smrrfette's Odyssey

[Fedodika]

you could just post something you did yesterday tomorrow and take the whole day off. Getting burnt out is the worst and it only happens to people who works super hard! just take a whole day off no drawing at all, and then you will slowly get back into the swing of things.

happens to me all the time, somedays you work 12 hours, (childsplay) some days you work 16 hours, somedays I go too hard then its like 4 hours the next day and i find myself just blowing things off. The key is breaks, like very often, and sometimes it catches up with me and if you work straight for like 5-6 hours specially on something boring it HURTS! rule of thumb is every 2 hrs you break even if your knee deep into something.

I'm not going to tell you what you could specifically do to pass the time. but what i did was something i knew i would also get burnt out on fairly quickly; playing old games that i knew i'd get frustrated with. or doing stuff for hours that would make myself ask, "why am i doing this?" But you know the next day, i found myself slowly getting back into the swing of working super hard.

And yes, it's good that you are making something each day, in the long run we have to get used to that if we want to work in commercial art. not everything we want to do is going to take that same inspiration and motivation, and you just gotta push out that crapp.. as brad rigney once said, "make excuses to draw, you'll be glad you did."

if you go to Dave's old sketchbook on CA on page 61 he gives a little rant about all this and every bit of it is gospel to me. but overtime, you know, the little tidbits of wisdom from other artist you pick up seem to fade away, and you need somebody to remind you they are all true. you can't and you won't be inspired all the time, so just lose that fantasy like we all have to at some point. You
have the right idea by posting each day and being dedicated; that's 100% of this is just doing the work.

On a side note, i think you get burnt out for the exact same reasons i do. You make things, studies etc. and you think that you've worked so hard for the past year that it should look great in a small amount of time... Well sometimes, if you have a good reference and you think just right, maybe that's the case, but 90% of the time, it's going to take more work to create something good and worth looking at.

I find myself looking at stuff i did this month and just saying, "man i'll never make it, (some dude like algen) was way ahead of me at this point." and i just close it. so just skip that altogether and try your hardest each time to make something that is good and worth looking at for you, you'll be glad you did.

I lub you with all my heart smrrfette and i want to see you and everyone on this side who busts their ass succeed because, it's like i tell my friends: Either this is going to work out or it's just a really really mean joke...