Wishing for love / 愛を込めて

I’m back because of Drawfest4!!

Thank you so much for the lectures! I needed the practice!

I struggled to do this piece and I need to do more studies 🙁
I don’t know if I’ll come back to pixiv…is it safe now to post here?
I’m still at twitter and instagram and my blog but I’m not sure if it’s safe against involuntary art AI data training.

Does anyone actively follow me here?
Should I post at pixiv again? I don’t know :<

Posted this on the 16th June 2023

Waited 6 months later to post this….and accidentally posted it early on my Youtube community tab last year haha

This is to practice composition better since I’m not good at many things :<

I was frustrated at my own art weaknesses and lack of visual library…I am so out of practice. I struggle to find time to study and not sure how to make it less overwhelming to do. I need to scale back on the other things I do (in which I’ll get into below).

Figure studies from earlier in the year 2023

Super rusty and embarrassing. But practice is practice! Slow mileage from several months ago!

Leonie Rambles about…

• In Defense of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (Final Girl Studios)
  • people have depth and are flawed indeed, video comments brought up how both Scott and Ramona in Scott Pilgrim are meant to be flawed and are jerks (I didn’t relate to any of them so I just lost interest to it)
  • I did enjoy the movie at the time but didn’t like most of the characters
• The AUDACITY of women aging naturally (Bryony Claire)
  • oof always working on not body checking/comparing myself and others in my mind – it’s hard to not be self conscious about fitting into “conventionally attractive standards of beauty” :<
  • always working on not being as stressed out 🙁
  • people are still mean/prejudiced/judgemental with older women
    • (and people in general with first impressions)
  • let people live and age however they want 🙁
  • I hope to not care too much about judgements…got other things to worry about
  • but yeah sunscreen is important – I am just lazy and wear a huge hat instead ;P
• How Art Stole My Best Years – Tensai Productions from Jamaica (video CW: death and suicide)
  • I think art took over for me too where I escape my reality to do art. But I can’t imagine life not doing art. I don’t want to starve, struggle, sacrifice everything, die for passion/art either.
  • Doing and balancing things in moderation is more the struggle thanks to my one track, hyperfocused mind.
  • I also don’t want to think about money – all the same we need it to survive, get our basic needs met, thrive and have the privilege/freedom to do what we want
    • I don’t want to stress about surviving but hey what can you do
    • we all just want to live and enjoy the short time we have in this world :’)
    • I don’t want to sit at my desk forever either…
    • now emotional needs is a whole other thing to worry about
  • It is possible to have love, support, thriving career, friends, have their own space, have a stress free non abusive environment and thrive as an artist – it’s just not easy.
    • I just don’t know if I can make it happen for me as an autistic hermit… :’)
    • so I guess for people who have it and juggle it all, I wonder how that’s like as I’m just outside looking in at people I know who lead different lives and have these things
    • I am grateful for the positive things I do have and I’m privileged to have in my life and there’s also the fear of losing them
• Lost in Thought by David Kortava The psychological risks of meditation (2021 article CW: suicide)
  • meditation is not necessarily a good thing and it’s not for everyone
  • I couldn’t stick to meditation – random, short breathing / zoning out moments it is
  • too much meditation and dissociating is terrible for your mind – < 20mins in moderation at best apparently

Creative Fulfillment actually sucks/ Passion projects isn’t for everyone – Toniko Pantoja

(notes were written last year at the time of the video, before I told myself not to do video notes anymore)

