I had a really great teacher who was like "yeah art isn't therapy once you do it for a living" and that made me feel a lot better. Its not to say art always makes me feel bad (usaully I get a thrill from the final stages when it starts to glitter), but sometimes it's just really exhausting. Because it's work. It's hard on your body. It's stressful to meet client expectations. It doesn't always make you feel good and fuzzy, and so what may be therapy for one person may not be for you.
From my experience (personal and hearing from others), it's pretty normal for artists to feel bad about their art for many reasons regardless of the level of their abilities. No matter how good you are, something might not turn out the way you wanted, or you might feel jealous of things others can do. Even if you know better, we all have negative thoughts that can get the best of us at times.
I recommend if you're dealing with a period where your art frustrates you and makes you feel bad, but you still have the desire to create, try an unfamiliar medium. The more different the better. Paper cut outs. Make Halloween decorations. Buy some clay. Whatever it takes, whatevers different. Because it's unfamiliar, you won't be as hard on yourself about producing at a certain level, so you can just enjoy trying something new and slowly getting better. And when you're ready, hop back to your fav medium.
Heck, try quilting or knitting! Plenty of things to try. =3
Personally, yes, art makes me insanely f@cking depressed a lot of the time, and the longer I do it (or rather, the longer I improve it and fight to make it work as a job and watch others with patreons skyrocket past me in a fraction of the time I've been around) the more depressed I become about it. I've been doing it for over 20 years now. Tadtionally for most, and digitally for about 5 now. There was a time in which I felt "if I just got good enough, I'll make it." But as I got better, once I reached a certain point, I painfully realized (watching those with lesser skill - no offense to them ) surpass me on the daily, that no, it doesn't matter how good I ever become. There have been a lot of nights I've found myself crying in frustration on the floor back when I was younger over not being lucky enough. There are still times I feel like I could cry over it. I think what depresses me the most about it is I can't NOT be an artist. I can't NOT love art, and drawing, and spend most of my time doing it and learning it and WANTING it. It's very frustrating and poisonous to love art that much or to be a natural born passionate artist if you do not have financial success as an adult to go with it. The older you get, the harder it becomes in your life to be an artist as well. You have errands and chores and appointments and work taking up the free time you had as a teen who just had to worry about school. You have retirement and taxes and bills to think about. I don't really have anything uplifting to say. I have done art my whole life, I have watched Sakimichan start out on DA and blow up into the huge success she is today. You have more competition and less visibility these days than ever before. You have more things against you and more people in competitions with you pushing themselves forward with social media and Patreons and comics of their own. Thinking about art as the career I want, and don't have this late in the game, honestly f@cking destroys me. Other times, if it's just depression over lack of skill, that can be remedied by studies like going back over the fundamentals and practicing things like the loomis method and other things to get your art more to where you want it to be. I wish I had something uplifting to say, but you didn't (thankfully) ask for that. If it ever makes you too sad, I hope you can find a way to be happy with it again someday if you love it. I've never not had a desire to draw or an art block or anything like that so I can't speak on any of those things. I've only ever had bad luck. : /
I wouldn't say 'depressed', but I've definitely gotten pissed off at my art before. There have been times when I thought "I would rather DIE than draw one more panel of this comic" or I couldn't figure out the composition of a scene and just ragequit. There have been times when I've been doing commissions and suffering all the while from boredom with the design or what-have-you, and thought "Why did I agree to this...? Why am I putting myself through this for TEN CENTS"
...But as someone who kinda thrives on negativity, I've never been ashamed of that. ^^; Art isn't magic; just like any other activity, it'll have its sucky moments. There's no point in pretending otherwise.
Most of my art now is for the sole purpose of supporting or motivating others and not necessarily making art for myself. I've always found this suprisingly theraputic or empowering.
A small part of me still wants to pursue a career in art or establish an identity in the art community but I found this not theraputic.
Kinda yeah,i felt many things while drawing. But one thing won't ever go away and that is disappointment in my own work, as it feels like it won't ever be good enough. I really don't have much faith in it,or my self so it kinda shows in the art as well.
Absolutely, but that’s just the perfectionist in me. If whatever I draw doesn’t look anything like I picture I’ll get sad then start wondering why I should continue and just stop for a long time.
No, not really. At least not because of my art, though art was a factor. My family hasn't been completely supportive of my artistic endeavors to a point where I feel like I'm wasting my time when I draw, like there are better more productive things I could be doing. Art and drawing and comic creating make me happy, so I've never felt depressed because of it. Other than that, I've felt frustrated with my skills like most artists have.
Okay, guess i'm probably among the very few human beings on earth that get real depressive episodes while drawing now.
Wow, i'm unique 
Not to be that person but didn't you just make a thread like this (or at least very similar to this) barely a day ago? It seems a bit redundant to be making a thread every time for this issue, instead of just continuing the conversation in previous threads.
Well, We're all a little unique and we each have our own struggles.
What makes us special is not what we're going through, but how we go through it.
Turning circumstance into opportunity.
