I'm thirty something and I've been drawing since highschool. It's been a long time I'm stuck between being an amateur, giving up drawing, and being professional... I studied art and I have experience doing commission work, so it's not nothing, but at the same time, I lack confidence and I've never earned a living with art. I am not very consistent and I have a lot of weaknesses.
I want art to be more central to my life and I'd like to really become confident in my skills and experience.
Creating stories, making up characters and settings is something I take great joy in doing. It's the reason I started drawing. I want to finish at least one comic book, and then become better at it. I try to make manga art and to learn in that style, but I have a large style range (am very inconsistent) and I also look at realism to build up better fundamentals. Honestly, I want to be a professional manga or comic artist, but first I want to do some and develop my own stories and way of doing things before I confront myself with questions of level, competition and edition. 
I also want to review basics and become a better artist in order to teach art to people without feeling like a fraud. Learning and teaching actually go hand in hand I think, but the more I can practice the better I could teach.

I appreciate this place that gives me a chance to share motivation and inspiration with others. It's also a way to take a step back and write my goals and check my process, progress, etc. I hope it will help me become more consistent, to practice more, while not losing sight of what I want to create and the heart I want to put in my creations.
In the past, the experience of art school and a inhumane critical environment made me distanciate from my hopes, desire to create, and personality. I put a lot of effort into it, but I was unable to achieve things for myself and in the end, drawing was just not something I did with pleasure anymore. It felt like something I had imposed on myself, a huge mountain of difficulty with no reward, serving other people only. I stopped wanting to be a pro, but I didn't stop drawing.
Now I sometime feel that it's a tool that belong to me and I get closer to love what I do. I also realize how important it is to me, and I don't want to give up on that. I have already put so much time and effort in building my skills, and I faced a lot of hardship - it's a shame to not do anything with that.
The most important thing is that I focus on achieving my creative projects without getting distracted by too many other things- but I feel like training in a place like here can still help me with staying focused on improving certain areas, organize better, get motivated, and share the joy and hardships of drawing with people! I'm looking for feedback and happy to discuss anything art-related.
Thanks for reading me, have a nice day~

Hello!

I am so truly excited to be a part of this. My name is Josef and I am from Czech Republic. I am 20 now and trying my hardest to get to an art university. I first fell in love with illustration at the age of 14 when I saw a Blizzard art book at a local comic shop. I was immediately hooked, committed and never looked back. I honestly don't remember how discovered Dave, but his straightforward attitude really opened my eyes. Funny enough I never even tried to google the old forum he kept mentioning in his videos since I thought there is no way it still exists xD I tried it out of curiosity like a year later and to my complete amazement the forum was still very much alive.

So here I am, still can't believe I am now writing this. I have actually never used something like this before, so I don't even what I am doing. Also, English is my second language, so I don't really know what I am writing either. Already a promising start:)

Anyhow, I am here to get better. And I will. I will start posting as soon as I figure out how. I also look forward to helping others any way I can, although probably not many people here will need my advice. I looked around the forum a bit already and your work is pretty badass.

Many heroes of mine have come through here. I am honoured to have the opportunity to leave my mark i this little corner of the internet, surrounded by good people and artists of this caliber.

Take care everyone

Till later

Hello to everyone reading this 

I'm Joseph alias Komodo, 26, from France and I do graphic & motion design for a living. I like my job but I've always been very passionate about concept art.

Since I'm a kid, I draw on & off from 2 to 10+ hours a week. I've always been serious about drawing but never really studied art theory seriously. 

A few days ago something snapped as I felt like I was plateauing regarding my drawing skills. So I decided to begin again to learn to draw and -digitally- paint. I don't know if I can one day produce professional level illustrations but it's worth the shot. The journey should be rewarding anyway. 

That's the story behind Komodo joining Crimson Daggers. I'll soon post a sketchbook thread to share my art with you and collect feedback! I already started to draw more and focusing on theory and studies rather than trying to produce finished pieces.

Excited to be here, surrounded by amazing people and artists! Have a good one and see you very soon 

Hello! This forum reminded me of conceptart.org (RIP) and I decided to join.

