I think I understand some of what you're saying. For me, I definitely also feel "I want to create, not compete", but because I wanted to do artistic things as part of a "life career", I feel I have made many mental barriers for myself when I was younger. But speaking to other artists, I don't get a "compete" feel from them, generally speaking.

That doesn't fully stop issues around jealousy or envy for me, but being able to relate and think about how they feel does help me think that we're just on different stages of the same journey, in a way, even if that journey is going to be different for everyone.

Personally, I actually start having trouble seeing posts from some artists if they're so frequent I can't keep up, but I feel that's on me really, maybe because I don't check on stuff every day, so it can feel like a lot to take in if I haven't checked in a while. I certainly wonder to myself about how someone is doing when I haven't seen something from them in a long time and I'm self-conscious both about posting too often and about posting too little.

Currently I don't struggle so much with regards to actually posting stuff that I want to post, I just don't have time/energy to get stuff from my backlog up to a cleaned up look that I think is preferable.

And I don't mind messy art at all, but I admit that people tend to look more at things that look "clear" and I guess this is the curse of online anything for me, there's a certain feeling that if people aren't looking, then why bother? I've gotten over it a bit now, though I was often getting too obsessed about numbers or stats, I feel there's a balance to be had if you want to make yourself better known and still cope with your own self.

I think if you're struggling with caring about your own art, then you might try looking into why this is.

Really think about it, something like: "why don't I feel anything about this piece anymore?" or something along those lines, whatever makes sense to you. Also, consider that, just because you don't care now doesn't mean you won't care later and that it won't be relevant to someone else in this now too.

What's important to you, about your art? And as well, what's important to you, about the art of others?

Thank you so much for your reply, and for waiting! That second covid shot was, something, oof!

It's a big problem I have, and am working on, that I'll know something /logically/ but the...emotional? perceived? side wins out.
I definitely know that logically many, if not most, artists are about creation. Knowing logically, and perceiving are two different beasts

Amusingly,I spent most of my early teens certain I was going to reach my artistic goals and have it as a career! What changed is I researched what I had to do, and the /quality/ I had to achieve.

I'm one of those get discouraged types rather then the gung-ho ones ^^; I didn't quit though, so there's that?

I mean, I deliberately gave myself an unreachable goal to do it("you can quit doing art when you like your own art". No, I don't want to /give up/ art) But I mean, it still counted?

I've heard growth metaphors (we're all tress/flowers growing at different rates) but I must admit I've never thought of it in a more journey-like sense. That gives me something to ponder!

I do have some knee-jerk reactions, excuses? Anxiety? That I don't know how long the journey is and so I don't know if I need to push harder or can allow myself some more slack. However, that's for me to sus out. As I said, pondering.
I do, sincerely, appreciate it! Worst case, the mindset doesn't work for me. However, if it does I'll owe you even more, man, Shadowhide.

I don't check daily either, fwiw, I think very few do. It'd be asinine to expect folks to check daily! But I see why people try to post daily as well.

It's a mixed bag...I do know if an artist I follow post frequently with very little variety( same subject matter/pose/ same pallete ect) it all kind of just...blurs together and my eyes will just start passing over their pieces entirely.

I hope this isn't out of line, Shadow. You don't have to follow it of course! Have you tried setting a set time, 5 minutes, to work on cleaning whatever piece?
Can be while your watching TV/ listening to music, not a set time /solely/ to this. Assuming you find the art process relaxing. I definitely don't recommend if it'll potentially add more stress.

This is something that worked for me and writing for a good while!


If I'm 100% honest I actually don't look at stats :X I post the thing and step away...which actually could be an issue. "There, I did it, lolbye"

It actually leftover from my DA days, I'd obsess with stats, because I was in my mid-late teens.
The clock was ticking.(I felt)
If I was going to get into art I needed to hit that quality so I could start applying to schools and truly start my journey!
I saw the stats as a way to gauge how "good" I was.
One day I realized how upset it was making me. I'd spent a day staring at some stats. I'd worked so hard on a piece, it was "so good", why didn't people like it?
I understand a lot better how all this works now. Then though? So I turned off my stats. I stopped posting for a spell too, but that was due to irl.

