sketchs

But I no like my sketches either :P

I really like parts of your style and a lot of what you've put out there. I think you have a very unique perspective and I'd love to see more of it but obviously I can't really tell you how to like your own art. That's something you'll have to find on your own I think. I can speak a bit from personal experience as someone who also hates their own style though.

What usually kills me is the discrepancy between what I want to portray and my actual ability to do so. There's a reason pretty much everything in my gallery is just a simple asset or part of a collab which will be shared no matter what. Everything I draw starts with some idea, and how I feel about the finished piece really depends on how well that idea came across, not the quality of various details or how much time I spent or anything like that. If I started something wanting to portray some specific sense of depth and scale for example, it doesn't matter how well the piece came out, if it doesn't have that feeling of depth and scale exactly as I wanted to portray it then I'm going to hate it. And the more time I spend on it and fail the more I'll hate it. To make matters worse often I find that my style in general just doesn't allow me to draw certain details at all, which is just frustrating. I find myself constantly wanting to draw in a way that's completely outside my style for that reason but when I try I struggle immensely and ultimately can't really break away from it.


I can't really say I've worked past these problems, I haven't. What helps me though is adding challenges to recontextualize why I'm drawing. For example instead of drawing because I want to portray something specific which I know I will fail at and will end up tweaking until I hate. I might make it a point to draw with some additional constraint so I can make working around that constraint the reason why I'm drawing. For example setting out a very specific pallet that's somewhat outside of what I usually work with and only working in that pallet. Or establishing a very sharp, very directional, light-source in a scene and working around that. It allows me to stop measuring the quality of something by the metric of "how well does this match my original intention" which I know is impossible to succeed at, and instead measure things by the metric of "how well did I work around this specific constraint" which I can actually succeed at sometimes.

Anyway I hope you find something that works for you. I do like what you've drawn, as mentioned, and would love to see more of it.

Thank you for the thoughtful comment. I know why I don't like my style. It's changing it that's difficult, and something I've struggled with for years and have quit art a number of times because of it. It's like a long time habit, it's not easy to break. It does not help my mother gave me her perfectionist habits, that too drives me insane sometimes (but I've been getting better about that).
As you said no one can tell me how to like my own art, I have to just experiment, teach my hand to draw in unfamiliar territory. Just the frustration, disappointment, among others, that's another challenge to overcome as they eat away at me sometimes. I don't know, it's crazy how complex it feels sometimes to be an artist...

Mental health is hard. At least you've managed to maintain the desire and motivation to draw. There's more to that than you might be giving yourself credit for. You've managed to put out a not insubstantial gallery and I know you've almost certainly done a lot more which never made it here. It sounds like you've honestly made a lot of progress in a lot of different ways, but it's hard to see it that way when your still in thick of it. If you set out to make a boat then it can at times feel like the only difference between being 2% of the way there and 99% of the way there is that in one case you've put in way more time, money, and effort only to still have a boat that doesn't float. I do think I get where you're coming from but it's good to sometimes step back and appreciate the progress you've made.

From a more general perspective what seems to work best for most people, which I've never been able to really do, is to take a detached view of your own art. Where whatever they draw doesn't actually have any real significance, if it comes out great or comes out terribly it's all the same and they can just put it away when their done and never look at or think about it again. I've always been somewhat envious of that approach. Anyway I hope you find some way forward. I'm sure you'll be out of the thorns eventually.

I'm not sure I'd call it "Maintain". More like...well, I have nothing else to turn to so I just keep doing art. Obviously it's more complicated then that but I don't want to write out a wall of text here lol
Oh, and actually 97% of what I draw I post in galleries/Pateron. That other 3% is usually sketchbook/painting stuff I'm too lazy to scan in/edit to post :p So there's really not much I haven't posted in my galleries.

Hmmmm...wow, I'm not sure I could handle a detachment view on my art. Especially when drawing my characters, or character story stuff, I'm too attached to my OCs to draw art of them with a detachment view. It'd make me feel like it's pointless to even draw them if I don't feel anything out of it or even want to look/think about it >.< But I could try that for small stuff maybe.

Thank you for the wishes, I too hope I can find a way forward, it would be nice to get more work done. Maybe I'll try something right now after all this thinking.

Well I look forward to seeing what you come back with. I'm sure it will be something optimistic and bright which conveys a feeling of hope for the future.

Ah, well, it'll be something I suppose. Which is better then nothing! Thanks for chat, and good luck with your art as well.