Alright you lot.
First off, I wanted to just take a second to acknowledge the fact that we made it to
200-thousand subscribers on this channel.
It doesn’t even seem real to be saying that, and I just wanna say thanks for being here,
and just how incredible it is that in such a massive community there’s so much kindness
and accepting and supporting of each other.
I really do feel lucky to have each and every one of you here.
So welcome to the new peeps, welcome to the fam, and shoutout to my oldies who’ve been
here since I was filming videos with my phone.
Anyway, today’s drawing… mm.
I wanted to draw an industrially, a little bit post-apocalyptic structure that was haunted
by toxic radiation.
I wasn’t as excited about the idea as I had been with my past drawings but I still
had a good idea in mind of how I wanted it to look.
But I was having a bad art day.
So…
A bad art day for me is like a bad hair day.
It doesn’t matter if you’re doing something you’ve done a thousand times before, using
the tools you’ve always used, doing something that always works out, or something you can
at least adjust and fix and eventually work out when it doesn’t go to plan… on a bad
art day, it’s like the world is against you and your brain isn’t communicating with
your hand.
Everything that can go wrong will go wrong and every mark you make is another mistake.
I’m sounding a bit dramatic, but when you’re in the moment that’s what it feels like.
You get exasperated and frustrated and the most disheartening part is that you keep going,
keep trying to salvage it, but the more you do to try and fix it, the worse it gets.
The first thing to know about bad art days, much like bad hair days is… no-one really
notices.
It might sound bad but people aren’t gonna see the drastic, tragic difference that you
see.
They might notice somethings a little off compared to your more fluid, neater or more
harmonised work.
But I promise you, your perceived disasters don’t stick out like the sore thumb that
you think they are.
That’s great to remind yourself when you’re done with the drawing, but a lot of the issue
with bad art days is finding the will-power to keep on going with a piece of work that’s
uncooperative and fights you at every brush stroke.
The idea of giving up and starting again can just be so tempting.
And by all means, if you feel you can do a better job, drastically better job, by starting
over, there’s nothin wrong with doing that.
You learned for your mistakes of the first and you can chalk that last drawing up as
a practice.
But that’s only if the piece you’re working on is unsalvageable.
For me, and I know this isn’t easy, but I just kind of keep going.
Plod along.
Remind myself that I always kind of hate my work until it’s done anyway and hold out
the hope that if I keep going I’ll actually end up with something I like.
I acknowledge the fact that I’ getting frustrated, but in noticing that feeling and labelling
it, I’m stopping that frustration from spiralling and taking me down into a hole of self-doubt.
Thinking to yourself ‘I can feel myself getting annoyed’ is a lot different to feeling
annoyed.
If that makes sense.
It might only make sense once you’ve tried it.
So I sigh, when the ink I’m using to add a hint of rust isn’t orange, its actually
pinky red, and it spreads farther than I anticipated and it stains the page so I can’t get rid
of it.
I think ‘ugh, typical’ but my hand doesn’t stop moving.
My thoughts are separate from my actions.
My body is kind of on autopilot and I just kind of scramble to do what I can to fix the
drawing.
And then I think ‘I’m getting frustrated, this is a bad art day’ and somehow just
saying that in my head makes me a little bit less frustrated.
Enough to keep my positivity high enough to keep going.
Bad art days are hard, but m advice is to stop yourself from spiralling into frustration
by noticing and acknowledging how you’re feeling and to stop your thoughts from taking
over by letting your body do the work, keep your hand moving and let your mind tick away
in the background.
Just don’t give up.
That’s all for today.
See you tomorrow for the next one.
Bye!