Logically, I know I gotta look at stats, see what gets looked at, what gets faved. All that to grow an audience. I just...don't right now :X


I do know that feeling of "nobody's looking, why bother?"
All I can say is it's awful.

Your last paragraph is a bit harder to articulate a response too DX I feel this response may already be a bit word vomit-y and going into such things (even just prattling at a void...though perhaps I may later) could get, oof.

I do know some things that are important to me (color! Form! Give me some deep dark, contrasting shadows! If one isn't using shading, big, bold use of line) I'm working on them myself, finding that perfect contrast, but haven't found it yet. Slowly trying to work line back in...not line art, but line.

I digress! I will admit I've never factored any relevance to someone else. Not in a "no one sees, why bother" sort of way.
I suppose circular reasoning, back to "I'm bored looking at it so other people will be too. Nothing worth looking at"

I want to make something worth looking at, of course! Guess I just have to pinpoint what making it "boring".
Not boring to do, but boring to look at.
Like how it is when a very young child does art, you look at it to encourage, may display(fave) it, but you're never going to look at it again because it's just not interesting to look at, nor does it say anything.

My art hasn't been, at least not consciously, been about saying much for a good, long while.

Glad to hear you're better now, and no problem at all!

Thank you for the suggestion. It makes sense, my main issue with doing it is that all of my clean-up happens digitally, which means that I have to change my desk set-up and start up a program and make sure everything is on the correct screen and so on. Picking up a piece of paper and drawing on it casually is how I often get any sketching done at all, sometimes doing a few sketches in 3 minutes and other times filling a page in 15-20 minutes or more. What could be a 5-minute session for a digital clean-up inevitably becomes longer for me.

The other aspect of it is that I'm (not by conscious decision) the type that either does a lot of work in one go or doesn't do the work at all. Often, I've painted full acrylic paintings on medium/semi-large canvases in just two hours (rarely more), with no breaks of any sort and although they often come with technical problems, I do consider them finished in most senses because the paintings and drawings on which I spend several sessions working on, never seem to materialise at a (to me) "finished" level; I just have some non-conscious aversion to returning to unfinished work and I don't know why. Commissions have been the sole exception where I have a real obligation to return to an unfinished work or idea.

About stats. Obviously without knowing you personally this may not make complete sense; it sounds to me like you went through a phase of caring too much about stats and then adapted to your own feelings about it by going pendulum and not caring at all. Because of the way "exposure" works, which in my view you correctly describe in terms of growing, it means that not looking at all makes it more difficult to have some sense of why people might be interested in our work, especially because people so rarely seem to comment on the works of lesser-known artists like ourselves. If you looked at my gallery and saw comments on works, most of those comments would be on the fetish/NSFW pieces. I'll get back into that below.

Oddly enough, for me it was the other way around, I never cared about stats during my early dA/FA days (also my teens) and then when I returned here only a couple of years ago, I cared too much about it all of a sudden. Finding a balance was difficult for me at first.

I don't personally think your work is boring, some pieces could have better contrast, I guess? You can find minor flaws in most artists' works though, I see most of the flaws in my own work and generally accept that some people just don't care as much and that others don't notice them. What do you mean when you talk of your art not having been about saying much for some time now? That you're not attributing any specific meanings or symbolisms to it, consciously?

Personally, I think some part of the non-conscious processes inevitably seem to rise to the surface before the threshold of normal awareness in a way that will make meaning manifest itself naturally anyway, especially since you likely have a certain creative vision for your art and for the world. There's a potential jam-making metaphor there. In my view, the difference between allowing these processes to rise up independently and then doing something or nothing about it consciously, is a bit like the difference between having a rough cut gem and a polished cut gem. And only allowing meaning to come on its own has the disadvantage that in a way, you're not exploring every aspect of creative discovery; I think this part can be promoted by trying to get into subjects that you're not normally attracted to, as long as they're not especially boring to work on.

