When you were (or if you still are :)) a child, how did your family react on your creative work? How did it affect you?

When i was a child, my father didn't like that i was drawing so much, and he would repeat over and over that only manual / productive work pays money and every artist just end up in the streets begging for money. My mother didn't think much about me drawing, neither of them would look at what i draw, they pretty much never cared about it.

When i asked for going to an art school my father was opposed to it and despite my health issues, i failed the third year at high school just once and he sent me to the mecanic apprentice school / formation and i spent two years learning and working as a mechanic around the age of 15, but i was still drawing in my free time. Even tho i had back pain issue (spina bifida) he would need me to help him in the garage after work or school until very late sometimes, my father was only seeing life through work and nothing else, mecanic / repairing car was his passion. I would just help him sitting around because i couldn't whitstand a standing up pose for more than two hours.

My parents were fighting a lot after they divorced when i was 4 year old, fights for keeping me and my sister under their guard / home, and a lot of in between familly fight ensued, "tell your father i said this, tell your mother i said that, your mother's cousin said that etc etc" parents were not the most responsible to take care of their childs but had a lot of energy to fight to have the charge of the childrens as if it was a medal of pride. As a mean for escapism from how horrible the familly situation was, and how little care me and my sister really received i kept drawing and creating my characters and universe, at school it was not going very good either, from my elementary school and age of 5 / 6 i was allways at the last place of the classroom, and no other child wanted to get close for i was a little bit strange already, i was very quiet because there were already enough tensions, disputes, and problems at the house.

I remember that i was really bored at school and cursus were so easy i wasn't paying attention and just kept drawing in the margin of my books / lesson pages, and even in my class report journal, sometimes i would do stupid and idiotic strips on the side of my exam sheets and hopefully the professor was just laughing at them, but sometimes, one would not be amused and remove a point for the drawings all around lol.

Even after all these years, my father has 2 cancers these past two years, and this time, he has one in his bones... I can't say my father wasn't right about the fact i would never make a living by drawing, i feel like he has allways been disappointed by the fact i was born with a defect, and he will probably die without being able to prove him i'm worth something, or otherwise.

Well that's how it is.

My parents have been somewhat supportive. They paid for me to go to art classes, paid for me to go to art college... but they've never really given me any praise or the like. I don't think they really think positively or negatively of it.

But I was able to get a job as a graphics artist so I think they are happy with that at least.

I don't think they've ever read any of my comics. I kind of wish they would because I feel like my comics are a part of myself, but it'd also be a bit embarrassing.

For me they were very supportive , they even helped me to take a very cheap drawing class for one year. Even tho i appreciated the support i understood that they didnt see it as a main option for my future, like i know that even if they say words like "your good at drawing", "i like how you draw" or those type of stuff that they dont really think of it as something that can be considered "work". It kinda hurts knowing that but im gratefull that they didnt try to cut it out from my life and they even tried to understand me.

Well you see, My father was from a rather blue collar family that either worked at the local paper mill or one of the Power plants off the coasts and My mother was from a family that never pursued that field, so while they are supportive they were also extremely cynical about comics especially when pursuing a life-long career.

I'm lucky since my mom is pretty passionate about stories too - she's never outright told me that I should become a comic artist, but she's always been there - she numbered and spell-checked the comic books I made when I was in 4th grade, and gives me suggestions for my current comic. Like actual good suggestions. "maybe the story would be more dramatic if this happened..." and my brother reads my comic too although he still insists on calling my MC "Parises"

It was indifferent for most part, but in positive way, like just look at the half of second and then "yeah, that's good" and like that. Then i stopped to show my works to anyone (because why to bother, nobody is interested in it), and still doing it, except Tapas and Deviantart.

Mom said once that i should go to the special drawing lessons after-school (we don't have a standalone drawing school here). But those lessons were led by the teacher who always called me a "debil" for my drawing and other things so i said that i'm not so interested in improving my skills and didn't go there.

my mother to this day encourages my artwork although none of my family consider my self employment as an artist a "real job" one of my brother wont even give me the time of day because I am not a person who considers money my god and refuse to go a slave all day to make other people rich. money comes and goes you will find what you need is my view. art on the other hand is a skill that must be practiced or it will be lost to you.

