All Good Things… Can’t Draw, Won’t Draw! · 11:45pm Jun 21st, 2020
#Blog #Bloggerstribe #AllGoodThings…
20th June 2020
Hello, Chaps and Chapettes,
Welcome to another edition of “Scaramouche gripes about a part of his life rather than gives us a healthy dose of advice. Why do we even follow this again?” I’m just kidding.
Nobody’s following this. :P
What I’d like to talk about today is some of the hobbies I’ve attempted to kick off of the ground and why they haven’t worked out thus far, but also why that’s okay. As it was the main hobby that I thought would go somewhere, I’m mostly going to focus on art, but I’ll also touch on attempts to play a musical instrument, attempts to get fit by running, and anything else I can think of that I am currently doing far less off.
Art is my biggest bug to bear with as I still return to it sometimes. I do love drawing and creating pieces that I want to share. I suppose the sharing part is the problem.
You see, ever since I was little I loved to draw, paint, and basically do anything creative. When I was still in primary school, I’d start to trace images of Thomas the Tank Engine characters, soon perfecting them so that I could draw them without the need to trace. This skill became transferred to attempting other cartoon characters, and at one point I was drawing South Park characters and selling them to friends for 50p per character. They loved them and that made me feel good. If I’d kept up that little hobby-enterprise, I might be more successful at it than I feel now.
Skip ahead a bit and I got great marks for art at a GCSE level (that’s where Secondary school ends in the UK) thus decided to try for my Art A-levels, alongside English Lit and Lang. However, something changed for me in this year and among many things, the idea of seeing through an Art A-Level was sullied by a disagreement I had with my teachers about how the class was leading me away from a desire to build my skill and into experimental and revolutionary art practices. I got a good grade for AS-level but did not pursue and complete the A-Level in the following year.
Despite this, I still wanted to do something with my drawing and painting interests. I decided to draw and write a comic about some characters myself and friends from the furry fandom created called ‘Furlives’. It was my attempt at creating a funny, sometimes introvertly sexual story around my passions. I made it unprofitable by creating a furry version of Doctor Who and later attempted to revive it with a new story with new characters, this time called ‘FurFiction’. However, as I posted these in my galleries on FurAffinity and DeviantArt, I became disillusioned by the realization that few people were watching or liking what I posted. I did other pieces for people but never charged as I was losing faith in my abilities, comparing them to others, and finding myself lacking.
What seemed to be the real nail in the coffin came one Christmas when I was about twenty years old. I decided to offer to draw and paint bespoke commissions for colleagues in the call center office I worked in at the time. I charged a very small price so that I could earn some money to pay for Christmas gifts. I did pieces during this time that I was actually proud of, including painting a dog belonging to a woman to give to her terminally ill husband. This is still my favorite of all my works.
Unfortunately, it all came to a halt when I gave another commission to a different woman in the office. I went back to my desk and started to work when I saw them come in. I watched them go to the desk, look at the picture, and give it a blank stare. After a few minutes, they came over to me, waited for me to finish my call, and then gave me some rather blunt feedback.
They didn’t like the picture. They felt I hadn’t drawn the people from the photo correctly, the image I’d drawn looked nothing like them, and they didn’t want it. This, looking back, was fair feedback, yet they did this in front of all the colleagues surrounding me. There were no walls or barricades blocking what she said, so I was left feeling embarrassed and apologized, let her keep the picture which I’d also framed and did not charge her anything.
This act stuck with me like a blade between the shoulders of what I’d enjoyed ever since I was a kid. Now, every attempt to lift a pencil or paintbrush was marred by this, and the lack of likes or interest in anything I did share drove it deeper. In the end, I had to step away, because art became an albatross around my neck.
This has seemingly had an impact on most things I attempt to do, not just art. If I try to do something just for myself, I usually enjoy it. However, when I start to share it and I see no views or feedback that is critical of what I am working on, I feel foolish for falling into the trap of trying again. Additionally, if the ability to learn to get better takes too long, it often trips me up or can stunt my attempts to keep going as best as I can.
So why is this okay? Why should I feel that there’s something to gain from this?
For one, it’s made me realize that, with anything, you should not expect positive reviews. If you get them, great. If anyone even remotely glances at what you’ve done, brilliant! But DO NOT RELY ON IT. If you draw, write, play, whatever, for the sake of someone else’s applause, the lack of it will drive you insane.
And if you get it, no matter whether it is one person saying “I like this” or a full standing ovation, appreciate the heck out of that. So many people chase their whole lives and never get it. Some get disillusioned by the lack of it. Some hurt themselves over it. If your audience is kind enough to tell you that you’re doing a good job, make them feel like you are happy about it. Definitely don’t take them for granted, you never know when they’ll turn on you.
Lastly, don’t give up. If you’re an audience of one, then at least you’re entertaining yourself. You’ve got a good thing in the fact that you have something you can focus on and enjoy, many do not even have that. Love it, believe in it, and let it be what it is. Sometimes, you don’t really get to see what it will become, as we have learned from people like Van Gogh and Emily Dickinson.
You never know what you’ve got, so stick at it. It might be what people will be talking about for centuries to come.
Stay safe, stay happy.
All good things,
Love, Scaramouche.
X