• I resonate/feel this so much in terms of feeling conflicted with “creative fulfillment” and how huge passion projects and your own IPs suck out any joy I had for creating because it all depends on you and it’s your responsibility on how it’s executed and if you have the ability, charisma, luck/opportunity, interest to market/appeal to people
  • and as you know I tend to spiral if I don’t have someone else to bounce off from
  • then again I spiral anyway if I overthink too much
  • I guess I don’t have that personal/strong motivation or drive to make something this big when I’m more of an artist who enjoys learning, the journey and making fanart haha
  • I do envy people who do have their own IPs, attractive branding and projects that thrive + lots of autonomy, creative business ideas and creative control but that’s not me right now because my mindset is terribly self-depreciative and I’m just tired and overwhelmed
  • one day I hope I can manage my own project/thing…?
  • I know with all this AI, one needs to create original things to thrive above it but I’m not interested in that stage right now
• I don’t want to suffer and crunch for art anymore as much as I fail/struggle at reigning myself in a lot, how I hyperfocus on things and how I need time to recover from art burnout in waves :’)
• sacrifice, suffering and pain …indeed why that is not why I do art
  • Why do we have to hustle and grind to succeed??
  • this whole mindset burns me out too
  • the job market is super competitive for artists as it is and the pressure to overwork feels expected
  • it’s terribly discouraging/humbling/saddening when people keep saying that the majority of artists won’t “make it into the industry, the depressing amounts of layoffs, companies using AI generators instead of hiring/employing artists (like XPen (who walked back on it??), HUION/Gaomon, Wacom, Adobe/Behance, Magic the Gathering due to Photoshop?, allegedly the Apex devs, Japan embraces softened AI regulations and probably more) and some job positions requiring unrealistic experience and skills across other disciplines
  • it feels hopeless when it’s clear that they don’t want to pay artists and want quality things cheaply…
• I am not someone who has an ultimate “dream project” but more of a “what do I enjoy learning about, iterating on, experimenting on, studying on, creating about”?
  • so this video gives me so much reassurance
  • so far many other artists and “influencers/creators” hammer down about making personal projects/IP when I struggle to want to for myself. I feel validated!
  • passion projects don’t give me fulfillment – questioning does this project even reflect me?? Is this meaningful? Is it worth it? Can people even relate?? Am I alone with this?? Who would pay/invest in a nobody like me?? as the video says it’s full of self doubt, especially when you aren’t sure about your own ideas
  • I tried to make it work in the past as I was testing ways to survive and experience things but it doesn’t work often because it’s lonely and hard making something people don’t care for or recognise – nothing seems good enough and you tend to take this personally because it’s tied to you!
    • eg: my personal SuperLeonieMode comics won’t go anywhere (it does not have a big audience), my heart isn’t in it anymore nor do I want to keep pumping it out and using my negative and mixed feelings as my drive/source – it isn’t great, burns me out and is emotionally draining
  • yeah being around people who are all about hustling and pitching, career climbing and/or being an entrepreneur makes me feel conflicted with my situation and the industry
    • because I’m not motivated by these things but it feels like I should
  • Perhaps I’m not ready right now. Leaving possibilities open to survive and also I don’t know what I’m doing :’)
• being creative is about problem solving and one needs to be honest with themselves indeed
• the journey is better than the destination – makes it more creatively fulfilling due to the learning experience
  • it also feels good for me if I’m learning something, enjoying it and pushing my art skills :0
  • and if I’m making what I want and not only what I think is expected/in demand :’)
• ownership – creative control, responsibility, having a voice, level of involvement in the creative vision versus being a cog in the wheel
  • I used to care too much on not being a disappointment/scapegoat (well wait I still do sometimes) and my ego got in the way (internally) but now I just focus on getting the thing done and I’m glad I helped out as an art grunt/worker bee and see how I can problem solve/make it fun or interesting for me
  • occasionally I get some creative control in the early stages though!
  • art leads/directors have so much responsibility + reputation/prestige + people management that goes with it but I don’t know if can handle that myself – sounds too overwhelming and stressful for me
  • as long as I am able to help and enjoy what I do then I’m good ;0
  • just don’t micromanage me too much, I need my space to experiment, make mistakes and iterate too
• a commenter mentioned that creative fulfillment is about telling great/insightful stories that are helpful or meaningful
  • that if you don’t think in story with no insights/meaning on life then all you’re doing is craft without communicating interesting/cool ideas that make you happy to share – it’s about ideas you think are cool to tell stories about
  • great point for the emotional side of things!
  • I kind of draw things that make me happy so I lean more towards the craft side and am weak on the story/meaning/emotionally deep side of things 🙁
  • well it makes me happy to draw it ;P
• agreed – as long as I’m true and honest with myself and keep experimenting then it’s fulfilling. It’s hard when there’s so much noise/influence from other people on different paths, demonstrating and telling you otherwise
  • resisting influences and pressures of whatever other people are doing
  • minimising checking my social media feed helps

And I do wonder – if you didn’t have to work what would you be doing instead?

I think I would still do art and go all in on fanart and character design learning anyway but at a much slower pace, get less disciplined and actually play more games. I would actually take more breaks and take weekends off maybe oof

I’m still terrible at having off-days. I didn’t really turn off from art related things over my holidays. So if you ask if I had a good holiday I would say it was a mixed bag of gaming crammed towards the end because I didn’t relax for most of it.

I need to make this happen this year 🙁

Deciding I’m not doing subtitled timelapse videos anymore & shall try to scale back my rambly blog posts!

Can’t be consistent with youtube videos with subtitles anymore. I have to write a normal/long blog post and a tiny blog post for subtitles in the video – it’s more work!

And proofreading takes a longgg time with my blog posts.

