Hi, everyone. I'm a hobbyist artist who seems to have a very big potential in the art world, as friends and strangers have told me. I have ADHD, and I also have vivid dreams. However, over the years, I've lost that spark, and I struggle with it greatly.
I ended up stumbling upon this place, so maybe I can find some help here. Here's my story.
Long ago, I had an unending spirit to draw. Although I didn't draw or create original characters until high school (I mainly did my favorite video game characters and such), my art had come from my strange perception and imagination, so it was ... not like what was normally seen, but people loved it because it was unique. I loved drawing so much. It was endless! Even if it didn't look right, I kept at it. I really wanted to pursue this down the road.
In 7th grade, I believed, I had somehow entered into a state of redundancy. I stopped naturally progressing and kept drawing the same favorite character over and over again. I've noticed in my old art that I stopped coloring my pictures, too.
Come senior year, and my art grew stale and garbage. I had class peers who were much better at art than me. One was the first minor (at the time) to sell art at a convention and made thousands of dollars. The other was really crafty and did art for the school. Both won many art awards. Me? Everyone no longer regarded me as one of the artists of our class group, and I felt the same, too. My art regressed to samey bullcrap and dull sketches... I just couldn't do what they were doing ... I was socially awkward in high school, having no discovery of myself, but still.
Now my art background has become a wasteland of potential, which is why I've given up pursuing it and doing it as a hobby. I have such vivid dreams that I know can be turned into something great, but I lack the skills to realize them. I've tried setting off time to do observation studies, but even those have ended in failure. It all comes to my motivation, and it's become absolute garbage. It comes and goes, flickering when it wants to. It takes so much to work on art. I feel much more satisfied if I'm working on something I'll post online, but if it's not what I see, or if it's not the right kind (? I don't know how to describe it...), I get so frustrated. When I haven't found something to captivate me, it's constant unsatisfaction and I hate it.
I miss coloring. I miss doing beautiful pictures like the ones seen here (well, mine were never this great, but just the enjoyment of completing something...). I miss being able to complete things without worrying how correct it looks. I miss just drawing endlessly and getting results.
I'm not sure if I've hit every issue, but this is the gist of it. I'll probably tell more over time. I hope to get some help; this site looks promising of direction for my deprived art life.
Thank you very much for reading.