An acquaintance of mine seems to have closed her online art accounts. A lot of what she seemed to talk about was a lack of response toward her work, I think(?). At first, it kinda seems silly, but thinking about it more, I realize I know where she's coming from.

For me, it's easier to draw when I have an audience. The fact that some people do enjoy my work, no matter how disappointed I am with it, keeps me going. If left on my own, there's a chance that I would've quit art a long time ago. I judge heavily based on others' opinions of my work. Luckily a few people do respond to my work, and I feel like I'm doing an okay job.

But sometimes, I am blown back by uncalled-for criticism. By criticism, I don't just mean comments that point out faults. If someone's analyzing/evaluating my work, then their thoughts count as criticism, which isn't always a bad thing.

However, if there's something I work on for fun, I work really hard on it, and I think it's pretty good, a single comment that rubs me the wrong way could instantly take away all my motivation. I may be more sensitive to criticism than I originally thought. It's hard to accept the downfalls of something, after working so hard on that something. So everything I do, somehow, is purposefully not done to the best of my ability. I have the patience to, but I'm not brave enough to fully invest myself and expose my ability because of the chance that it could be attacked... or even worse, ignored. I don't even get a lot of criticism, mostly praise, which only makes criticism even harder to swallow.

It's easier to work on something I know is flawed. Maybe that's why I've been able to maintain my experimental webcomic for over six years. Because I'm comfortable with its blatantly obvious flaws, I'm able to play around with it at the risk of screwing it up even more.

But for things that I want to be done well, like stories I've been planning since I was 12, I'm really hesitant to start them. I want them to be good, I've already put in a lot of work into them, but I start doubting my capabilities. I too heavily base my opinion of my work on others' opinions. In the end, what I want to draw is what I expect other people will want. In fact, I feel like my best work are actually commissions or gifts to friends.

I'm not really quite sure what it means to draw for myself. That feeling comes so rarely that if my sole motivation was to draw for myself, I probably would've quit a long time ago. But once in a while, I do get the genuine feeling of wanting to draw something. And when it does, it tends to turn out just as good as a commission, maybe better. But this doesn't happen often. I'm lucky if I even get this feeling once a year. I enjoy art, but I actually don't have an intense passion for it. Sometimes I wonder why I'm still drawing. More likely than not, it's because people have told me that I was "good". Maybe I'm still drawing because of those people. They expect me to continue drawing, so I do.

But I kind of wish that I drew more for myself. I wish I wasn't so afraid of it. I need to be more assertive! I want to be able to draw something and say, "I DREW THIS BECAUSE I WANTED TO AND IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT ANYONE ELSE SAYS OR THINKS".

It's harder than it sounds, but I think it's a goal worth working towards.