When I was little, my parents used to praise my drawings, but never anything that I wrote, which is what I most wanted praise for, because I wanted to become a novelist. They also dropped hints about how all great writers in my country have starved, unless they happened to come from very rich families, and they have made it quite clear that writing cannot bring anyone any money and that I'd need a full-time day job. This was disheartening to the point of making me suicidal, until I realized (in my twenties, after several suicide attempts and years of depression) that they were wrong and that there were writers out there who were making a living out of writing. I am very far from being able to support myself out of writing, but at least now that I believe that's humanly possible, I have a goal to be striving for, and I have some hope, and that has helped me out of my depression.

Also, this is not from when I was a child, but at some point (in my twenties, I think), I showed my mother the first chapter of a novel that I was working on (in Romanian). She had a good laugh while reading it, then she told me that she had enjoyed it, and that she wouldn't mind reading more if I want to write more, but that I must absolutely not ever publish it, because it is too controversial from a political point of view (it was a Harry Potter parody, not a political essay!) and she does not want my name, and therefore her name, associated with anything like that. After that, I was unable to write for several months. I'm still unable to write in Romanian (my native language and the only language she understands well), and the only way I managed to get myself to be able to write again was deciding to write under a pen name and to keep it all a secret from her. I'm now able to write under my own name, and that's even though she has been learning English and reading one of my series online (it's Toadmila Wartly that she's reading) but it has taken me a lot of years to get to the point where I'm comfortable with knowing that she might read what I write. And I'm still afraid of her reaction to what I write.

I know this all sounds like a lot of whining, but what I'm trying to say is:

A) not all parents are supportive, and that will have a tremendous impact
B) if your family and/or loved ones are not supportive, you are not alone
C) don't let your family bring you down or discourage you in any way
D) if your parents are supportive, go thank them now! You have no idea how important that is, and how lucky you are.

I'm personally just terrified about showing my parents or anyone on my family anything i do but i don't even have a good reason for that. They know i draw, they know i write and they've seen my not-comic related work, i really don't know why coming to the decision showing it has been so difficult.

They've been pretty uninterested the whole time too so i don't really believe they'd mock it. I'm probably more afraid of getting to reaction rather than a negative reaction.

My family was positive about me drawing well but my mom dislikes very much anime and was telling me that they are ungly , what she saw was dragon ball characters and she thought that i am drawing monsters but she didnt tell me to stop , she just complains sometimes about it.

They never discouraged me from pursuing what I wanted to do, the only drawback is that they didn't know what to teach me for me to be successful in this path so they always recommended that I optimize my career path where I can work somewhere and bring home money.

When they found out that I rather be a creative, then they adjusted their expectations accordingly. They were more patient, they were more lenient, they put faith in me that I wasn't wasting my life away. (Or rather, I'd like to thing that they are or they've given up on me completely. Which isn't too bad. No expectations means I get to surprise them when I make something out of it)

I live with my aunt's family my whole childhood until my teenager year. My memory is always bad, but I don't remember them saying that my drawings is bad or anything. They don't particularly understood things like art and I don't showed them much about my drawings. They're just okay with what I did.

Then I live with my grandma for my middle school years and well, I'm been more secretive about my stuff. It's not like they care.

Then after that I moved back to live with my mom and sisters in a new town... they thought of my drawings and time spending it is a waste, most of the time, thought at the early time they kinda let me buy some sketch Book and stuff though, and very very rarely when they see my better drawings (not my manga s*it), they simply sharing it to facebook and letting me doing portrait for them (an well, that's pretty s*ck any way) and then... uh, I guess that's it. It dies very quickly and then they're barely saying anything about my s*it since they didn't even care about it. :v

They simply don't give a s*it and I also didn't care to give a s*it back.

At least they still let me do my own s*it, and I just improve naturally, though my motivation always drain very quickly.

I think I just don't care to think about it anymore.

(Ah... how many times I repeated my words?)

