Another year, another art challenge.
I started out with an optimistic outlook with this challenge. Truth be told, prior to starting the challenge I was already feeling rather insecure about my art. Mostly it was the result of something missing or something I felt I was doing wrong... But I could never figure out what it was.
Intertwined with this was a sense of inadequacy towards my art. Since early 2023, I had never felt more confident in my skills when I made art with my current rendering style. Over the course of the next two years I slowly developed it, and I was proud of what I made as a result of that. But now, as I've told friends and others, I feel like I have hit a glass ceiling with my art. I found myself looking at the artists whose art styles I have been inspired by, and I couldn't help feeling that I'm still miles behind where I truly wanted to be.
My art style was supposed to be a combination of styles I admired, but somewhere along the way I developed something else entirely. While it's not necessarily a bad thing that I created something that ultimately became my own style, what I developed wasn't the ideal that I pictured myself having. And it started to feel... Wrong. It was so much that I wanted to learn a wholly different painting style just to make myself feel better over that.
An art community I joined pointed out I needed to improve on my lighting, so I started making strides towards that. After a while, my self-esteem took a hit to the point that, for the first time, I felt emotionally distraught towards my art despite all the effort I had put in towards learning up to this point. Perhaps, in some way, it is because of that very effort that made it all the more painful to bear. The pain was so immense that I couldn't find myself speaking to my regular friend circle without feeling some volatile emotion from being reminded of that.
I took time to reflect on what was happening with myself. I realized how bitter I became about art for reasons beyond just the disparity between the art style I had and the ideal I wanted. Beyond that, I felt like I just wasn't doing as well as my peers were for whatever reason or another. I was happy for them, yet I would be lying if I said I held no envy towards them over it. Somehow it felt like I was in my teens all over again—did I ever really change from who I was or did I just become better at wearing a faΓ§ade of confidence about all of this? I didn't know, but the whole experience left me feeling hollow and empty over art.
Despite everything, I'm still aware that I need to keep moving forward (and maybe I need to get rid of Bluesky and Twitter for good π
). As a silver lining, I am thankfully now able to put a proper description to the new art style I want to master: the use of hard brushes to define a figure's light and dark values. I want to continue working towards being able to create more art with said painting style. My hope is that by zeroing down especially towards my lighting studies, I will be one step closer towards achieving the ideal art style I've always wanted to have.
As a part of this process I... Unfortunately needed to distance myself from certain circles and friends. I want them to know that should they be reading this, I'm still okay, I still value my friendships with them, and I'm just going through a bunch of things I need to just let happen. It's eviscerating for sure, but I'd rather not jeopardize relationships over pain I have yet to fully move on from.
Thank you to everyone who has been supportive of me and has stayed with me through the course of my art journey. Although my outlook on art currently remains bleak, there's solace in knowing that there will always be people who support me, even if they're all a scant few. For that, I'm grateful. Truly.
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