That Time You Have Artblock

I never claimed to be an artist. When I was going through elementary, middle, and high school, I always got the worst marks in art class. I liked to doodle, a lot, but I hated art class just for that fact (Ironically, English, one of the degrees I graduated with, was my second worst). In fact, I never thought I could draw simply because I never received much positive feedback on my work. Mind you, I had horrible luck with clay (it didn’t get along with the other pieces all too well, even if the clay was part of the same piece) and usually we had to draw silly still life things like scissors (mine always looks like some under-the-influence squished monster thing – I don’t even know…).

Of course adding eyebrows and fangs doesn’t really help…

Due to this, I even avoided taking any art classes in my undergraduate. However, it seemed, no matter how old I was, how I dressed, or how I tried to act, people who didn’t know me all too well always assumed I could draw (the same way people think I’m a vegetarian). But I can’t. I can’t draw realistically, I can’t copy the art styles of others, and my artwork is by no means consistent! I got C’s and D’s and SFRTG! (That was a keyboard slam, by the way, not an actual grade…) However, before you start trying to cheer me up, saying that was  or think that I’m just saying this nonsense to get compliments, let me get to Point 1, something a crazy professor said to me my first semester of graduate school – Everyone is an artist. Of course, like I said, this man was crazy. He would sing songs and make us act out words and dance around and we were all 21+ and sober as far as I knew…

However, his words stuck with me and I started an ask-blog, where I drew answers because I wanted to get practice for making comics. I made friends with a bunch of other people of various ages who were also doing ask-blogs. It was a great experience during the time I did it and it linked up as great experiences for talking about literacy (I used to talk to my advisor about it and she was in love with the whole idea of bringing different ages together). However, after a year, the block started. None of the questions I was getting seemed all too inspiring, and I started running out of ideas for what I wanted to draw. So against my better judgement, and going by my ask-blog community’s advice, I took a break. And then a longer break. And now the blog is in a ghost town with a bunch of other ask blogs from the same fandom as we all shifted into the rp-relm.

And it’s like writer’s block – the longer you stop, the harder it is to get back into it. After a bit, a similar thing happened with rp-ing – you decide to reinvent your muses, change characters, the works, but none of it works. After that break, you don’t feel like writing again. It’s the same as how long it’s taken me to post blogs. Strangely, I have about 11 ideas in draft. This one had to have been started maybe a year ag-

Oops

Honestly, there have been long spans of time where I wouldn’t even touch these drafts and sometimes, when I noticed the link to my blog was with my main bookmarks, I would contemplate deleting my blog, believing nothing was of good quality, but that was the thing that my art in literacy professor was trying to say: when you don’t keep going with your art, soon, nothing feels good enough. So I kept the bookmark in with my everyday ones and continually returned to my drafts, working when inspiration hit. It’s important to push yourself to keep going. It doesn’t have to be magical at first, but when the real inspiration finally arrives, you’ll at least be in the pattern of actively writing about it, instead of putting off the inspiration and letting it fade away.

So now, for the x-millionth time, I’m  going to try to stay more active with this (at least between cosplay projects) and finally get those drafts done. I’m going to try to add more art of derpy scissor monsters (or maybe something more relevant) to my blogs and go from there.

 

Until then, that’s it for now,

~Hex

“So you’re the new poison gym leader, right?”

“You have some rather huge shoes to fill, considering that, well, my dad and I were the only poison gym leaders for awhile…”

I drew this for an RP group I’m in, so if you see it elsewhere, then it might be from that.

That’s it for now.

~Hex