But I'll Do My Best - Tumblr Posts
A personal art reflection of 2015
I can’t for some reason post that ”best of tumblr” thing, but I think that’s public for everyone, so f you are for some reason curious, go check it out.
Long rant ahead
There’s like 11 days left in the year, a lot of things happened but for the most part everything stayed the same. My personal life today and a year ago are pretty much identical, and there ain’t nothing wrong with that. My biggest issue is in regards my artistic skills. I started this year super excited, doing studies, painting coloring and stuff like that, but I have a huge issue with self discipline, and all of that motivation is like a firework, powerful and beautiful but short and meaningless. I go to school for graphic design, and I have taken many classes to help me be a better draughstman and animator, and for the most part I did excellent this semester, my professors liked my work, I got good grades in the classes I cared for and did some longform projects that I probably wouldn’t have done outside an academic environment.
However I think the issue lies on the little bubble of mediocrity I’ve put myself. I’m over 70% of my college program. In about a year and a half I will be graduating, and despite my work being apparently good enough for college, it is garbage when I compare it to the industry I admire and that I want to be a part of. Thanks to tumblr and picarto I’ve surrounded myself with some incredibly skilled, hard working (and super nice) people, and that only serves to emphasize how unprepared I am for anything remotely close to an actual job in the illustration or animation industries.
Unlike engineering or medicine art can be, and is in great part, a self teaching endeavor, so even if my college seems to approve of what I present, to me it isn’t enough. It’s not the level I want to be at. Maybe I’m being harsh to myself, but I maintain that this is at least an objective criticism. My work is inferior to the people I admire, and I’m so lost in regards to what I need to do to come near them, and what they do. This year I’ve constantly repeated to myself “I know I can be a good artist”, and that remains true to me, but what I don’t know is how. I have a ton of resources on my hard drive, and the internet has an infinity more, but I don’t know how to use them. I constantly just find my self staring at pages of PDF’s completely oblivious to the message the author tries to convey in his manual.
I know my destination, but the road just seems like a swamp where I can’t properly step, but if that’s the case, I’m gonna swim through the mud. Because self criticism s useless if it just deforms into complacency or self pity, I wanna make 2016 my year. The year I finally start feeling a solid ground beneath my feet. The year I can finally show a portfolio to a superior without fear and take the criticism with maturity. The year I can finally start calling myself “an animator”. The year I feel prepared to be part of an industry. The year where all those scribbles and doodles and what have you will pay off, because a long time ago I made the decision that art wasn’t gonna be my hobby, but my career, and that can only be achieved with sacrifice, reflection and passion. If you read through all of this, holy shit. But also HERE’S TO A BRIGHT 2016.
Phone guy aka Scott