One thing I have noticed is that you don't tag your submissions very heavily, which could help with others discovering you - obviously keep tags relevant but thinking of some extra tags relating to the work could be helpful. Unfortunately I can't recall how I first came upon your profile myself. This is always a point of discussion for me though, discoverability. Here on FA at least, probably on some other sites too, a lot of discovery looks to happen around NSFW or fetish art. In my view this creates disproportionate followings because it becomes even more so about target audience and so on. My NSFW content is (generally) stuff I'm into myself, but generally speaking there are always going to be more people interested in that compared to my SFW or purely symbolic pieces. As I've seen from my own stats but also in other peoples' galleries, even for popular profiles, good technical work can get vastly less interest than a thematically attractive one (to a given viewer).

I'm a bit short on time now and there was something else I wanted to touch on but I forget what it was.

I'm sorry for the wait! This summer's ended up busy. It looks like it may be that way for a while yet.
That said, please don't feel like you have to rush to make any potential replies! I can definitely wait. And thank you for your reply!

Ah, not a laptop then? If it's not too personal, and if it is you don't have to answer. What do you do to relax? Like watch tv, play video games, read ect.
I wondering if doing it on the computer while editing is possible, like having, say Netflix, playing while editing things.

Again, as long as it wouldn't make something relaxing stressful.

Another thing that you could consider would be a more long-term goal. Look into something like an Amazon Fire/Microsoft Surface/ Ipad ect.
Setting aside 5-10$ every paycheck or something akin to that so it doesn't have to a large purchase?

You can get refurbished for cheaper, though maybe I'm just frugal XD

Simply that way you could have a way to edit that's more mobile. you could look into the options/reviews and available programs and such.


Oh goodness! The either hyper focus or never finishing! I've been there, it's a pain. I'm afraid I can't help there though, mine was fixed through meds :X. That's actually why I don't do commissions.


As for art not saying much, I suppose it connects with the boring in a way. However, yeah, there's just not any symbolism or emotion behind it.

There's been a lot of "let's experiment with media/technique. Let's draw something quick as the subject. Oh look, a dog, whodathunkit?" Which is fine on occasion, of course! One doesn't grow when being complacent!

I just find myself going "okay let's do some art." and it ending in "wow a bust/head shot. Very creative. You drew a bear. Who woulda thought you'd draw a bear? Much surprise. Very wow./s" a lot
So there's no symbolism, there's no emotion, I suppose not even technique despite what I tell myself?

Perhaps I've cornered myself in a nice little hidey-hole comfort zone? But comfort in name only. Familiarity breeds contempt as they say.

Ahaha, kind of makes me want to laugh then cry the idea that my mental whats-its may have bled into my art this way. Why can't it be angsty vent art like when I was a teen :P
I mean, at least I'm /doing/ art though.


I do try to branch out on subjects, though, perhaps not as often as I should. Perhaps not as varied as I should either. I don't touch insect/insectoids ever and I never really touch reptiles at all. And I find humans to be the only primates worth bothering with, for example.

Perhaps I should look into generators. I know with our talks of stats and such an obvious answer would be requests. Honestly, I'm still a bit scared of that, of overwhelming myself and going into my hidey-hole. I'm getting better about realizing when I'm doing it, but still don't like the feeling, nor disappointing y'know?

I've actually spoken with a friend about tags before, though they don't tag their work at all. I don't have any issue with tagging though just don't know how to tag properly, I suppose? I just don't want to get in the way, if that makes sense. I worry about mistagging, so I stick with what I know.

Oh man, NSFW, the elephant in the room XD. It's something my hubby and I have discussed as well as he's like "Why don't you do personal fetish art?"
I don't want my fetishes to become me "Oh that's Akorr the x artist."
Not that there's anything wrong with drawing your fetishes and what not! It's not a judgement. I must admit, I'm not much one for nsfw at all ^^' most nsfw I've ever gotten is nude studies.
I do understand it garners more of an audience though.

It's kind of like with style for me. I could easily mimic a more popular style to gain an audience, but then it wouldn't be /my art/. So I acknowledged that my style wouldn't be as appealing. I guess it's the same here? "Here's the action, here's the consequence, you prepared for that? Okay."

