RE: art insecurity clubhouse
05-15-2016, 04:25 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-15-2016, 04:43 AM by Kaynato.)
I wish I could even say anything about this with relation to visual art because I have sort of given up on getting anywhere serious with it. Try a little harder sometimes? Sure. Ok. But when I make really awful things and then have no idea what I'm doing it's a bit difficult. I don't really even feel like it anymore. I never started even properly drawing people in the slightest bit until sometime in secondary school, before that it was all stick-figures. I was legitimately scared of drawing self-portraits in primary school. Art was a class I almost dreaded. All the way to middle school my art consisted really of landscapes, stick-figure comics of some weird imaginary extension of runescape of all things (I remember only a few: the first was called "squirrel invaders" of all things) or my homespun Zork ripoffs, made of half-folded and stapled A4 paper...
I got a Vistablet around 7th grade or so. Around then I decided to put my homespun Zork ripoff to the test and tried to run it as an adventure on MSPAF. It failed rather awfully. Around the same time I opened a facebook page to draw on (2010-ish) and did some things there I guess. A bunch of other people were also drawing and got a ton better rather quickly. Some of them are professional now. I don't interact with them at all anymore. Many failed adventures later and running out of things to post the page died and I slowly moved out of MSPAF, feeling that my adventures consistently died just because of my weird impossible standards with art. I stuck to forum games after that where I could write. After I got too ambitious and tried to run a ludicrously complex one I stopped that as well.
For some reason I find myself envious of others' happiness. I think this is probably my own problem.
I will say that I really have improved. Ask me to draw a human at least decently a few years back and I would have completely balked and refused. Now I can somewhat do it. I actually sketch. I actually prepare at all before my drawings, sometimes. Still, I do not say "I am a person who draws." I do not say "I am an artist." I don't think I'm up to that. Not up to the task.
I made some adventures as a result of my own frustration. With MSPAF down, they will probably not be recovered - that is for the best, honestly. They were a cesspool of self-hatred. Looking back, though, maybe it was still an actual coping method - putting the causes of my misery in such an absurd light that I could distance them and make light of the predicament, so I could approach them from a less negative standpoint. Maybe it worked. As soon as the mood lifted I couldn't actually find any drive to continue those adventures.
At that point I had a few ambitions.
A large game design project. Multimedia. Audio. Graphics. Mechanics. Programming. I got stuck on a basic part of the engine and ever since four months ago I have not worked on it a single bit. I have decided to stop working on that and instead focus on a new project with better tools that hopefully is in a more sane direction. It intimidates me. But I want to create. I don't know if I can do it. But maybe I'll try.
Art insecurity for me is also about piano. I stopped lessons last year. It has been thirteen months since then, now, and I fear I have slipped fiercely. When I fumble arpeggios and slow practices of pieces, when my expression feels empty and meaningless I am acutely terrified that I have lost something dear to my heart. I hope to continue lessons in the future because with unreliable practice and no guidance I do not trust my own ability to really propel myself forward. I am no professional, but I do consider myself someone who plays piano.
Writing is something else. It's something that I probably just need to do more of - not enough to gain a serious sense of what I should work on but enough to discern a rather vague one - enough to plant a fear that fences me in.
Action is the word of the day. Just keep going, just keep trying, just keep, maybe, hopefully, improving or something. At the least if you change your mind that's one more thing you've tried. Maybe it won't. Maybe it's not really "skill" but just "luck
" each time. Maybe impostor syndrome isn't wrong and it's not really my own accomplishment. But I guess if the result's there in the end that's still something that's been done.
I tie too much of my own creation to the validation of my efforts.
I tie too much of my own personal worth to how I am appreciated by others.
Ask me to do something for myself - that's fine. After I show it to anyone else it's not for myself anymore. I can't even want that, no matter how much I should.
Maybe I should be working on this as well.
I think I am trapped in a strange place of self-scorn and undirected frustration. I have been making things that I do not want to make and unmaking things that I would want to make. I hate it. It is not the me that I want to be known. It is not what I even want. There's a Greek word for this I don't remember.
I got a Vistablet around 7th grade or so. Around then I decided to put my homespun Zork ripoff to the test and tried to run it as an adventure on MSPAF. It failed rather awfully. Around the same time I opened a facebook page to draw on (2010-ish) and did some things there I guess. A bunch of other people were also drawing and got a ton better rather quickly. Some of them are professional now. I don't interact with them at all anymore. Many failed adventures later and running out of things to post the page died and I slowly moved out of MSPAF, feeling that my adventures consistently died just because of my weird impossible standards with art. I stuck to forum games after that where I could write. After I got too ambitious and tried to run a ludicrously complex one I stopped that as well.
For some reason I find myself envious of others' happiness. I think this is probably my own problem.
I will say that I really have improved. Ask me to draw a human at least decently a few years back and I would have completely balked and refused. Now I can somewhat do it. I actually sketch. I actually prepare at all before my drawings, sometimes. Still, I do not say "I am a person who draws." I do not say "I am an artist." I don't think I'm up to that. Not up to the task.
I made some adventures as a result of my own frustration. With MSPAF down, they will probably not be recovered - that is for the best, honestly. They were a cesspool of self-hatred. Looking back, though, maybe it was still an actual coping method - putting the causes of my misery in such an absurd light that I could distance them and make light of the predicament, so I could approach them from a less negative standpoint. Maybe it worked. As soon as the mood lifted I couldn't actually find any drive to continue those adventures.
At that point I had a few ambitions.
A large game design project. Multimedia. Audio. Graphics. Mechanics. Programming. I got stuck on a basic part of the engine and ever since four months ago I have not worked on it a single bit. I have decided to stop working on that and instead focus on a new project with better tools that hopefully is in a more sane direction. It intimidates me. But I want to create. I don't know if I can do it. But maybe I'll try.
Art insecurity for me is also about piano. I stopped lessons last year. It has been thirteen months since then, now, and I fear I have slipped fiercely. When I fumble arpeggios and slow practices of pieces, when my expression feels empty and meaningless I am acutely terrified that I have lost something dear to my heart. I hope to continue lessons in the future because with unreliable practice and no guidance I do not trust my own ability to really propel myself forward. I am no professional, but I do consider myself someone who plays piano.
Writing is something else. It's something that I probably just need to do more of - not enough to gain a serious sense of what I should work on but enough to discern a rather vague one - enough to plant a fear that fences me in.
Action is the word of the day. Just keep going, just keep trying, just keep, maybe, hopefully, improving or something. At the least if you change your mind that's one more thing you've tried. Maybe it won't. Maybe it's not really "skill" but just "luck
" each time. Maybe impostor syndrome isn't wrong and it's not really my own accomplishment. But I guess if the result's there in the end that's still something that's been done.
I tie too much of my own creation to the validation of my efforts.
I tie too much of my own personal worth to how I am appreciated by others.
Ask me to do something for myself - that's fine. After I show it to anyone else it's not for myself anymore. I can't even want that, no matter how much I should.
Maybe I should be working on this as well.
I think I am trapped in a strange place of self-scorn and undirected frustration. I have been making things that I do not want to make and unmaking things that I would want to make. I hate it. It is not the me that I want to be known. It is not what I even want. There's a Greek word for this I don't remember.