Week 1 Day 3

 Had a breakthrough vis a vis the whole burnout/I never draw (or create generally?) anymore. I was doodling around in the linux equivalent of ms paint (didn't even know it was there until tonight) and I had a thought as I was drawing "eugh, this looks like something I would draw" and it did occur to me that that feeling is probably one of the the things that is stymieing me. 

I definitely have this self consciousness that my art isn't very good, or that it's ok but could be a lot better but I'm in this big rut. I'm the kid whose not paying attention in class because I'm drawing an eye. Because I love to draw eyes. Because eyes are easy for me to draw. Why do I just draw a bunch of blank faces looking vaguely at the camera? Aren't there fine artists who just do that as, like, their day jobs? So what's wrong with that?

That last thing does actually gall me a little sometimes. Like a remix on the detestable sentiment "Why's that in a museum? I could've done that" (which like 1, no you couldn't have, and 2, ok then do it). But it's a little weirder for me because, well, some of these things I could actually do. We stayed in an airbnb recently-ish and there were some figure drawings up on the wall and with one of them I thought to myself, "I hope the guy didn't pay money for this... I did better figure drawings than this before I even got into my program at school"

I'm referring to the one on the right, but can we talk about this sexy couple that someone thought would, idk, set the mood for the room??

But it seems to me that feelings of "I could do better than that" rarely prompt me to actually do anything about that feeling. Maybe rue that I haven't tried selling my old newprint figure classwork as another revenue source? I feel like I'm sort of going off track at this point.

I guess the point, if there is one, is why do I feel like I have to achieve at a certain level in order to feel like making art is worth doing? Why can't it be enough that I like doing it? Do I like doing it? I don't like doing it and thinking "ew looks like something I would make" but how do I get past that? How do I return to the kid who isn't paying attention in class because drawing eyes is awesome in itself? Maybe I should do some master studies. idk.

Anyway, here's my revelatory doodle:

I look at this and think "this is basically what I was doing back in 2012 when I did this project for the first time :/ When am I ever going to grow as an artist?"

On a less philosophical note I've also considered a few technical things (e.g. it's a pain to log into blogger now that I'm not constantly logged into google) that may hold me back this year. I guess we'll see. Maybe I'll come up with workflows that are better for that.