Don't worry about it, it's somewhat a casual conversation after all. I don't particularly feel any pressure to answer by the way, hope you don't either.

This got a bit overly long so I tried to section it.

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Well, I guess it's funny that I actually have an iPad that I got "cheap", on which I used Procreate to make a lot of my first posts on this account. That was my only decent way of drawing digitally for quite some time actually, but I fell out of love with its process and limitations. I probably have abandoned it a bit too much, because I probably could use it more for casual work like you suggest...

I think I just become so picky about certain things, I end up not doing it, things like having to get my scanned drawings to it first and then exporting them back to the PC and so on...

And about leisure activities, I mostly play games and sometimes watch something like a film or favourite show, but I tend to prefer something where I can have an active input, even if it doesn't require a lot of thinking. If something is too passive I can find it, unsettling? The right word escapes me now. Though honestly these days I'm finding little enjoyment in most things. Conversation is one of the few things that I find myself really enjoying but I don't get a lot of it sometimes.

Anyway, I am curious, you say that medication fixed the "hyper focus" or "never finishing" thing for you, could you explain in any more detail? By PM perhaps if it's more private? And about not doing commissions, did you mean because of a fear of never finishing them?

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Hah, I see what you mean about angsty vent art from teenage years, I suppose I did a lot of that but not especially proud of any of it now. More recently I have done vent art on this account but I guess I have a different way of going about it now too.

You have something that I hear a lot from other artists. Drawing something and assuming there's no meaning there. Some really do seem to just automatically draw certain things and say "I don't know why I drew this" and never really getting beyond that. In my consideration, you didn't consciously think of the subject, I can understand that, but some part of you probably did think it was relevant to draw that for some reason, I would think...

My opinion only, of course; meaning, in terms of a symbolic and linguistic substance, is not something that comes without some effort of thought. For me it's normal now for nearly everything I draw to have a meaning but I think it probably wasn't always that way. And while you might think that my drawing practise has no meaning, a lot of my choice subjects in practise work often comes from how I'm feeling, not necessarily about what I know needs improving, although that does play a role too.

In any case, if you think I can help you in some way in terms of artistic meaning and so on, just let me know.

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I hope this comes across as some kind of constructive criticism, let me know if you take issue with something I've said, of course.

Honestly, from what you do have uploaded here, I personally think you're good in terms of technique, which I seem to get the impression you have doubts about. Are there flaws in your work? Sure, but I think we can really see the flaws of any work if we're looking for them. Most people don't actually look, I think. Any of your work that I might think is not as good as you can make it, I consider that maybe it was an off day, or that it was actually casual and you put in a different amount of time or effort.

For me at least, technical skill is not a constant... In regards to what we discussed earlier on the "compete" feeling, I think that some artists only post their more "perfect" pieces and do everyone a small disservice that makes it seem as though they are themselves perfect and that it's possible to be that way, even if they have all the same self-doubt. The reason for doing so, is logical, of course...

It's just that in my view, this is a societal problem in regards to how everything has to be "tidy", "good" or about performance; ironic to me since in my native culture there always used to be a lot of "bodge" and "that'll do", but I guess even now that's not quite true anymore. Just my feelings, I feel that there's too much pressure on being perfect, these days. And then we all end up depressed...?

From you, I think what I'd like to see more of is just, more stuff, in all honesty. While I can't remember how I got to your profile in the first place, your stylistic approach is one of the things that does appeal to me.

I think in regards to themes and subjects, experiment with other subjects to be sure, if there's any initial interest in them but there's no "do or die" there, since you can always drop that interest and pick it back up later if it ever seems relevant to do so. Like lately I've been doing practise around birds quite a bit, something I haven't really had much of an interest in doing before.

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Yeah, I don't really know what people think of me in that regard. "That's Shadowhide, he does..." what, exactly? :P But I feel I probably appear a bit random in my choice of subjects to others, that it likely doesn't matter.

