might have noticed that I have problems with medium/long-term art goals in particular. A third thing that needs investigating, if I ever get the opportunity to actually speak to someone about it, is about this issue.
Between 2020 and 2022 I made, at a low estimate, approximately 2,600 drawings, of which, a very small portion became either commissions or other things I posted here. I can't estimate very well how many of the drawings were pure practise versus ideas/concepts, sometimes the two things overlapped. I have mentioned some of these figures before, the point here is only to illustrate how few of the idea sketches I actually turned into full pieces, despite having a lot of motivation and interest in doing so. There are many ideas I still really want to start as full pieces, let alone finish, and which I simply know I never will.
Over the years I have tried very hard to employ many self-motivation techniques to finish both personal and non-personal works and projects. Even when I really want to finish something, I often don't and I have learned from a friend that this is part of something called "executive dysfunction" and it's affected me my entire life, just never had a name for it; the only real reason I have ever finished literally all commissions (save for one) is because of the strong sense that I have entered into a (somewhat informal) contract with someone and that I must honour my side of it, more particularly if the commissioner's interest remains high and loops back into my own motivation; money is a motivational factor because if I feel financially unrewarded, I'd rather be doing something else I can enjoy more.
Strangely, it only dawned on me after a comment the other day that I almost do not really enjoy making art at all; I enjoy the products of creativity involving myself, and if the motivation is correct, involving a commission or request; my personal pieces mean the most to me though. But, all of my experience with making art is just kind of... Intense, painful and uncomfortable, not to mention often frustrating. Much more than half of my own personal ideas and works never move past an early "post-sketch" phase at best.
TLDR of rambling: I enjoy its products but art is hard for me and hardly enjoyable as an activity.
