Also, The Reason I Vanished

Quick art dump for the new year!

WIP

Had a friend send me an outfit reference to draw a character around. Decided to go for a strawberry cow gardening. It fits pretty well.

I needed this in my life so much

I just had a small epiphany why you might like other people's art more than your own:

It's the lack of suspension of disbelief.

When you see something someone else has drawn or painted, you take in the content faster than you take in the technical aspects. You experience it as pseudo-real, the same way you stop perceiving animated characters as drawn or book characters as written as you get into the story.

On the other hand, when you yourself have made something, all you see is the machine behind the theater, so to speak. You're probably thinking about lines, shading, coloring in a "does this make sense? Is this the best decision I could have made?"-kind of way.

I think that's also why sometimes, pictures you haven't looked at for a long time starts looking nice to you again, à la: "Hey past-me was unto something! Why can't I replicate it nowadays?". It's probably specifically because you've forgotten the process of making it that you are now seeing it with fresh eyes.

Art is an illusion, but a magician has a hard time tricking themself. So don't be so hard on yourself: it's probably just that you can't see the magic right now, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

Bonus @mangakeque doodle I just found in my sketches folder. The face was so funny I couldn't resist redrawing it.

As requested by a friend:

The worms

.....

Do not punish the behaviour you want to see

I mean, it seems pretty obvious when you put it like that, right?

But how many families, when an introvert sibling or child makes an effort to socialize,  snarkily say, “So, you’ve decided to join us”?

Or when someone does something they’ve had trouble doing, say, “Why can’t you do that all the time?” (Happened to me, too often.)

Or any sentence containing the word “finally”. 

If someone makes a step, a small step, in a direction you want to encourage, encourage it. Don’t complain about how it’s not enough. Don’t bring up previous stuff. Encourage it.

Because I swear to fucking god there is nothing more soul-killing, more motivation-crushing, than struggling to succeed and finding out that success and failure are both punished.

Long overdue fanart for @mangakeque as thanks for the art they made me. :)

@cheesecakegardener the pfp you asked for

Done!

I may have gone overboard with the lighting, but it was really fun to do.

I wanted to draw Ranboos avatar when it first debuted so badly, but the burnout stopped me from doing it. (or anything else for that matter)