You're right anyway, you should do what feels right to you and not necessarily what makes you more popular. Maybe doing some things that help you be more well known, now and then, can't hurt. It really just depends on what approach you have to all of it and how genuine those attempts feel, to you. If it doesn't feel like "you" (and you haven't been paid for it) then don't do it, I think that's a sound guideline, anyway.

Like with requests, whether you accept them or not would still be up to your discretion. Personally, I don't accept requests because I feel I might too easily accept something I'm not actually interested in and I know myself, I can become too personally invested in something that might actually not be worth that personal investment, causing me harm in the long run.

I'd much rather do an art trade with another artist, because it's more likely that I (and the other artist) will get something in return, other than just some practise or "good feeling", a distinction that to me, feels important.

I don't know if this will help as I'm not sure how..."professional" your exporting process is.
However, when I don't want to deal with editing on the computer I'll scan the file and just email the 100% raw, unedited file to myself, open it up on my tablet or laptop and edit there.

If you want other options for the Ipad there these options for editing and/or editing. If memory serves all adobe products are available through Apple, like Photoshop and Illustrator and such.

I have a refurbished Amazon Fire so I'm a little limited on what I can

I've used this for editing: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adobe.....ad/id804177739

Art programs I've tried or use:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ibis-.....-x/id450722833

https://apps.apple.com/in/app/autod.....ok/id883738213

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/conce.....?platform=ipad

Adobe Lightroom, Ibis Paint X, Autodesk Sketchbook and Concepts in case there's region malarkey.

I freaking love Autodesk. Ibis Paint is the most Photoshop-esque though, it depends on what you prefer, assuming you didn't care much for Procreate.

Ah, so something in the background would not be your thing? Conversation is a great one! If you can do spoken be it irl or via discord or Skype you can edit while chatting, perhaps

~~~
I wouldn't say I'm proud of the angsty art of my teenage years, just simply it had meaning, or perhaps a blatant meaning? You could look at it and tell it meant something/was telling you something/a story, which is something I want to do ultimately, tell stories.

It's more "I wanted to draw thing" or "Thing is easy to draw so I drew it" it generally more...low effort isn't quiet right but that's the only thing that comes to mind. Perhaps because I get hung up on wanting to do well on technique I go for "lazy" or "easy" subject and pose.Who knows?

~~~

I'm always open to critique! I've considered making journals directly asking for it but anxiety seems to always get in the way. Logically I know the chances of someone saying "You suck" straight up, to my face, are slim, but logic is nothing against anxiety.

I digress!

I do struggle a lot with how I see my technique. I don't think I'm bad but hmm I get hung up on "I want to be good" a lot. What's good?

That I could get jobs off it. Have I tried? No, I want to be good enough. Perhaps a different rut I need to figure how to pull myself out of. Do I want a job in art? Not at the moment, I don't think I could handle it, but I want to know I could


Oh, there's definitely a culture (or at least a subset) of you must show your best stuff, showing largely sketches and more "hobbyist" pieces is seen as "lazy".
Growing up wanting a job in art (originally character animation, then everything became digital, then largely CGI and I enjoy neither so then it became comic penciller) certainly left its mark.

Like an overbearing parent, it must be perfect or it's not worth bothering.

There would be a lot of benefit to saying "Mistakes are okay". The mindset is there, of course, just hard to listen to when it comes from the "wrong" people (parents, teachers, people who "have" to be encouraging)

I've scanned a bunch of stuff and edited it! Now it's just a matter of a posting schedule! Progress, whoop!

