Getting over art blues by celebrating progress

[Cielle]

so I've been feeling a little down on myself lately, the typical "why am I not better at art??" or "Why am I not as good as ____??". I think it's a pretty typical feeling to go through as an artist, and I know "comparison is the thief of joy" but it's normal to be better, right? Anywho. The art blues have been affecting my production of new pages, so to try to get out of rut I decided to revisit some old pieces instead, and I'm glad I did. Here's why:

This is a panel from a page I did in february 2015. At the time, I was pretty proud of it. I thought it was one of the best things I'd ever done (which I guess at that point it was). As time went on, though, I started to only see what was wrong with it (and there's a lot "wrong" with it).

So I decided to redo it. Not the whole page, just the one panel. And this is what a year and a half's difference is:

I'm sure in a year and a half I'll think "gee I can do better" but wow! I feel much better about my progress. I guess the moral of the story is that when you're not happy with where you are (or where you aren't yet!), you should look back at how far you've come.

Maybe one day I'll redo the whole beginning of my comic, but for now I'm going to put my energy into making my new pieces better. And next time I'm feeling down, maybe I'll revisit a different old panel.

what about you all? How do you get over the art blues?

[Kirstin]

Ohhh nice! the new one looks great. It's always pleasantly surprsing to see progress. It's so easy to be hard on yourself esp when looking at other artists. Personally I'm redrawing a ton of pages because the difference in quality was just to much ahaha.

it'll be interesting to see our art in another year or so!

[demthorshie]

I really love the new style you have taken on! All we can really do as artists is improve, improve and improve some more :3! No need to feel bad about where you are in your art stage, just keep on drawing. You'll always get better with time, as you've demonstrated nicely above.

[Cielle]

thank you for your kind words! I'll keep on trying to get better! XD

[9outofPen]

Wow, what a difference! You should feel proud of yourself!

That's pretty much what I do when I'm not feeling confident. I look at old drawings from high school or middle school that I find particularly bad, and do a redraw. That way, I can say at least I'm not that bad anymore, haha. Every year I seem to learn how to do something better, be it faces, proportions, clothing folds, etc. I can see how much you improved on, from your shading, to expression, to figure drawing! Keep it up! ^-^

[jacintawibowo]

Whoa that's a lot of improvement! Congrats! I especially like how the expression is much more refined, with better consideration put into lighting.
Redoing old art is a cool way to get over art blues. I usually practice in a lot of different styles (Steven Universe/Fairly Odd Parents/Flapjack/etc) or art techniques to loosen up from an art block.

[Cielle]

@9outofPen thank you! I will keep it up! >w<

@jacintawibowo practicing different styles sounds like a great exercise for getting over art blues, I'll have to try that next time! also, thank you!