07-27-2015, 10:05 AM
I'm still on the learning journey, so I don't really have any answers, but I want to relate to that feeling of not getting anywhere fast enough.
I think you get to a level and plateau for awhile not because you're not improving, but because you are solidifying and expanding more sideways than upwards - I don't know how else to explain it, but I feel like I've been nose to the grindstone for 9 solid months, and can't really see much improvement, but drawing in general is easier.
The more I listen to other artists talk, the more I realise that they always have drawings which they feel they could have done better, so I don't know quite how you manage to judge your own work as commission ready or not, apart from other people being willing to pay for it.
I 100% have days where I feel like art school would be so much easier, just do the work, and any extra self study would be directed by what the school work at the time was, or just by interesting stuff that you feel like hunting down. I find the self learning to be such a huge ocean full of things that I often get paralysed and just spend the whole day doing timed drawings because I can't get my head around what else I should be doing. I have a terrible time making decisions as it is, and the fear of going down the wrong path and wasting time on the wrong thing, plus the overwhelming number of choices means I will just flounder.
I think you get to a level and plateau for awhile not because you're not improving, but because you are solidifying and expanding more sideways than upwards - I don't know how else to explain it, but I feel like I've been nose to the grindstone for 9 solid months, and can't really see much improvement, but drawing in general is easier.
The more I listen to other artists talk, the more I realise that they always have drawings which they feel they could have done better, so I don't know quite how you manage to judge your own work as commission ready or not, apart from other people being willing to pay for it.
I 100% have days where I feel like art school would be so much easier, just do the work, and any extra self study would be directed by what the school work at the time was, or just by interesting stuff that you feel like hunting down. I find the self learning to be such a huge ocean full of things that I often get paralysed and just spend the whole day doing timed drawings because I can't get my head around what else I should be doing. I have a terrible time making decisions as it is, and the fear of going down the wrong path and wasting time on the wrong thing, plus the overwhelming number of choices means I will just flounder.