I have a lot of respect for you, and artists like you that strive to get better every day. There's just certain qualities folks like you have that let you overcome each hurdle that comes your way. I don't have the strength to push as hard as that to make something worthwhile.

The thing is, with your art, it’s that you lacked proper guidance and the free time to hone your skills. I know that if you had more time to put toward it and someone to stand over you and point out your mistakes, you would have more to show for it. It’s not your fault your art is not where you want it to be when you literally don’t have the time or energy to put toward it. However, that being said, every new piece I’ve seen you draw has still had a marked improvement over the last.

I could play less video games, but with two jobs (well, one for the summer) I'm not usually "in the mood" for art. It's mentally draining, if that makes sense.
Thanks man. I'm not sure I'll ever be where I want with my art, though. Especially when I want something more realistic and less cartoony. :P

Honestly, as difficult as art can be, going from one style to another is less difficult than it seems, you just have to make sure you’re drawing with references. I rarely draw without them anymore, and usually only go without them for little thumbnail sketch ideas.

Sort of a tangent, but every once in a while, I'll see an artist that almost perfectly replicates another artists style, though with some things that make the replication seem almost uncanny (one or two details might be different). I've seen a few people imitating Kuma and Braford's styles, and it's always intrigued me how an artist is able to create new poses and such using a style that's just an imitation. I find it fascinating that they're able to do it.

Honestly, I really hate seeing that. I've ranted on Twitter several times about how I hate being able to see exactly who someone's influences are because I wouldn't be able to trust that person to come up with an original drawing if they don't even have an original style. Your style is just how you draw, and if you can't draw like you, you have no artistic identity. That's at least how I feel about it. Even if you can switch from one style of art (I should have clarified earlier to say genre rather than style, tbh), it'll still look like yours if it's something you've developed rather than aped.

Hmm. You raise a rather interesting point. I hadn't seen it from that perspective before. Never saw those rants because I don't use my Twitter haha. I should really use it, might grow my social media platform so I can actually get some readership for my novels. >.>

Twould be a wonderful idea! Despite the general toxicity of social media, it's still the best way I've found to grow your audience!

Sadly, it's also one of the things publishers look for nowadays. They don't want to spend money on marketing or building an audience. They want to take on authors who have an audience already, and who can do most of the legwork themselves. But since I have issues with authority as it is, I'd really rather be independent anyways... but then I still gotta build that audience myself!

I hope it works out for you! Just remember that it’s just a bit of colour and if you make a shape that’s not right, it’s easier than you think to fix it because all you do is just use the colours around it to shape it back to what it should be. Think of it like sculpting, if that helps. And along with that, make sure you have the fundamentals down to make it work, especially your handle on lighting, multiple light sources, and reflected light. Painting with colour alone is almost impossible to make it look realistic without a good grasp on that. I like to start by painting the core shadow first and lightening things up from there, but there are other methods that might work better for you.

Best of luck, and please don’t let yourself get discouraged! It’s difficult, but there are few things as rewarding, at least to me, as being able to step back and look at a finished product and think “Wow! I painted this! I painted this!”

I need to draw more often first, but I agree with the things you've said.

It's all about the thrill of the struggle!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cifJ-QDCuUE

Interesting and useful thoughts. Thank you for sharing :)

Good afternoon! I am a painter. My art journey was much the same as yours in that my process went through the same stages and now it's all kind of one stage.

My friend showed me this journal and asked me what I thought of it.
And I wanted to share, because my opinions are so important (They're not)

https://imgur.com/a/eX9jt12

TL:DR You're right and wrong! everyone's take on this is. Everyone is basically saying the same thing, it's just very polarized from the internet and interpretations of the words.
Hard work is incredibly important, you have to do the work to get the results, hard work is not the same as struggling though. And that we as a community should be helping each other make it easier, and not harder.

Keep creating beautiful work.


