Another year, another downer of an emotion-dumping to ring things in. Holy shit, I really do only post journals literally once a year, don't I? Maybe it's just because twitter is so much better for sharing fleeting feelings and thoughts, positive or negative or otherwise.
Eh. Whatever. If you wanna read through this, then I appreciate that you took the time out of your day to do so!
At this point, I've come to feel like the new year is basically an arbitrary distinction, though a good excuse to get together and have a big dinner and with the pandemic still going it was a bad idea to even do that. I honestly have a difficult time imagining things improving substantially in the near future, so I'm not gonna bother with positive sentiments or anything like that. Instead, just gonna talk briefly about what I've been doing and what I want to do.
In short? School has been an absolute drain on me. With the stress from literally everything else bearing down on me, it exacerbated my executive dysfunction and I ended up in a horrendous feedback loop where I had to crunch to turn in work on time, ended up too emotionally exhausted to do anything but watch youtube and slack off, then had to crunch again because I didn't have the capacity to work on material ahead of time. I only just barely passed my classes, although I guess I'm content with the bare minimum. After all, that's all I get from this fucking world anyway, right?
So yeah, I've been totally and completely unable to even think about doing art, save for the thanksgiving and holiday break - and even then, I'm just so tired and unable to will myself to work that I have had a hard time doing anything aside from basic poses. That being said, I'm still really happy with the Gatomon and Amelia pictures, at least, and I have a few more I should try and get around to cleaning up that I did while over Christmas break.
More importantly, though, I've got a minor backlog of commissioned stuff, too. It's kind of hard to muster the will to post when I don't get much response and I feel weirdly pressured to write a giant description, but I'm still in no mood to ever return to posting on FA, given their horrendously outdated website and piss-poor moderation. Out of the options, IB at least has a functional tag blacklist.
In general, though, I'm not sure how much art I'll be able to get in the future. It's not like I don't WANT to get art. I'm actually dying to get another piece soon because it's one of the few ways I can actually boost my mood. xD
But I'm very particular about the quality, and unfortunately not able to afford much. Everyone's raised their prices, and I don't blame them for that, but it just makes it nearly impossible to buy a cheap stream sketch on a whim like I used to be able to.
On top of that...? I'm weirdly dissatisfied with the state of my stuff. Not my own art, I'm ignoring my shortcomings for the time being, but the stuff I commission from other artists. I have a textfile laying around that lists a whole bunch of ideas I thought would make for good pics, and you know something? Few of them actually seem to hold the same muster now as they did when I first came up with them, and... whenever I look at others' stuff, my pics with blank backgrounds just seem so shallow and insubstantial by comparison. You know? This picture of Maki that I got seems a lot more appealing to me on a deeper and more fundamental level at this point than something such as this Nori pic, although I'm still really turned on by both. I like art that feels like an actual lived-in world with a whole history you could delve into. I want background details that hint at what I'm otherwise forced to imagine myself. Stuff like in Snao's art where you could see posters of hyperfurs or piled-up bottles of discarded GRO-chems or big, beautiful interiors.
Or maybe it's simply that, for whatever reason, the novelty wears off my own stuff faster than the art others do? I don't know.
I can't 100% articulate why I'm not happy with my commissions, although they do certainly turn me on, but that feeling of insubstantial-ness is certainly real, and I'm not sure how I'll be able to address it going forward. In the end, it comes down to what I can afford, of course, and while I'm not complaining about folks charging for backgrounds (they're fully justified) I'm just saying it sucks so hard that I can't readily afford such things.
Anyway... I'm really sorry for this long-winded rant! Like always, I only ever post journals when I have something serious I gotta get off my chest. I doubt anybody reads these anyway. But it feels good to say them, I think. I'll post a new pic in a bit to even things out at least. x)
*gives you the good hugs I keep on reserve* That's a lot of ruff stuff to climb over. Love your ideas and art. You're a treasure to have around. Just take care of you and what you can.
*gives you the good hugs I keep on reserve* That's a lot of ruff stuff to climb over. Love your idea
