Welcome to Gaia! ::

I'm in Phase Five of AIT (If you recall, I'm in the Army now.), and have some degree of Internet access. I haven't found a scanner yet, but I will be hanging around and posting, if nothing else.

I think an issue with me as far as drawing is concerned is that if I don't have adequate mental stimulation, I just don't want to draw at all. The Army seems to provide that spark I need. I can promise you my drawings aren't great (I'm rusty), and I've found that the degree of a**l I was about my own work was actually counterproductive, but I should be contributing again once I find a scanner.

I'm happy to see that this guild's backbone is not in the leadership, but in the members. See you all again soon.

Discuss: Your roadblocks in being a good draftsman/artist, your strengths, weaknesses, and how you've worked through them, or failed utterly to do so.

Also, this should be a hot topic for this group: What degree of self-critique is counterproductive? Have you ever been in a situation where you were "the best", then discovered that your high expectations of yourself made drawing either unenjoyable? Did you find that it was too difficult to uphold your own standard?

I've never thought I was the best. I don't think there is a "best", i mean. it's art. You can always do something more or different, improve on something, change, grow, be a hippy and sprout more things and flowers and ideas.

Er, I've always felt like everything was a work in progress. I've never drawn anything that I thought was ugly or complete crap. If I don't like it, I usually take a piece of it and remake it into something different.

I think my art has feelings or sumin. Don't want to hurt it XD

I miss you. As far as stimulation goes, I find that boredom and strong emotional discord produce a great amount of inspiration in my writing and visual art.

As far as drafting and composition goes, i'm as untrained as a person can get, but i try to push my limits at least once a day as far as what I do or see artistically. I find that it keeps me motivated by allowing me to see some kind of improvement on a daily basis instead of over a long stretch of time.

I'm really impatient.

I'm going to go into experimenting more with body forms and shading, but my main medium is MS Paint and a mouse when i'm at work, lol.

I am Parade/Assgrommet FYI and I would say that I am not so good at anything really. But if YOU say I suck, I will break your knees and steal your teeth.

I am kidding pal.

I keep roadblocking myself by forgetting to loosen up - like, for a few sketches I play around on the page, and it all turns out pretty cool. But then I get gradually more and more obsessed with getting it to look perfect, to the point where I want every sketch to be deathless art to last the ages. Unfortunately that means I get intimidated by drawing and lock up, and can't draw a damn thing. xp This especially happens when I have an idea for a series of related pictures, where I sort of run out of ideas after a couple and lose momentum.

Good to hear from you again, anyways. biggrin