Amusing you mention birds because that's the first thing that came to mind when I thought "Okay, figure out something new"

Playing with beak shapes has a lot of potential.

~~~

I've thought of asking that too "What makes Akorr's art Akorr's?" but figure it might come off too much like fishing for compliments. Like "I had a sad, stroke my ego", which wouldn't be the aim. However, I can't control how others read my stuff (art or writing)

Draw fox, draw all of the fox, yip yip yip :P Re:popularity I kid, of course. I do understand what you're saying, though. You've certainly given me something to think on for sure, thank you!

The main thing that became an issue for me with Procreate is actually more the hardware-imposed limitations around canvas resolution and layer limits. So the issue isn't so much Procreate itself in that regard, because I quite like how well it performs and its feature-set is very complete. Quite often I was struggling to do stuff at a good working resolution because I wanted to use more layers, sometimes only temporarily, but that made the process annoying.

Sort of by extension I also started to realise I had an issue with it because the iPad feels needlessly obscure about file locations and sizes; plus it backs things up to my Apple cloud, I think, but looking into that, it looks equally obscure and I can't actually determine anything useful from poking around. I just find these types of veils over information to be really frustrating. I'm fairly certain a lot of my Procreate project files are actually quite large and I generally take issue with deleting project files even after I've completed them. This just meant that concerns around file size and space available on the iPad became much more present in my mind.

Finally on that subject, I obviously do NSFW stuff, so this meant my iPad has become this sort of "black book" that I can't really show around or share, because there are many exported image files and so on that are NSFW and with no real control over their visibility it just means I feel uncomfortable at best with sharing its use with anyone that isn't my partner.

Sometimes I can talk while I work but sometimes I really need to be focused on what I'm doing, nobody in the room. Sometimes no music, even. Just depends on what I'm doing. Curious if you think about it, people have worked without music for most of history, it's quite a different setting to have music so readily accessible at almost any time and place now.

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I see what you mean on your working subjects, that's understandable. I think that's probably why I don't try to do certain things so much myself. An example, I have a lot of interest in open mouths and vore and such, though I have actually done very little in those subjects, because they feel... "Not so easy", to put it a bit like you.

My teenage art really was mostly about feelings but with it always felt to have poor expression of that aspect. Also on looking back even a couple of years later I would realise that the art's title had lost its original meaning to me. At that point I started to understand why artists have sometimes simply left their pieces untitled. And yeah, storytelling is probably one of the more interesting aspects of creating visual art, since it can be an accessory to something else like an actual story.

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Yeah, I am the same in that regard of anxiety versus logic. Even with recent posts I sometimes dither about before actually pressing "post" simply because of that... There's always an anxious expectation that I might fail someone or myself, somehow.

And yes, that's right. My family and my partner can tell me that something is good and whatever but it's not the same as when someone else without a "love" bias confirms it. Like a lot of my teachers were also encouraging people, actually more than my family in many regards, but often that wasn't quite good enough for me because I was also fairly close to those teachers that were encouraging to me.

I think with making a job out of it, it's a bit of just going ahead and just doing it (not as easy emotionally), at least if you don't want to work for someone else anyway. It takes time to get going but like my partner's self-employment was the same; the first years are difficult for many reasons and as time goes on it does become easier, also because people become more aware of you. Like with commissions for me, it's not a significant amount of money realistically, but it is something and the thing about them is that I've had way more interest than I expected. But I guess that goes into the popularity aspect of the subject a little bit, too...

I'm largely self-taught but I did arts at college and wasn't great at it; then did a bachelor's in design and eventually did a master's in game design. I learned some really useful things in the design course, for life and thinking processes as a whole, but that course just highlighted my flaws when it comes to creative processes, I learned a lot of my weaknesses from that design course. I hoped to go into game design professionally with an interest in doing game mechanics and systems but the course was just a bit... weak. I ended up not finishing it and getting a partial degree for it, but it really has made no difference to my life, not like college or the bachelor's did...

All this to say, formal education can suck and be of no value and it can be of value but not in the way expected. What we end up doing, for me, feels like is sort of a game of fates. I feel like the people that are "excellent" at stuff when they come out of a course and actually get a job in that field, are the people that are more less just "programmed" that way from the start anyway, which just wasn't my case. I'm not saying they didn't have to work hard, but still, I think you'll know the kind of people I mean.

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And happy to hear about you getting some art stuff moving. :D

Will be good to see more from you! It might come off like fishing for compliments but maybe not, because it can depend on how you're asking. Though you're definitely right about people's interpretation anyway.

I wanted to comment a bit on critique stuff but am short on time right now. :x