Why are artists insecure when it comes to their comic/art?

[Kelheor]

@Chocolate I mean, it's not really about if someone is great in what they do. As people above said (and they already mentioned all the great points), it's just very personal and artists, sharing the piece of their soul, are meeting a lot of comparison and expectations. Of course, no one must like what we do. But when you're creating something to make yourself or other people happy, it's tough to deal with the fact a lot of people either won't like it, would say you need to do better in any way, be it becoming a "better artist" or making money or becoming popular. The idea of creating, creating happiness with something you like to do becomes a background and insecurities flow in. So while it is a problem of disrespect, if you took away the foil of artists being disrespected for their craft (which is, of course, an existing problem), I think it's more of a problem of a human being looked down at for them expressing their feelings the best way they know how.
(Of course, not all the insecurities are outsiders inflicted, but it's overall a pretty deep topic )

[DanielRKM]

Last week, my Google news algorithm threw an article at me titled "6 Subtle Signs You're a High Achiever with Low Self-Worth" and I just thought...

...is this one of those subtle signs?

[abigaillmartin]

Do you have a link to that article I kinda wanna read it for myself.

[DanielRKM]

6 Subtle Signs You're a High Achiever With Low Self-Worth

It's a battle, for sure (I can be a mopey SOB from time to time) but some things that I've learned along the way to help with my mental health are:

1) I turned off notifications from Tapas (the pings felt great, but when they stop, the silence felt too much like judgement/indifference and that has a deteriorating effect on my happiness over the course of a week). I also check my notifications only a couple times a week (or a couple times a day- who am I kidding?).

2) When I have a set schedule for working on art/posting to social media- I'm WAY more focused on the joy of making that art rather than the need for validation. It's easier to be objective and out of my head if I'm more focused on achieving the goal rather than aimlessly checking for the reaction to the art.

3) I've noticed that artists with (literally) 1,000sX more followers feel the same way I do with 10s of mine. So I try to be objective and find the joy (I mean, I wouldn't rather be doing anything else in my art journey). And also, giving love to comics/artists is infectious (I just realized that can come off as dirty- apologies) and spreading positivity can just help everyone.

Be kind to yourselves, folks. You're so much more than what you make.

[TheLemmaLlama]

Yeah, there is the 'art is personal' aspect and it explains why people are insecure about what they draw/choose to portray/etc, but that doesn't really explain insecurity about skill. In that aspect, I feel like it has more to do with this:

you need approval of others to do a good job at it. Stand up comedians and actors are in the same boat. And the approval is subjective. If you are a boat builder and your boat sinks, you are a bad boat builder. Art doesn't have that.

Conversely as an artist, you wouldn't worry about your creation killing you, like a boat builder might.

Another aspect though might be that everyone can have an opinion on art. If you in, say, a super obscure and/or technical academic field, people can't really criticize you unless they're also well-versed in that field, but with art, even someone who can't draw themselves can tell when your anatomy is off, for instance. This means critics are less likely to have that empathy that comes from sharing your experiences as someone in your field, and it makes sense if that's scary.

(Then again, I wouldn't know; I've never really been insecure about my technical skill; I'm more familiar with the fear of people judging the actual content of what I choose to depict, like accusations of being exploitative/insincere/whiny/fetishizing/cringe/pretentious/etc :'D)