As some of the people I'm connected with here might know, it's becoming harder and harder for me to get myself to draw.

Or, maybe more accurately, I haven't felt the same sense of liveliness that I'd felt in the past when I drew before. I feel a heavy sense of frustration and emptiness when I try and draw nowadays. Lately, I've been struggling to draw, and struggling to draw just about anything I'm satisfied with.

Before, I'd be drawing and doodling in my sketchbooks, pumping out all sorts of new pictures and sketches each day.

But now I'm spending days and weeks staring at the same plain white page of my sketchbook without even picking up my pencil and pen.

Part of it is me being frustrated with whatever preliminary sketches I come up with that look obviously disproportionate or out of perspective. Granted, with that, I haven't drawn in a while and I might just be out of practice.

Another part of it is me feeling overwhelmed with other things going on and being in-between colleges. It might be stress wearing me down and distracting me: Voices in my head telling me I have "better things to do" with my time than to draw.

Another part of it is me feeling that I outright lack the capacity and drive to actually complete a comic, as I've been telling myself to do for the past four or five years. For thinking of myself as a comic book artist and rarely ever drawing a single page of sequential art in recent years, I feel like some kind of shameful fraud. Although, this could easily be remedied by me finally just...sitting down and committing to a project.

Another part is me feeling like I don't know why I'm drawing anymore. In the past, I'd been driven by the desire to earn others' respect and admiration. On one hand, this spurred me on a great deal and fostered a massive improvement over my work in the past. On the other hand, this became horribly self-destructive when I felt my work didn't measure-up to my standards. At present, I don't know if I even have the drive to draw.

Another part is me feeling inadequate as an artist overall, but that can easily be overcome with consistent, grueling practice...but then that means dealing with all of the other problems that are nagging me. So it's...kind of cyclical.



If any of you put yourself through reading this, eh...
Well, on one hand, thank you for your time, and thank you for caring. @__@; I just happen to be enduring a rather frustrating and stressful night at the moment, and my mind went to a very dark place.
ON THE OTHER HAND, if you've ever been in a situation like mine, what did you do to get yourself drawing regularly again?


HAHAHA. LOOK AT THAT. I'm posting a journal entry on deviantArt for the first time in over a year, and it's for something like this. >_>