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Hey remember updates? well here's one!
10 years ago
Lemon scented entries
Hey everybody, Thought I’d give a little update on the status of myself and the arts. People who have spoke to me know that i’m not much for words so I’ll try and colour this picture of what’s been going as best as I can.
Man, so where to begin….
I’ve been kinda heading downhill recently. I kinda have been getting more and more withdrawn. Maybe swinging and out of depression and waves of despair.
I don’t know what it is. I feel like a lot of situations in life I just don’t feel prepared to approach. So this leads to me just shutting down and pretending the rest of world doesn’t exist.
I feel like I’ve let a lot of people down this year when I launched my patreon.
I wanted that to be the definitive push for me to get my life on track, the motivation to work more on my art and get a better dayjob than being in an ok job with a terrible boss. I wanted to finally move out this year and do all these things and blah blah blah…
Unfortunately that didn’t happen.
Two notable things happened, pretty close to each other. I broke up with my Girlfriend of 7 years and I received some backlash on a commission.
Now please allow to me elaborate, the latter event does not compare in any way to the former, I only mentioned that only by the proximity of when they happened. (Broke up on a Saturday and Backlash on a Sunday)
I’m not going to comment on what exactly happened again, out of response for Sama and the only thing to take here was it took it’s toll on me. On one front was the shock of the event and then on the more slow gravitas realisation of it to follow.
So to elaborate, I took on a fairly big commission. Again, sorry to omit details here. But it was a fairly big group picture and it was a sports related one. If you know what I’m talking about you may know exactly how it went down.
Not very well, a certain community responded to it pretty negatively and I received some comments/mail mentioning how terrible of a job I did.
At this point, I panicked. I had no idea what to do. This was exactly like the time I got some mail from the part in SS3, except I couldn’t really respond in the same way… I felt like my lack of talent had been exposed. The great facade of being a competent artist had been debunked.
I had lost all faith in my art and lacked the confidence to continue. Though… I couldn’t admit to it at the time. I was at a pretty confusing point in my life. I had spent so much of my life trying to be a decent artist and felt this mountain I had been climbing only just grew 100 times it’s size.
So I halted on SS and my production came down to a snails pace.
I wanted to learn how to be a better artist before I could continue this…
At what point did I get over this?
Two artists/friends I follow helped illuminate on what I should do.They are R4 and Modeseven. Now this didn’t come from any advice they gave (though they did help numerous times on that front). But just from seeing how they approached art.
R4, is an extraordinary artist who for the time he’s been drawing has made stupendous progress. I can’t believe how fast this guy has learned. Though for all his demonstrations of finesse and technique. He (at that point in time) had such crippling doubt in his art. I’ve seen this scenario before, Artists been overly dramatic isn’t new. but I caught a glimpse of what I felt like myself. I felt like I was watching myself from the outside.
Despite having such talent he was being blind to the progress he had made.
It made me realise that negativity comes purely from perception and thus success is something one needs to internalise rather than having an external factor authenticate it for you.
Then Mode helped when I would see how he approached art.
He approached every drawing with Love. The love to make art, the love to just draw because you want to. You draw whatever you want whenever you want because It’s drawing for yourself.
I had forgotten what this felt like.
It’s easy to do that when you bring money into the equation of drawing.
I learned some important lessons recently.
Or maybe I just remembered what I had previously forgotten.
Either way I feel that art funk is now totally done with.
Things aren’t good just yet for me, but I feel I’m on the way to making things better for myself. I feel like I’ve learned what I needed to learn about art and continue making more SS and sequences….
I can only hope that maybe I can regain the trust you’ve all placed in me and make your investments yield some results.
This start to a new year will hopefully mark a start to new me.
-Lemon
Man, so where to begin….
I’ve been kinda heading downhill recently. I kinda have been getting more and more withdrawn. Maybe swinging and out of depression and waves of despair.
I don’t know what it is. I feel like a lot of situations in life I just don’t feel prepared to approach. So this leads to me just shutting down and pretending the rest of world doesn’t exist.
