I keep dreaming about how I'm going to go do my drawing in a coffee shop when it's fine to do that again and then I realize that I'm sitting here at my desk alternating between making insane faces and chuckling at what's going on in my comic... hmm.
i probably just have to make new refs and save em in an easier to find folder but they're ocs i've had and been working with for ages 
Yeah, I have reference files for some of my characters, because I keep forgetting which side his freaking boots button on!! Or things like that. I'm embarrassed how often I have to refer to it, but that's just artist problems for ya.
I'm the same way with my stylus, and my pencils (they usually roll away or I'm siting on them because I got up XD). My computer with writing when I write a paragraph and start another paragraph one sentence in new paragraph switches with the old paragraph somehow.
My non photo blue pencils wear out faster than a burning rubber tire rolling on a bed of nails 
I have to buy new ones soon
when you love buying art supplies bc shiny new toys
... but you are a digital artist 99.9% of the time
Honestly, my greatest struggle is trying to balance being a mom and a creator and with a baby, it is hard. I am always scared I'm messing up at both or one of them though I care more about being a mom. However, I realize that it is a common struggle and it has a way of working out.
Walking into an art store is such a HIGH of possibilities.
... but even as a traditional artist, you end up buying the same handful of things. Do I REALLY WANT the shiny oil paints, the gorgeous pastels, or the fancy spray paints? God yes. Have I painted in oils since college, or spray paint since my best friend's wedding? Do I even LIKE using pastels? NO!
buys the same four pens, two erasers, and five sheets of paper
As a writer, this is my problem.
You know those old people who speak what they write? Like when typing their passwords, they'd mouth the numbers? I'm kinda like that. I at least "vocalize" the dialogues and sometimes [for harder and more complex scenes] I need to act it out or else I would get lost with 11 pages full of "quotation marks" with no description. I can't seem to do things just by imagining, I need to see it for me to write.
Drawing/coloring on the wrong layer. I do it ALL THE TIME. Because I don't name my layers LOL. It's just an inconvenience but dang, does it annoy me.
My biggest writing issue, besides inspiration, is repetition.
Like, jesus becky, how many times in one paragraph did you say the word see, feel, or look? Six? Seven? But, oh no, you want to be more descriptive? Now you sound just arrogant and cocky with a bunch of over-the-top synonyms.
wheater, yes, wheater
Here is 8 months of summer so its always too hot to draw (no, not everyone has an AC my friends, in my country its a luxury and too expensive electricity bills so no ) so I cant concentrate well to draw and when winter (rainy season) comes, theres the electrical blackouts xD so no digital work can be finished on time and for analog, depending the paper you are using, the humidity will affect its texture ;w; and I end going to take a nap since the weather is nice and with the rain sound haha
My MC has 3 ahoge that are hard to draw from behind 
after so many years I guess I have to finally make some proper references from a few angles xD
Also "I used that nice brush for blank half a year ago... I wonder which one was that" opens a list of 5000 brushes, starts crying
When my cat eats my kneaded eraser a when I leave them out. Or that my kneaded eraser a always get a ton of animal fur in them! Or maybe that any of my art supplies get eaten by my dog when I leave them out. Having cats walk across my paper or my tablet as I'm drawing. The fact that I have no where to store oil paintings while they dry where animal fur won't get on it! Or when I have a full palette of paint and a cat steps on it and proceeds to track it all over the place!
And the quiet female's emerald orbs dragged slowly across the chiseled visage of the man that makes her scarlet life's liquid rush faster through her veins. Her painted lips split wide to reveal her almost pearl white teeth in a joyous reflection of her inner feelings that get evoked like wild fire any time her presence mingles with his.
Vs
She smiled at Bob.
.... Yep I know that struggle :')
I freak out every time I resize a page in Clip Studio as it pretends to freeze and threaten me with a crash to desktop.
didIsavedidIsaveDIDISAVE?!?!
When I'm doing traditional art, sometimes there are just those erasers that smudge instead of erase. You had ONE JOB
- Me making
mary sue characterscharacters with heterochromia and forget which color belongs to which side. Even with reference, I sometimes still forget to flip the canvas back. - Sometimes I draw the hand backwards. It happens sometimes.
- Is the character sounds too much like me, or am I starting to sound like them after writing them for a while?
- Me being proud that I can remember a word and use it in the sentence (not English speaker, do not laugh), but it turned out the meaning is different from what I remembered. Now I have to correct it in embarrassment, and never trust myself again.
- How many times have I referred to this character by name in this paragraph? Wait, all of the sentences started with his name.
- "Is it" is for questions, "It is" is for statements, what kind of no spik inglish fool do not get that? (me).
I do this too! I do most of my 'writing' in the shower or car, where I can speak through dialogue and conversations out loud! I jot it down afterwards.
Old age school students tip: clean the eraser first by rubbing it on the nearby wall (or any surfaces that won't dirty the eraser), it will scrape the troublesome part that will make the smudge.
Also, I believe in Pentel eraser superiority.
