Ive been very lonely in this fandom, i feel like what i do or draw isnt good enout to be noticed or found as an artist

It can easily take years and years to be noticed :( Please don't let this bring you down! As long as you rpassion is within you you can keep improving and make it big ❤ I have also been lonely in the fandom and every relationshio I had ended with a stab right in the heart. But there truly are worthwhile people here and I refuse to keep trying ^^ I hope you will power through this rough bit too!

I hope so too, ive been in the fandom over 10 years, and ive been drawing every day, drawing is my passion and i just want to share it with as many as i can

Okay I am high on my morning coffee and have an opinionated tangent incoming as I've felt this way many, MANY times before and I have deeply held feelings on what I'd have told myself.

"Drawing every day" is not helpful if you aren't experimenting and trying out new things -and developing and evolving as an artist. In fact, turning drawing into an overly "routine-based" process (or heuristic if you want to be fancy) can backfire if just leads to stagnation.
Furthermore... you shouldn't be focusing overtly on gaining followers and viewers. Those will come by making stuff that stands out and demonstrates interest and passion in your own material.
Looking at your stuff, I'd give basically the same advice I give myself all the time; study 3d shapes. Start with cubes, spheres and cylinders, polygons etc.

I STRONGLY recommend some Proko tutorials as well. Michael Hampton is one structural based artist who has excellent ideas on how to treat figures not so much as pieces of anatomy, but as structures which can be pliable and articulated. Is it easy? No. Is it rewarding with practice? Absolutely. Hell I don't practice nearly as much as I should, but I promise you, that breaking things down more into "structures" and articulatable elements (spheres cubes, boxes etc), will make your stuff have more depth, especially when shading and lighting comes into play. Steven Zapata is another artist who I've seen tutorials on, his ideas on shading have been particularly influential for me.

I also STRONGLY recommend getting some Morpho anatomy books. Fantastic examples of simplification and body structure analysis, all on paper. Something to mention; don't merely copy artists and educational materials; play around with them in your head.

---See a simplified box figure drawn on paper? Try and mentally twist it around, which is easier todo with simplified boxes, spheres and cylinders. Try doing a gesture doodle, then drawing structural elements over it. And separately. You aren't bound by any rules, just make sure it looks good. My suggestion would be to; try everything and don't get overwhelmed if you are feeling like you are "doing it wrong." Just try another technique and don't stress. It's just a sketch doodle, and you need to make tons and tons of sketches (not full on pics) to explore and break down ideas. I am not going to pretend to be an expert on this issue, I just wanted to share my thoughts.

your artwork is fantastic.

To recieve tips and how to draw from you is an honor, you know what you are doing <3

I dont know why i draw everyday, it just... feels good, its just fun!

A quiet start to the year, so I can't complain.

It's also good to see more artists returning to FA and other art sites proper. For folks like myself who stay away from social media, it did feel like we were missing out on half the fandom.

I was missing FA a bit, a lot of people seemed to have vanished and so I also migrated to Twitter. I depise social media as much as the next guy, but sadly if you want to be able to make ends meet as a freelancer you have to go where the people go. I am very happy to be able to get back here. Hopefully I can make a full comeback too and become more active :) thank you!

Yeah I can understand the plight of making ends meet. At least for myself I was able to quit social media some years back, and the improvement to mental health was immediate!

Nonetheless, would definitely welcome a full return from the likes of yourself!

Totally agree! I deleted my twitter account last year for the very same reason.

I'd love it if FA had a couple of the reaction buttons for peoples post though. Just to make it easier to react/ respond to peoples comments etc.

If you don't want negativity, stay away from social media.

If my livelihood didn't depend on it, I totally would. Sadly we all must do things at our work that we don't really enjoy :( Social media is a major downside to being a freelance artist, especially fighting againt the rise of AI lately T^T

Will you be deleting your Twitter?

I never deleted any account anywhere, I don't think I will be doing it here. It took me 10 years to build my following there and it would feel silly to just get rid of it. I put some realy hard work and effort into it. Drew countless free art to expand my reach... I still have hope it could be turned for the better. Times change, algorythms change. I will just stand by until a good change happens (if it does)

Works been a little slow, but construction usually has a lull in the winter. And I am starting physical therapy to help with a nerve problem I have.

Unless they changed it again, I think all artists should leave X/Twitter as they use your art to train their AI. It was in their terms of service.