I feel like I’ve let a lot of people down this year when I launched my patreon.
I wanted that to be the definitive push for me to get my life on track, the motivation to work more on my art and get a better dayjob than being in an ok job with a terrible boss. I wanted to finally move out this year and do all these things and blah blah blah…
Unfortunately that didn’t happen.
Two notable things happened, pretty close to each other. I broke up with my Girlfriend of 7 years and I received some backlash on a commission.
Now please allow to me elaborate, the latter event does not compare in any way to the former, I only mentioned that only by the proximity of when they happened. (Broke up on a Saturday and Backlash on a Sunday)
I’m not going to comment on what exactly happened again, out of response for Sama and the only thing to take here was it took it’s toll on me. On one front was the shock of the event and then on the more slow gravitas realisation of it to follow.
So to elaborate, I took on a fairly big commission. Again, sorry to omit details here. But it was a fairly big group picture and it was a sports related one. If you know what I’m talking about you may know exactly how it went down.
Not very well, a certain community responded to it pretty negatively and I received some comments/mail mentioning how terrible of a job I did.
At this point, I panicked. I had no idea what to do. This was exactly like the time I got some mail from the part in SS3, except I couldn’t really respond in the same way… I felt like my lack of talent had been exposed. The great facade of being a competent artist had been debunked.
I had lost all faith in my art and lacked the confidence to continue. Though… I couldn’t admit to it at the time. I was at a pretty confusing point in my life. I had spent so much of my life trying to be a decent artist and felt this mountain I had been climbing only just grew 100 times it’s size.
So I halted on SS and my production came down to a snails pace.
I wanted to learn how to be a better artist before I could continue this…
At what point did I get over this?
Two artists/friends I follow helped illuminate on what I should do.They are R4 and Modeseven. Now this didn’t come from any advice they gave (though they did help numerous times on that front). But just from seeing how they approached art.
R4, is an extraordinary artist who for the time he’s been drawing has made stupendous progress. I can’t believe how fast this guy has learned. Though for all his demonstrations of finesse and technique. He (at that point in time) had such crippling doubt in his art. I’ve seen this scenario before, Artists been overly dramatic isn’t new. but I caught a glimpse of what I felt like myself. I felt like I was watching myself from the outside.
Despite having such talent he was being blind to the progress he had made.
It made me realise that negativity comes purely from perception and thus success is something one needs to internalise rather than having an external factor authenticate it for you.
Then Mode helped when I would see how he approached art.
He approached every drawing with Love. The love to make art, the love to just draw because you want to. You draw whatever you want whenever you want because It’s drawing for yourself.
I had forgotten what this felt like.
It’s easy to do that when you bring money into the equation of drawing.
I learned some important lessons recently.
Or maybe I just remembered what I had previously forgotten.
Either way I feel that art funk is now totally done with.
Things aren’t good just yet for me, but I feel I’m on the way to making things better for myself. I feel like I’ve learned what I needed to learn about art and continue making more SS and sequences….
I can only hope that maybe I can regain the trust you’ve all placed in me and make your investments yield some results.
This start to a new year will hopefully mark a start to new me.
-Lemon
Glad to see more stuff from you again!
The most important thing in all of this is you. Not the art. Don't let anybody make you feel bad about yourself because of art. We're with you, no matter how bad you feel, or how happy you feel, we are here to support you.
I know how it feels to struggle with ones own mind. I too had some major troubles in the past. (I still have) So reading this from you made me feel a good amount of empathy.
“The Path of the artist is the longest and most troublesome paths of all.”
That is the phrase I always tell myself.
It means that the path is never ending. Every step brings self improvement. Even if you are not drawing. Everything you do, everything you learn will be reflecting in the way you execute your profession.
One by himself can hardly see the changes but they are still there.
So let me tell you: “You are not alone” and “Never give up!”
I know, those phrases are quite overused and maybe do not even help. But they are still true.
Your art is good and your stories are better..
You are worthwhile, as a person and as a professional.
Even I have to deal with constant derpression... You shouldn't have to.