I wasn't drawing comics, only when I was like 8 years old. My parents were positive about my art, I think. I was going to art classes in elementary school, but didn't like that as we were doing a lot of similar things and those that I didn't enjoy very much. I just had a different style than the teacher, so everyweek, I was pretending I had a headache, therefore can't go On the other hand I still liked the teacher and I did learn a lot of useful basics, I would say.

I loved to draw animals and dragons, later birds and generally liked to practise drawing wings, so I would start drawing all kind of animals with wings just for fun and practise when I was just doodling, which ws in my later teens. I am not sure why, maybe just that I was shy about it, I tended to hide those from my parents. My mum discovered my sketches and looked like she thought we need to have a talk and that she things it is not normal and she has a problem that I draw that many things with wings. She must have thought I am weird because of that. Well, I tended to lock myself in my room when I was drawing and hid everything as well as I could.

My friends and teachers always praised me, though and were very supportive of my artwork, sometimes telling me they are sure I will do that as a job one day or asked if I was planning to. I didn't really dare have such dreams as I imagined it was difficult. And here I am today, working as a full time artist for a company abroad ^^ Couldn't be happier about that.

My family has always been really good about being supportive of any endeavor, but I really didn't have the confidence to share much when I was younger. I didn't want them to read it and hate it because I thought I would be crushed. Once I finally matured out of that, they became my best supporters. I usually have a family member edit for me since I know they'll be honest, and I know that can trust their opinions.

The range of experience here is interesting though! I'm glad to see that there's a lot of supportive family members out there. But credit to the people who kept at it no matter what their family said. That takes serious determination.

My mother used to paint with us as a kid. I'd help decorate costumes she'd make for her halloween parties at the RAAF base, she helped me make space dioramas for school and one time we made an "aquarium" where my dad built the frame out of wood and we painted glittery fish that we hung from the lid. I used to show her my stuff all the time and she'd give a critique saying something was wrong. I'd change it and bring it back until I get 100% approval. One time however she said "You're 13 now this is childish, I don't want to see your art anymore." So I stopped drawing around everyone and would come home, lock myself in my room and draw. Then it just went downhill from there because now there's complaints I'm not spending enough time with the family and yadda yadda yadda. (Family had split by this point and her new boyfriend is an asshole to the point where extended family members and co-workers did not like him.)

This actually all culminated to where I was kicked out of home at 16 because I wanted to be an artist as career and as they say it's "not a real job", people like me are just leeches on society. Keep in mind the only career that qualifies as a real job to her was being a secretary for a government position. It had to be /her/ job. Anything else I applied to I was told to get a new job within 2 weeks or I was out, even if it had a legitimate career track. Long story short she went from super supportive to completely against, her new partner got her a new personality and I honestly think he was enforcing a lot of this behind the scenes given one time he even confiscated my art supplies for no reason. I don't talk to them anymore, and I don't think I ever will. For me this went beyond not liking someone's hobby to completely destroying their life over it. It's beyond forgiveness.

I think it comes down to my mother actually wanted to be an artist once upon a time in highschool, but her dreams were crushed by a teacher grading her picture with a lot of perspective focus (room full of people sitting down) an F while he graded a random abstract piece an A. She honed her skill till she was 18 and then stopped because the world told her no, so my guess is that she expected me to do the same. Sometimes I wonder if the pressure against my art was so hardcore because she'd have to face the fact that she gave up when she could've just continued.

I'm currently at an awkward moment in my life; Currently in junior year of high school and happens to be anti-college, my mom, like she has to my brothers, is pressuring me to go to college and or not pursuit art and do something else.
While I understand that when push goes to shove, I wouldn't mind taking on a job not art orientated if it means affording to life, I can balance art and work like I do with school, but my issue is where my mom glorifies my artwork in public yet has done nothing to support or encourage it. She treats it like a token, my dad likewise.

My older brothers, though concerned, are and were always supportive of my artwork and showed genuine interest in it.

The range of support does not limit my abilities to make art, but if I do gain publicity from it, I intend to be honest on the scheme of things since people need to stop treating art like a poor man's profession, it's just a different field that happens to be under rrated.