Hello once again!
Whether or not your holiday mood is over or still prevailing, the month has concluded and thus a new reflection has to be written.
To be honest, I didn’t enjoy Halloween all that much this year. For one; I didn’t celebrate. I couldn’t come up with something to do, didn’t ask anyone out or had any special thing planned to help the day stick out from the other. I played a couple of spooky games and tried to spread the good spirit of the day but that’s about it.
The second reason was that I felt completely drained artistically; Most of the time, I’m working on school projects and, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy working on them but my personal projects are taking the toll and this is something I think needs to be addressed finally.
This is nothing new, I have been feeling this mood since last October, where I went through a small existential crisis before I applied to university.
I thought this mood would vanish once I had this new direction set but for some reason it didn’t and it has shown up a couple of times. The small break from SM hasn’t helped either, it even made me a little more distant so it feels. Sure, parts of it could be blamed on the change of this website, but this is certainly not all that’s influencing me mentally.
I am in a big struggle in my arts. Even though I think I could manage them, many concepts end up the the scrapyard and many more projects compared to the years prior.
For whatever reason I am demotivated to create, building ideas feel as hard as ever and nothing new sparks my creativity. The stagnating feeling I described before my little SM break… yes I think it is still around. And while I am happy with the few pieces I managed to finish this year so far, it just nags me that there could be more of them if I hadn’t scrapped my projects and just moved on and put more energy in the process.
I can’t fully comprehend the why to these things but the effect they leave on me is always the same: I feel even more demotivated and as a result; I become less productive and begin to feel like I’m underdeveloping my skills to stagnate.
The go to strategy was to find purpose in my art; if not doing it for me, I found it through others having value in them; which usually helped but now it is dawning on me that this might not work any more…
I have developed doubts over myself; that I won’t be able to keep my standards up and thus decrease the quality of my art; a vicious cycle is what I am afraid of. The last couple of weeks I just wanted to cherish the lovely Halloween vibe to be productive and develop nice little projects; they rarely ever met up to my wants; I wanted to produce quality art but none of my concepts really felt genuine in that way. I need many new approaches to projects before I could even consider to finish them and when they are finished, I just keep asking the same question: why don’t you develop more?
Maybe I’m a bit too arrogant; thinking art is a craftsmanship like any other: over time, you get better at it. And yes, I see improvement to my past works in terms of technique but… not in the substantial part: the creativity, in fact I’m seeing a decline.
And I keep wondering; what took it away, what was the defining factor about how I saw the world and managed to bring it on paper. I had no struggle depicting a video game, movie or song that led me to imagine beaches, hellscapes, lush hills or a new character design but nowadays… as strange as it sounds, with the more thought I put into my works, the less genuine they feel… and the less they tell others about me.
Hmmm so what could be the solution?
I’m not sure.
And this is why I’m writing it all out, because I haven’t done it before. And I’m so far out that I’d really consider bringing this topic to more people and hear if it resonates with them. And hopefully reaching someone who has had the same issue and found a way out.
I don’t feel like sharing thoughts of my art like I used to for this one; mainly because I don’t have much more to share than I have already explained somewhere in the comment section.
Anyway, this new month should detach me from personal art projects… it is brimming with school work that I can’t afford to do something else rly, maybe it came just at the right moment. I’ll keep up a positive outlook and as long as I still have my lovely friends at my side, my mental health shouldn’t be something to be concerned about ^v^
So don’t expect something to show up in the near future, I’ve got a lot of stuff to do.
I’m sorry for everyone who expected a special Celebration from me this Halloween, I love the holy day, I really do, but it didn’t work out this time and I’m probably more bummed out about it than anyone else…
Have a nice November, the year is almost over so spend your time well… as always.
~Souvillaine