Both are contributing to my lack of sleep and low level burn out and I need to reign things in, especially when I also need to dedicate my time to life, work, learning, practice, creating art and sleep(???). Patrons have been super quiet, generous supporters all the same! Youtube peeps have been supportive too! At the current rate it’s unsustainable and I am just hurting myself in the long run as it’s just more workload I’m juggling with.

For now I’ll have to not subtitle things and just revert back and focus on music and art process in my videos instead. I find that I run out of things to say and I’m getting stumped and making up things to say because of it, especially when I ramble at my blog already :’) Edit 11th January 2024: well I’m back to subtitles if needed and it won’t be every video! Just posting timelapses isn’t very interesting so I’ll see how I go. But then again, even my subtitled videos don’t get viewed much so it doesn’t matter – timelapses are not popular ;P

I know ideally I “should” do voiceover, subtitles and longer videos (if I were to have more production value) but that just stresses and pressures me into performing into a voiced, masked persona, into a lot more work than I can afford time/effort/work/financially to and I just don’t want sharing art to become something I dread again. I am wary of being pigeonholed into something I don’t enjoy nor can I stick with. I’d rather ramble at my blog.

When I was striving to loosely plan (many times over) what things I want to do this year…I didn’t have much time for editing videos left. Also not much for making rambly blog posts.

This was the same for 2023 and the year before – I don’t actually schedule/plan much time for video making and when I do actually do that it takes a lot of my personal time instead. I end up feeling way behind with all the other things I actually planned to do. Yet the video is tied up with art and a blog post so I have to do it on the same deadline. It’s gotten so time consuming for a long time and I’ve also brought this up a few times in the past. I can’t keep going like this anymore.

Indeed I’ve set myself up to fail and self disappointment for my other learning and artist plans often :’)

So I really need to simplify my videos and not worry about making engaging videos (as much as I’m a heavy Youtube video watcher). I don’t want to invest into youtube too seriously when I am not even earning anything from youtube itself – so many youtubers and art youtubers burn out with much more higher production value and work than I would ever reach. And they also struggle with their mental health – making videos is their equivalent of me creating and learning art. No thanks I don’t another whole career! At least not right now when I have other things to juggle with.

I am not trying to be an entertainer or educator but I’m just sharing my art progress & journey. So perhaps inspiration in that we’re not alone? I might format things a bit differently as I go along as usual but we’ll see.

I feel relieved that I don’t have to write more things for subtitles (all the time). I thrive much better just writing here :’)

I also found out about a browser extension that blocks out the youtube studio metrics and likes – I don’t have to see that anymore! I don’t have to feel upset about random dislikes or no likes at all unless I go directly to my own video. I wonder if that affects how I post this year if I don’t know how my metrics are doing? Likes definitely help boost the video and if people like it but currently I obsess and check too much. Actually I don’t know if I want to know because I shouldn’t be taking youtube and social media too seriously this year.

Even so I need to scale back my blog rambling! So reminder to self: no more summaries of videos after today’s post because I do get carried away!! And I’ll be more mindful with my other thoughts and rambles. Perhaps stick to dot points more depending on the situation. I will keep blog posts super short and sweet if I don’t have anything to say (trying to remind myself too)!

Just don’t expect rambles for every blog post! I’ll have posts with just art and minimal writing with it. There’s times when I just have art to share and that’s it. You would be able to tell from the blog excerpt if it’s a “little blog post” or if I actually write up a list of things that I’ll be rambling about.

Twitter – just posting blog updates & art previews. Trying to cut out more things this year!

• I will retweet work tweets if applicable
• it’ll become a blog notification account now because I don’t want to bother with twitter threads or linking things there anymore haha

Simplifying my life bit by bit! All the same I’m already using twitter minimally and I have stopped checking my following feed again for a while now (I get sucked back in sometimes where I always see the same handful of people posting but I have now made it less accessible for me to scroll) :’)

Again I want to depend on it less and stay away from it more for my mental health.

Also the website is broken/breaking apart. Lots of times where I press links and they don’t show up, links don’t work or respond after a few minutes. Also my reach (and everyone else’s) is at the lowest it’s ever been and I’m not really reaching much new people at all, similar to Instagram. And the bot accounts that follow/interact instead of interactions from real people…it feels pointless posting there – lots more people quit, don’t use/interact at twitter anyway and I don’t really have a huge engaged audience. And the silly “are you a human” verification checks are more complicated and ridiculous.

I hope this makes things easier and better for me. Time will tell how this goes!

If I really don’t have much reach and/or engagement, I’ll just quietly stop posting to twitter altogether and cut it out like the title actually says ;P

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