This Looks A Lot Better Than I Remember It? - Tumblr Posts

I just had a small epiphany why you might like other people's art more than your own:

It's the lack of suspension of disbelief.

When you see something someone else has drawn or painted, you take in the content faster than you take in the technical aspects. You experience it as pseudo-real, the same way you stop perceiving animated characters as drawn or book characters as written as you get into the story.

On the other hand, when you yourself have made something, all you see is the machine behind the theater, so to speak. You're probably thinking about lines, shading, coloring in a "does this make sense? Is this the best decision I could have made?"-kind of way.

I think that's also why sometimes, pictures you haven't looked at for a long time starts looking nice to you again, à la: "Hey past-me was unto something! Why can't I replicate it nowadays?". It's probably specifically because you've forgotten the process of making it that you are now seeing it with fresh eyes.

Art is an illusion, but a magician has a hard time tricking themself. So don't be so hard on yourself: it's probably just that you can't see the magic right now, but that doesn't mean it's not there.