Pushing Through Feeling Inadequate: a Somewhat NSFW Art Update
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For those that haven't read my blog The Vulnerability of Starting a New Hobby, the long and short is that I've been trying to learn how to draw and create visual art. I've tried to do this many times in my decades of life, but I've never been able to push past that feeling of inadequacy that ruins my enjoyment of the craft and inevitably leaves me giving up altogether.
This is the first time an art attempt has made it longer than a few days or weeks. Over the past few months I've been trying really hard to push the boundaries of how I perceive so I can better interpret that onto the page. Between the three different Udemy courses I'm taking (one for pixel art, one for the basics of drawing, and one for beginning gesture drawing) and the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards, I've been taking in an overwhelming amount of information on how to break free of my inability to stick with art.
Admittedly, I haven't made a lick of progress on my pixel art course since my last post. I've done a couple basic assets as stand-ins for development for one of the games I'm working on, but I've been really focusing in on my actually drawing for practice lately.
While I'm sure that you've picked up on the fact that I'm not a pen and paper girlie (all of my art is done digitally), I'm still trying to predominantly do everything by hand with a (smart) pencil but on different layers so I can easily fix part of the whole when I realize I fucked up. I'll let myself take advantage of some of the more time saving features once I have the skills already built up, but not as a means to miss out on important steps in the learning process.
Since the contours shared in the previous post, I pushed through more lessons in the basics class, I finally made it to the next big challenge: still life art. I won't show my very earliest attempts here as they were rough, but within a couple of tries I feel like I started to get my footing better! Here are a couple of the ones I'm the most proud of so far.
This was around the time I started to feel that familiar pull. The voices in my head grew less supportive, telling me, "Give up already. Sure you've made some progress, but you're not even enjoying this anymore. What's the point?"
But this time I fought it, and rather than trying to grind through the slog of dozens of still life practices (the homework for this section of the basics lesson), I decided to mix it up. ADHD brains crave novelty, so I figured that my best chance to keep moving forward was to jump onto a new set of tracks heading towards the same goal like a subway surfer in the night.
This is where I finally started another course I had purchased on a whim during a sale a few years ago: gesture drawing.
At the end of the day, I know myself: I want to draw characters. People. I want to make fan art of my dnd games to immortalize iconic moments from in game. I want to draw my friends and their families and have it be nice enough to appreciate as a piece of art, not a just a thoughtful gift. I want to maybe even open up some commissions and create art for people that don't want to go on the same journey I am.
I've taken each class seriously, but I do feel I've dedicated the hardest to this gesture drawing course out of those I've taken thus far. Even after weeks of work and practice, I'm still only equipped to do gestures that have basic details on the legs and lower torso.
Sure I could've moved on and learned the feet and hands, arms, shoulders, head, butt, and chest, but I'm forcing myself to slow down. My body itches with the desire to "speed run" learning art, but I'm fighting that impulse with every fiber of my being. I know that to get this right, I have to build not just my understanding of what I'm seeing, but the technique and speed with which I create the gestures.
This is easily the longest I've stuck to a single section of a lesson for no reason other than my own drive to get better before adding more. I may not be in love with every single one of these, but overall I'm very proud of the progress I've made in what feels like such a short amount of time compared to how long I've avoided doing art.
As you can see, I've gone through 32 different poses for practice. While the long-term plan is to push forward and complete the course, for now I'm aiming to continue with more gestures of this level of detail until I'm hitting closer to the amount of time my teacher is suggesting we aim for: 5 minutes. Will I ever achieve that time? Only time will tell (because right now my ability to focus, even on medication, says no).
I wasn't sure if I would post an update on my art ever again, but I've decided life is too short to care too much about the judgment of others, especially internet strangers. Even if this post doesn't help someone struggling to feel proud of their art push further or reassess how they view their own creations, that's okay. I don't need to make some grand difference in others life to share things that make me feel fulfilled. Silver linings are sometimes the best we can hope for, and seeing myself do something I've failed at for my whole life is definitely one I feel is worth celebrating.