So the "day" (when i say day i mean the period of time i was awake not actual solid day) I drew this I actually spent almost the entire thing incredibly depressed, I was crying for hours and kind of just lashing out probably one of the worst breakdowns I've had in a long while. Of course it was about art, frustration with myself, my inability to just draw the things I wanna draw, and my feeling like I've not even gotten better and am just wasting my time. In the end several hours later after I ate and showered and watched some videos talking about art and the struggles of it I read drawabox's thing about how if you really can't draw the things you want now just start small. So I drew my sona, it's not quite the things I wanna draw but I'd been meaning to redesign my sona anyways, I felt it wasn't really zombie enough. To some degree I still feel it's not but not sure what I'd do to improve that without making it too complicated to draw, my sona just exists so I have a way of drawing myself, after all it's not a character, I need to be able to draw it quick and easy.

I have a lot of thoughts right now as I type this and in general. I don't dislike this drawing but also I'm frustrated, some of these drawings are "cuter" than I would like, I was drawing my stickman style instead of trying to develop my normal one, the easy safe option. I'm frustrated because no amount of telling myself if I wanna draw the things I wanna draw I should just start drawing them gets me to overcome the frustration when I go to actually draw. Nevermind it feels like I don't know how to draw anymore, I don't know how to simplify the shapes of the body, I don't know how to construct the forms, the only way I know how is old habits I developed before I started trying to improve and I don't wanna draw like that anymore. I'm not sure where I want to take my artstyle but I know i'm not close to it. Knowing it'll take another year or two at best to get to where I want to be is hard to deal with mentally.

Recently I had a video in my youtube reccs by sycra called How Practice May Be Killing Your Joy. I kinda get it, the practice trap, it's definitely something I've fallen into, the "i can't draw this now". At the same time though hearing that made me kind of mad. I started having art as a skill I wanted to develop 18 years ago during that time I almost never practiced I drew just to draw and in that time I made very little progress. Sure I wasn't drawing the absolute things I love (horror and gore), but even still I drew things I wanted to, things I liked, drawings I was proud of and passionate about, and in the end I still ended up where I am now. Admittedly I didn't watch the whole video cause I started getting caught up in my own frustration. Spending so long without practicing and I barely improved and now I am practicing and I feel like I'm not improving, it's one of those things that makes me feel like I wasn't meant to make art. I really feel that sometimes, obviously it's irrational nobody is made to do anything but it's not about rationality it's about feeling.

Aso yes I listened to Heart by TOOBOE on repeat while drawing this and it did inspire me somewhat in the new sona design haha, it's one of the things I looked at and went "God my sona isn't zombie enough."