As some of you may recall, I used to be an artist. I used to draw, used to enjoy it, attempted conventions and Artist Alleys. However, after a year or two, the constant disappointment with my own work, the lack of "being noticed," so-to-speak, and general loss of enjoying my art as a whole, sort of drove me into an art block the size of Jupiter. That said, ever since mid of this year, my depression and general emotional / mental issues have slowly slipped away (a few seemingly overnight).

With this, I thought and hoped that my drive or motivation would return. However, that is far from the case.
I wake up from time to time, driven by the burning urges to draw, to pick up my pens and pencils, to sharpen my coloring sticks, and really put some time and effort into a piece of art. For some reason, despite the losses of my overall depression, I still get a massive wave of anxiety when i put a half-finished, near-finished, or just started piece of art in front of me. I can't focus on it, I get angry at myself that I can't just work on it, then everything that I woke up with wanting to do with the art leaves me. Pencils get tossed aside, and I resort back to my feel-good remedy: PC games.

The will is there, the drive and sometimes overwhelming, screaming necessity to work on art.
But what is present is the reminder that it's somehow turned into a job or requirement that I get this stuff done, and it kills my mood for art along with the anxiety. I have art I owe people, I have art that I want and would love to get done / get started on. I don't want to lose my one and only source for having a creative outlet (some sandbox games help, but it's never enough).

I am a traditional artist through and through. The only way I can stream anything is by using a webcam and mounting it on a series of rulers above the art so people can see what I am working on from above. Streaming used to motivate me greatly because I love people watching me work. But now I am worried I have lost any sort of "skill" I had previously due to the length of time I have spent with the art block and lack of practicing.

I am the kind of artist that emulates someone else's style / work. I cannot do poses from scratch, I have to trace poses from photos on Google (I do not trace other artist's work, and if I see a pose an artist did, I typically note them to ask permission to mimic that pose). When it comes to commissions, I fall behind a lot, and thankfully what commissions I have taken in the past were free (from milestones here on FA). While a great deal of these are finished, and a few of them are laminated (like con badges) I do not have the heart to send them out to those who they are owed to because the style looks like junk and the laminating process did not hold properly.

In the end, artistic motivation comes down to your emotional / mental state. Do you want to work on that piece you spent all night on? Are you in the mood to work? Are you willing to open up more slots despite having a backlog? You're sick, but should you work at the risk of your quality sucking? So many things tie into an artist's feeling for a piece of art.

Until the next [Ramble]...
~Akotos