I'm going through something similar right now. I'm in my final year of college, where the pressure's on to create the best demo reel and portfolio you're capable of. I'm in such a bad mood right now that I'm genuinely questioning if I should choose a different career and remain a hobbyist when it comes to art. I feel guilty for the lack of art and for the current lack of comic updates. I know one day I will once again love creating art, but I wish that day would hurry up and get here! D:
You are definitely not alone when it comes to feeling frustrated or even depressed about art. It happens to so many of us. Thankfully, there's often ways to overcome it, like taking a break, or getting back into a fandom you forgot how much you loved. I hope you start to feel better soon, as well as anyone else who might be feeling this way about their art.
I've been depressed while making art but I don't think it causes it or anything. It's frequently painful to make art, but its not the same kind of pain I would use to describe depression. It can be frustrating, but at least I'm acting on a desire. My current project often has me feeling sad and afraid and overwhelmed by the tragedy of life, but my depression has been slowly (like really slowly) easing up.
When this happens, it's your brain telling you to diversify! Like artblock, feeling depressed while drawing can indicate that you're stagnating or unhappy with what you're doing. The best way to break out of this is: stop pushing yourself to make something original. You're trying to pull water out of a dry well.
Instead:
Take it slow, and try new styles and new things. Approach things from new angles, and go back to your foundations and re-learn your basics, before you start trying to push yourself to create new and original things.
Not actually depressed, but when I started making my webcomic was also the time I started working on my own art style and testing waters. I remember how frustrating and painful it was for not reaching the same skill level as other artists. Also wondering how the heck those who draw bad anatomy and perspective got so big
The only way I got rid of this thought and also jealously of big artists was focusing on my own art and improvement by starting small, and gradually challenging myself to try other ways to draw a certain subject I've never tried before
I also keep myself busy to not care too much about views and likes, neither if I will get comission from someone who likes my art
But this may sound biased since I work as a freelance designer and also make a living from it, although it can also gets frustrating when the client wants something different from what I think it works 🤷
Yes, sometimes I think about how long I've been drawing and where my skill level is at and think about how it just isn't good enough. There are people out there drawing for less time, younger than me, less experienced, who are phenomenal.
In my case, art didn't cause my depression/anxiety. But art sure can be an outlet for depression/anxiety just because I'm thinking about it all the time. Consequently, art can seem like the cause even when it isn't.
It's like this:
1) unrelated RL event causes depression/anxiety.
2) brain wants to process it and be done with it, but doesn't know how.
3) at the same time, brain is dealing with art and comics all the time.
4) brain starts conflating art/comics and depression/anxiety because both are constantly influencing me.
5) Conflation leads to this thought: "art/comics are depressing me. I'm not good enough an artist, I'm not working hard enough, nothing is enough" when in truth it is "that unrelated RL event is depressing me."
6) ...which in turn leads to, I attempt to fix my depression/anxiety by making my work Good Enough. But this is futility. My work will never be good enough to cure my anxiety, no matter how skilled I get. In order to heal, I need therapy (even if it's self-therapy), I need support, I need clarity; I need to face the true cause of my stress, instead of its substitute. I need to STOP listening to the lie that my work not being good enough is the cause of all my misery.
I hope you don't mind me replying to this ... I felt very much the same way. The biggest thing that was holding me back from catching up to them is that I hadn't learned the fundamentals well enough and that I hadn't become familiar enough with photoshop and all that it CAN do like they were. Looking up tutorials on the fundamentals and photoshop for painting has helped me IMMENSELY come a long way faster than I ever had before and I highly recommend both. I'm not telling you what to do or anything like that, and I can only speak for what has helped me, but they were things I didn't know about when I was at a time like that in the past that I had wished someone had told me so I'm just trying to help, really ^^;
We seem to be mixing the reasons for the depression. One seems to be about...I don't know. People who suffer from depression who also do art. And in that case, I have no idea why we're talking about art at all. Depression is the problem, not the art part.
And people (or at least one post I remember clearly) is depressed about 'where they are' in relation to their art/career.
And maybe some problems with doing art for more than art's safe.
I also don't know if you want anyone to take these posts seriously or are we just venting and sharing and more...sharing.
So in the case of A) Depression is real and there's a sickness and then there's a 'life sucks when you're a (pre/post) teen' with little control over the, seemingly, most important aspects of your life. You need a life coach or someone who's been there and can explain how life changes as you get older and you have/had more control than you thought and the biggest problems are- worrying about the wrong things- and that includes people. Speaking to a professional - usually is a go-to.
B) When art mixes with business or profit concerns, it usually becomes a craft. That's when you need more technical skill and discipline than vision and motivation.
C) You can't fix the business side of art with more or better art. Success is not measured or achieved by the quality or quantity of your artistic endeavors. All most do is reverse engineer and look at the results and search for the reasons.
And fill in the gaps with speculation and opinions.
That's not how it works. When you compare (which is always a bad idea) - you need to compare more than what you can see. You don't know WHAT they did or for how long and with who.
Most successful people don't know and/or don't share that kind of info.
They do like to tell stories though.
None of which ever reveals the magic trick.