Twitter is still a decent place for art, but you're right about the algorithm loving politics, drama, and devisive topics. It require so much housekeeping like adding filters, marking tweets as uninteresting and conscious avoidance of certain tweets. But it is still somehow one of the best ways to explore new artists for me.

Good news on my end? New job as a courier, which has been steady if tiring, and has paid my bills and is pulling me slowly but surely out of debt. My health thank the gods is good despite being 54 and in an outdoor, elements-exposed job, and I'm on track with actually living, albeit with somewhat less free time and energy than I might have had. My friends are in good health and generally good spirits, and thus I cannot complain. Hopefully that's good news on the whole. It's the little things in life that matter, yes indeed. ^_^

Your oft-silent yet appreciative watcher,
Mika Kyubi
Kitsune-at-Large
(oft times quite large)

I abandoned ship there and left it private.
Not touching it or going back, so I went to Bluesky
since it's catered to artist more. It's better be in a
more calm and open environment.

Other than that, things are good on my end. Had
a snow storm in my town and it was peaceful.

I'm glad Bluesky works out for you! Frankly I guess I'm just not cut for social media at all, becasue Bluesky doesn't feel much better for me 😅 I mean there is no right wing political drama, but I still see a lot of negativity from people complaining about all sorts of things none of us have any control over and it ruins my mood. But even if I don't take that under consideration, I just don't like the doom scrolling it gets you into. And the constant feeling of needing to push for more numbers and likes drives me mad 🥴 somehow on FA I don't care about these things all this much.

Hope things are still going well for you!

Honestly this year has been absolutely devistating in just the last...16? 18 days? I've lost so much and multiple people have sought to hurt me.

I was hoping to make the best of the new year..."New year new me". I had gotten a good job, was working on self improvement and all of that was back stabbed out of me...nevermind politics. It's like I'm constantly at my limit and falling over it over and over again.

And yeah...twitter's just...no. Ever since I dropped it in favor of Bluesky it's been so much better...granted Bluesky has seen it's share of toxicity and growing away from what I liked so much about it...but it's way better.

I need to lay down, but I genuinely hope things improve for you and that you can get through this either way. I'll survive, for better and for worse I always do...

Gosh I'm so sorry to hear this. I meant to reply sooner, but life got in the way. I hope things have started to look better or you. But I get what you mean, I also lost someone I considered a friend in the beginning of the year and I felt devastated. It's been rough but if I recall right, beginnings of the year have always been this way somehow...
they stabilize later in the year! So I hope they will for you too!

It's fine, I know the feeling and have been there...but yeah, it does seem like the end and beginning of any year are always the worst...I don't know if you believe in lunacy but full moons are also a big problem too I've found. Police and hospital calls go way up, most of the worst fights and losses I've ever had happened during them and the person who got me fired did it during one....anyways, thank you, I really appreciate it and I'm done a bit better, at least better enough to try and do more than just be depressed as hull while doing nearly nothing.

Honestly I should get back to writing jounrals myself

So far so good. Some unknows down the road I'll handle as it comes. A loan done with come summer and that'll make life a lot easier.

Social media, block that crap out but I have done the same to regular media and man that's good for the mental state.

Journals sound good.

Sad to see 2025 starting right in the mud pit for so many people :(
And, to be fair I'm fairly new to the whole community, but I really don't understand why so much energy is spent being negative on social media as a whole. Oh well, that's people for ya...

Anyway, over on my end I'm just hoping the 3D industry job market takes off again and in the mean time try my best to be nice to people while drawing random stuff, practicing the "be the change you want to see in the world" kind of thing at my own scale !

Anyway, wishing you a better rest of the year and to anyone else reading this !

I came to a similar conclusion about short-form social media a few years ago ;)

Last year was an especially challenging one for me, but the start of this year has been MUCH more positive. I'm keeping up with healthy habits, staying busy, and now I'm even buying a house!

I'm giving my art process a lot of attention, evaluating new techniques and tools, and I've considered simply asking you what kind of brush you use for shading... but I've been worried that it's just a PS hard round and what I need is to "get gud".

It's been a pretty exhausting year. Personal things feel like they're doing okay, but the broader scope is... difficult.

I have a wordpress site where I could write journals, I only ever made one post on it tho. I did install the activitypub plugin tho, so I could see the post from sharkey/mastodon/pixelfed/lemmy, and boost it if I wanted to.

Lately for me tho, just no energy.