ive looked over my art again and again (i save all my pics, in an old shoebox.) i filter, look, glance, shuffle. all i see is my mediocrity, a horrible style, the inability to see things from any other perspective. quite frankly, i feel my dream is dying, seperating from me.
"quitters are people who never realize their dreams" kry aptly put it in one of the posts. my frusteration with everything is causing me to think thoughts of quitting. i can feel the frusteration literally eating me alive. i cant seem to grasp basic concepts that other artists grasp so easily. like i stated, i have no style of my own, truly. and drawing from other perspectives has me bundled, confused to no ends. nothing seems to make sense anymore. i feel like my art is stuck in a rut, now repeating the last things ive "learned" over and over again. no tutorial can solve this near insane burning, no amount studying can cure this pain, no pep talk can cure this depression. why am i even bothering to post? because, i feel that if i dont, ill just quit. final.i just dont know where to start, where to end, where to do anything.
so i ask of someones help.

Sounds like a case of serious artist block. Serious, serious.

So what you're saying here is that you're having trouble developing a style you can call your own and the fact that you're not grasping the concept of perspectives and such?

It actually sounds as if you're pushing yourself a little too hard there.

Start small; find a style that's already out there that you fancy, draw said style for a while, and when you've got the grips on it, try searching up on other styles and experiment a little. Eventually you'll reach a transition where you'll start mixing and matching and coming up with something pretty zanny, if not fresh.

As for perspectives, you should start off with the basics, side, front and back. I seem to have the same problem too, but then I just stuck with the o'le 'character concepts' doodles: your simple back, side and front views; and that's way before I developed a liking to my favourite 3/4 views.

MR's got pretty heaps of tutorials around. They're way helpful.

But like I said, really, don't push yourself too hard. It took me a few years or so just even getting angles right, forget about perspectives! And style... bleh, I lost count of the years just searching up artists and watching cartoons.

Time, my dear friend. Time and patience is the key.

It just takes time.

I guess im glad i never followed the lead of other artists when i started out. Trying to become as good as the better artists right off the bat, it's probably frustrating to start off with such a mindset.

When i was at your stage, i had no desire to become as good as anyone. I just draw becos i liked doing it. And since i liked drawing, i did it a lot. As the years went by, ive become a good artist without even trying.

It's just your way of thinking getting you down. As long as u keep doing it, you can only get better.

yea thats how i felt a few months ago

thanks... just reading this calmed me down like five notches (^_^) ill try some of the things you guys said.

Just building on what Des and Nyx have said, you just gotta take it easy. You know how it is, you look at a drawing and you just see how unsuccessful it is, especially when you've failed at trying to nail down something specific that you wanted to get right, especially when you've read and understood tutorials and had such a clear picture in your mind of what you wanted to do. It's hard when you put all that effort into something that just disappoints (and eventually depresses) at the end when your finished.
If you try to get better at it just by willing and trying, it's just not going to work well, because you just won't draw as much. I've tried like that for the last 3 years, and I think I'd have done alot better if I just tried less and enjoyed it more.
Sometimes, just drawing the same thing, like profiles of faces, will help. Don't be afraid to copy or trace artwork, you can learn alot by doing this (just don't go overboard ;)). You can draw little comics, where the main goal isn't the quality of the art, it could be small in-jokes you have with your friends or your most hated teacher being tortured in some way, just do your best and have a little fun with it, when you finish, you'll look at it and smirk, which is great, cause you'll leave the drawing with a good feeling, and look forward to doing it again. Invent a character, work on his/her design, put him/her in various comical situations, anything you like. More time spent drawing = you'll get better at it.
Of course, when you get better at drawing, that's a reward in itself, but if you find yourself stuck in a rut, get to the root of the problem and try to have fun drawing again, everything else will follow along, easy as pie.
It's always darkest before the end of the tunnel, keep at it and I'm sure you'll do great. :smile:

As the others put it, time and patience is the key here. Don't worry and stress yourself too much just because you don't see anything improving. The fact that you are able to see the negatives of your own art is growth in itself, meaning your concept of the do's and don'ts of art is expanding. I think when I was starting off, anything I drew looked pretty damn good to me. haha!

As for the style thing, everyone has to start somewhere. Like how my professor used to put it, pretty much every art style is "borrowed" from someone else's. Best way to put it is this: try concentrating on imitating a certain style first, then, when you are confident enough, jump to a different style until you start to experiment with mixing stuff that you've learned and develop your own. My first one was capcom. it all sucked but i learned alot after time until I mixed it up with different things ive learned.

As for perspective...well, dont ask me coz i SUCK at it lol.
I would highly recommend getting this book though: Perspective! For the Comic Book Artist by David Chelsea

Hope that helps! don't fret, every artist goes through something like this in some way.

Very easy to follow especially for beginners. Plus its made into a comic (which is honestly damn impressive) so its so easy to understand especially if you're more of a visual person like I am.

if you're having trouble with some angle or perspective, try drawing your figure drawing in blocks, like cylinder for arms & legs, boxy shapes for torso & hips, a ball for head, etc..

Lillejord was helping me and told me to do that when i got this block and it worked..

i still got problems myself with perspective and i felt the same as you, like my art was going nowhere and i couldn't pull of different perspective. ask Zera, he got a lot of my bitching about this.. :buz:

lol thanks again everyone!

oh yeah, tube...
that books freaky o_o

you dont like it? :wXD:

I loved his mashmallow headed partner. lol

no, actually, from what i got from the free part, it seemed cool...
except for the part where they strip to go watch naked volleyball xD
ill still buy it, of course (^_^)

Oh haha! well what's cool about that book is it teaches you the basics of anatomical perspective, different distances and angles, hence the naked volleyball part (wherein alot of people are in the BG, jumping, diving and whatnot).

It's still a fun book to read.