(also in the bit about art school is that struggle didn't help me get better, it made me worse
I was already pushing myself and trying to get better and working and learning as hard as I could, I decided to go to art school to help me do that
it messed me up for years, and if it hadn't I'm sure I'd be a lot better, that said, there's still time, and I will keep working hard, I just lost a good 3 years while I was in art school)

HOO BOY there's a lot to unpack here. I want to firstly say that your friend (whomever they may be) is...really quite wrong in quite a lot of things, firstly saying that I've romanticised any part of how difficult my journey has been. I've actively talked about how much the debilitating parts of my artistic journey has been awful for me and how I wouldn't wish it on anyone. In my streams specifically, I actively tell people how to avoid the mistakes I've made that led to the suffering I've gone through with my art. Yes, I'm very open about the difficulties in being an artist and how learning how to fix your mistakes can be exhausting, but I've never once said that the suffering I've gone through has been the crux of what made me the artist I am. Furthermore, what they said about the pride should be in overcoming those obstacles, well, that's kind of literally what this whole journal was about, and I did state that several times, that the struggle is finding the problem and figuring out how to fix it and acting upon it is what makes you blossom and bloom as an artist. Basically, your friend is focusing on half of what I said, rather than the whole thing. (I've also never once said that the way JK Simmons' character's way of teaching was good and have again said the exact opposite. I have said that what the main character goes through in bleeding for his art is not unusual and is how I myself record music: I play until I bleed in my recordings because that means I couldn't have put more into it than I did. I thought the ending was great because there's no way the main character could have given a bigger "fuck you" to Simmons' character. Again, focusing on half of what I said rather than the whole thing. TBH, that kind of hurts to be taken so far out of context.)

My whole point of this journal is that struggle does not equal suffering, which is stated several times. Struggle, by definition, literally means fighting to overcome a challenge, and the whole point of this journal is that having that challenge means that you have room to improve and to embrace that, because art is a lifelong journey and so long as you care about your craft, you'll never stop improving. That improvement, more often than not, comes from seeing your art and being unhappy with it, and therein lies the struggle - not suffering, but struggle. That's my whole point, and, hilariously enough, that was the whole point of what Noah Bradley said when he caused that whole shitstorm that he and his wife both have been suffering from because people misinterpreted what he said and took it to mean that struggle is suffering, despite the fact that he and his wife have repeatedly said the opposite, just as I did here. Struggle just means you have room for improvement, and being able to recognise that, and specifically to act on it is a wonderful thing, because that means you are improving, and that was the whole point here.

Your friend said that it's a lot of semantics, and yes, it absolutely is. I really want to be as clear as possible to them that while I spoke of my suffering in this journal, and while I speak of my suffering often, I never once and never will say that my art is what it is because of it. Quite the opposite. If I had known how to fix the mistakes in my art years ago, I can't imagine where I'd be right now, but I can absolutely tell you it would be far above where I am now. What happened to you at art school, being told again and again that you're not good enough and hating everything you do...that's suffering. What you're doing now, finding issues in your art and fixing them your own way, that's struggling and overcoming, and that's wonderful, and that was my whole point. I'm rambling at this point, but I'll say it again: when I say struggle, I absolutely 100% do not mean suffering, because they are completely different things. My suffering didn't get me here, my suffering held me back. My struggles are what pushes me forward because they tell me where I can improve, which is the same in any craft.

As for what they were saying about me being the equivalent of the rough teacher who says suffering is the best...maybe direct them to my first response to Stormhowl above, there.

Well I mean this is what I’m saying too is that the internet is polarizing, it’s really easy to come off far more negative than you mean to. I think the last sentence for example shows a lot of tone. And yeah art is extremely hard but I don’t think saying to anyone ‘get better or get left behind’ feels very much like for example my experience at school and I don’t think it encourages anyone and will only discourage. But the message of you have to work hard, really hard! Is a fine and important message.

Basically I think both sides are half right and half wrong and they’re each focusing on the /wrong/ half for the other

Anyways thank you for your thoughtful reply and I apologies for the pain and the suffering your lived through.