art insecurity clubhouse

Well, comparing yourself to other artists is a surefire way to make yourself unhappy and we don't like seeing you sad :c

Anyway doin' stuff is really hard and like i've said before, really reminding me of myself now and even more so before i was getting treatment for depression. Now that i'm out of that hole things are a lot easier in general but being popular and making popular art are easier than they seem? It just takes persistence, tbh. I know i've spent a lot of the past year or two trying to release some of my hang ups around art and return to where i was in early high school, when i filled countless folders with bad ocs and doodles of random characters and situations and just? So much stuff? Because while i did care about quality i wasn't so caught up in making everything perfect and worthwhile

So anyway i bought some cheap shitty sketchbooks and terrible paint from the dollar store and watered it down so it was less obnoxious to use and started chucking shit on a page. I doodled the characters from an old story that i doodle everywhere because they have v simple character designs and decided to reboot it, and i'm not posting it anywhere until i either finish it or have a buffer of at least half the story. That built my confidence up enough that i've moved to better paper and paints and using quality materials and stuff again, but i'm still in this nice mindset of just shit a story out and hope it goes okay? It's work and practice and it feels like i'm just having fun, which is the important thing. Sometimes i'm literally bedridden with depression and can't summon the eneregy to do it, which is fine! No one is waiting on me or relying on me, and sometimes i get a huge burst of energy and work on it for 36 hours solid then collapse, but its worth it because i'm making myself happy and getting things done. My self worth is less tied to my work, and that's good.



and i'm slowly building up my folders of art again :v

Here's some of my earlier work when i started, btw:




I made a bunch of shitty autobio and played around with adding colour with the paint, working up to more complex stuff



Then managed to make and print a minicomic :v



It's totally doable and you'll get there! Don't push yourself too hard, its okay to just move along at your own pace.

I'll also note r/n that since those starting comics? I've been published once, made my own mini (that i gave to one of my local comic heros and he said it was rly good(!!!!) have 2 comics in books that are going to print early next year and just did a really nice skype for a vlog with another local comic artist about my work and stuff. And it's mostly been through finding more comic people both locally and online? Everything is connections, tbh.

The guy who complimented snap actually made a comic about that very topic


Anyway i know saying that you'll get there eventually etc etc isn't very helpful; i got told the same thing. But the first step is letting go of a lot of anger towards yourself for not being up to making things, because you're not your art and you can't measure your worth by it.