I was in conceptart.org for a while, had a sketchbook going, but suffering untreated Bipolar I self-destructed quickly. I'm finally on meds that work so that is the past and there is still a future ahead even if I'm old now.

I've been wanting to get back into art. I have the itch back. I really want to learn how to draw as I'm at a stubborn amateurish level and made little progress in 30 years (I think I regressed really). I sometimes use AI to visualize my characters (I hope this is not a bannable offense!) but this just encouraged me to learn how to draw. I want to do it myself, from my mind.

Is it OK if I start a sketchbook straight away? Would appreciate the encouragement. I have one little drawing to show.

Thank you for having me here!

Hello. My name is Dwayne, I am an artist who has woked in animation, comics, illustrations, and tattooing. I have sort of lost my love of art and here in the hopes to reignite my light by being part of an artistic community. Here are some of my drawings and paintings.

I welcome any thoughts!

Hey guys,

I have been a silent reader for quite a while.
Back then I was too shy to make a account.
The first time I actual heard about that forum was probably 6-8 years
a go when Dave Rapoza talked about it during an interview.


My plan is to finally "git gud" and switch my career.
I guess being forced to work fulltime in a "normal" job
( I dont mean this in a non respectul way ) really pushed me to take
illustration more seriously.

I have to figure out a smart way to study art that wont
burn me out on the long run.

Im looking forward to get to know you guys.

Hi, I'm new here, I'll drop one of my sloppy sketches to be part of this.
I'm not used to do this, but I'm completely desperate and don't know what else to do.
The thing is that I've been trying to get a revenue from my art since 2015, after several years of studying, and dedicating entire days and months creating pieces, all I've got so far it's just failure; my art is never sold, it has been stolen, damaged, vandalized, no art gallery is interested on it, I've been scammed, it couldn't be sold on internet because I never got any visits due to me being a total nobody, and never got anything from it far from suffering and pain.
After losing literally everything, getting psychiatric treatment, getting to the point of literally puking when looking myself in the mirror, several mental breakdowns, and being one step away from living as a homeless, art is the only thing that I have left and I don't want to leave it behind.
Is there any advice or help that you can give me to stop having such a catastrophic artist career?
I'm even willing to sell my art as NFTs if needed
By the way, I live in a third world country, and english is not my native language, so I apologize if I couldn't express myself in a correct way, hope I get at least some words from you
Thanks a lot for taking your time reading me    

Hello!! My name is Ian and I'm into very detailed art, now if I'm going to be honest with you I'm not great at art at all, but hopefully with the help of everyone here I will be able to accomplish what I want!! As of the moment I have no way of publishing my work, so for the moment I'll just be getting used to the layout and everything this place has to offer. 

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A little about me!!  

I've been drawing since I could move my hands. Unfortunately I've gotten into the habit of staying in my comfort zone, recently I've been trying to get out of it. I would like brutal honesty when it comes to my art, as I haven't yet found a place that will tell me honestly what I need to work on. Right now I'd say I'm in the cartoon style(?) so everything isn't realistic. One of my several goals is to get into drawing backgrounds/scenes.   

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Goals:
- Get into drawing realistic entity's
- Get into the habit of going out of my comfort zone 
- Get some feedback and guidance
- Make some decent scenery
- Draw unique characters
- Get out of the same face syndrome

Hello everyone, nice to meet you all. I study art from the internet. I heard that critique is so important to improving on art, so I joined this forum. I wish I could make a lot of friends so I can get a lot of advice and have great discussion about art.

A little bit about myself I'm 19 years old and I actually go to art college, but my art college is suck, they don't teach anything. That's why I go to the internet to find a better way to learn art.

I am Artemis - real name Amy.

I'm a teenager(14), and I am still new to art, and to forums.
I have been drawing, doodling, sketching, etc. for a few years now, but I'm still not that good at it.
I usually draw random things, or copy images from the internet. I try different mediums, but the only one I don't suck in is probably graphite pencils, and maybe pen. I don't know why, but I've always been terrible at working with colors.

Nice to meet you all!