Some panels I dread making so much that I hold off on drawing them until the very last minute. Including backgrounds.
top 10 art related problems that I've (stupidly) done:
- Looking where is the ctrl+s button when I'm about to leave the room when I am drawing using pen and paper
- isn't this too smooth for a paper? - when I'm doing digital
- using two fingers to zoom in -- on a paper
- rotating the whole pen tablet while doing digital instead of rotating my actual canvas
- using an actual eraser to clean up lines instead of using ctrl+z during digital
- Why isn't it moving?!-- sees hand using an actual pencil instead of a stylus during digital
- Why is this not writing?-- sees hand using stylus instead of a pen
- waiting for the brush to switch color with the color i had in mind --- during traditional painting
- walking in art store, buys a handful of blank notebooks, arts and crafts materials then forget about them for about 1 month before actually using them then repeat
- when it comes to paints, one color is either too much left over or one tube isn't enough at all
Dipping the paint tube in the solvent instead of the brush 
Fortunately, I have not yet tried to drink the solvent. 
Yeah! This is the reason why I have my own bathroom at my house. I even opted for a higher-price, cramped storage-like dorm room on my last college. Although the dorm room literally looks like a CR (Comfort Room. Don't know what term other countries use but it's like lavatory) up to the walls, I still went for it because that's the only place available with a bathroom (bathroom = CR).
I, most of the time, spend 2 hours inside and sometimes if the scene is intense, it'll take 5. It's to the point that I dread going to the bathroom sometimes because I don't know what'll happen once I'm inside.
When I was at my dorm, I usually wake up at 3 in the morning even though my classes starts at 7. And I'll only have enough time to put on my uniform - no makeup, no combing. wet like a chicken, off I go to school. I HATE MY BRAIN FOR AUTOMATICALLY PLAYING A SCENE ONCE I STEP INSIDE THE BATHROOM URRRGH!
FWIW I label all of my layers (mostly because I don't want the program telling me how many layers I've got -- it can be scary) and I STILL DO THIS.
Forgot about a semi-huge artist problem I had last year (and am still dealing with a little bit right now): supply shortages.
This isn't an issue for digital artists (unless your tablet dies, in which case, you're outta luck...), but I spent half of last year wrestling with getting refills for my Copic markers, because Copic was redesigning them, and that, combined with the pandemic, meant that basically everything was out/unavailable or in extremely short supply for months. It's better now, the new refills are finally available for the most part, but there was a while there where I was out or nearly out of like ten critical colors, including several skin tones I rely on heavily.
How many colors have I had to wrestle with getting my hands on? Well, since last year, I've replaced 44 colors. I'm still waiting on two that have been infuriatingly hard to find. (YG13 and YG41, fwiw.)
...sometimes it'd be nice to just be able to use a color selector, not gonna lie. XD
Art
- Having to draw a recurring bg that I didn't know was gonna be a recurring bg. Leads to door knobs constantly flipflopping sides between panels.
- Drawing thumbnails when I'm half sleep, so when I go to sketch later, I can't tell what's going on.
Writing
- Scripting out dialog, but not detailing the camera focus or setting. Very helpful of you, past self -_-
- Thinking I'm writing a masterpiece, only to wake up the next day realizing it was all senseless drivel
@Rocksteady_Comics I went to sleep once, forgetting my apple pencil was on my bed. That thing's $100!
@migxmeg I've tried to pinch zoom and rotate paper before too
@WhateverTheTurtle that happens to me everytime I'm in a situation where I can't write or draw
@Yulek That's the curse of school settings, even universities. I think I'd die trying to attempt an auditorium or lecture hall.
Stupid writer brain problem:
"Yeah, this music is perfect! Choreographing this fight scene in my head is so easy right now."
Song ends.
"Welp, I guess I'll never get that flow back without that music now. Time to listen to it on repeat and struggle to sync up the scene futilely for an hour before begrudgingly finishing it in silence."
If I accidentally kick the cord to my tablet, my calibration becomes off and it won't let me recalibrate my tablet unless I restart the computer. 
It's one of the few accents I feel confident with (though I'm sure any actually Scot would disagree). It's my fav.
Dear secret services all over the world,
I am not a serial killer.
...
Nor am I a terrorist. Nor do I intend on hiring a hitman. Or poisoning someone. Or employing various types of psychological torture. Nor do I want to start a war.
Where the fuck is my stylus. Where the fuck is my other stylus. Where the fuck is my third stylus that I got in case I lose or break the other two on a Sunday.
My tablet keeps disconnecting because I don't know, the driver or the firmware might be outdated, but are there any updates available on the Huion website? No, no there aren't. Will I buy a new tablet?
...
Maybe. It's not like I have too many of them already.
Me: I don't do too much research.
Also me: googles the history of the bucket.
Also me: studies a 3D reconstruction of Franz Liszt closely to find out what his ears might have looked like.
...
They were swirly.
does a lot of research into historical figures my main characters are based on
carefully constructs a character based on what I found out about them
finds out random historical fact
has to rewrite half of the plot
finds new information about historical figure that would make my carefully researched and well thought out character based on that historical figure terribly ooc and historically inaccurate
Also, the amount of times I've forgotten a word in every language I know ... the thing. I mean the thing that does the thing. With the thing. The thingie. A writer I am. Very articulate I am.
Punctuation. Period.
And lastly, I have 5 comic ideas, of which at least 3 are big, long-running projects, as well as a novel trilogy, and I would love to be a professional musician some day, even though I'm already in my mid-twenties and didn't go to school for music, and meanwhile my thesis is staring at me with that "I am not angry, just disappointed" look ... but I feel like that's more of an existential thing so I'll end this here. 
