By Celestia’s fluffy beard! You’re right!
Let me have a look to see if I can fix that

Who says it’s a snake necessarily? It could be anything :3

If you bump into me, feel free to say hi! I’ll probably be using my name badge from last year, I’ll post another pic closer to the time X3

lightsintheskye:

methodicalmadnessv1:

louminx:

I know it’s probably a bad idea to answer this, adding fuel to the fire and all that, but there’s a good chance you’re an artist yourself, maybe even one struggling to pull in notes… And even if you’re not, you sound like the artist I was when I was at my lowest. So, I’ll take this as a chance to talk about my experience with notes, if only to serve as a cautionary tale.

First of all, and with all due respect, I didn’t start that way. In 2016, I could barely reach over 100 notes with my fanart. I can still remember crying tears of joy when I woke up to 300 notes one morning, like I’d somehow “made it”. I’ll also spare you the five years of DeviantArt and 2 favourites per drawing prior to that. My first “popular” post happened around May 2016, and everything after that was a slippery slope.

The more notes I got, the more notes I wanted. Validation, at long last! I didn’t even know I needed it, but now I wanted nothing more. It got to a point where I was no longer drawing for me, but for notes. “What do people want to see?”, I asked myself. “What are other people doing that’s popular?” “How can I ever do better than my biggest drawing to date?”

It got so bad that I began denying ideas I really wanted to explore, because I knew they wouldn’t do well. Art became a competition I could never win. Against other artists, against myself… And it was such a dark, unhealthy place to be.

Something inside me broke in July 2017. There were no more ideas. There was no more drawing. Nothing. Through my obsession with popularity, I had killed my creativity and had become afraid of drawing. I mean, sitting down in front of the tablet, tears welling in my eyes, mind blank and belittling, afraid.

It all happened at a time when my blog was doing better than it ever had. I was miserable, and oh so willing to give it all up. Because when you’re that disappointed in your art, that unsatisfied, followers and reblogs and notes just don’t matter.

I got back into art a few weeks later, not because of social media, but because something inside of me yearned to create. But those wounds were still there, that niggling voice in the back of my head, the insecurities, the doubt, the self-loathing. It’s been half a year since then, and I’m still paying for it.

If the experience taught me anything it’s that if the only reason an artist draws is for popularity, they won’t be drawing for very long. “Easy to say when you-“ yeah, yeah, I know.

Popularity isn’t why you start. It can’t be. There’s something else, something beautiful and magical that makes you want to create. If you smother that, you’ll stop, plain and simple. I did, I didn’t know that I was, but I did. It’s been a long process of self-healing since then (with some really dark days in between), but I’m finally getting somewhere happy… And I really hope you can get somewhere happy too, anon.  

I love art more than ever have. I’ve been posting original content recently. I’ve simplified my style. I’ve been honest about my struggles in art… and as a result my notes have been really suffering and my blog has stopped growing. As grateful as I am for the followers I have, I’ve never been happier in art than I am right now, being daring and self-indulgent and honest and unpopular. 

Hard fucking same.

I wont deny that the ugly head of jealousy rears itself from time to time and I really don’t want that to saturate my work. I’m a person that likes to make things that make people happy/sad/laugh ie something meaningful and I won’t say it disheartens me when people dont see my work or I get it into my head that they: 1. Don’t care or 2. My art is mediocre. As I’m sure any of you have noticed, I’ve been drawing a lot of fan art for The Arcana and part of me thinks: “you’re doing it for the notes and popularity” and while those things are nice, I genuinely enjoy the game a lot. The last time I felt this happy and engaged was for Persona 3 and Blazblue and those games came out…over 10 years ago. Y i k e s.

I can’t say you shouldn’t care because its very hard to turn off a brain that tells you that you arent good enough but i definitely agree with what was said here. You should always create what YOU want because thats what makes it all worthwhile.

I feel this a lot

Truth!
Notes are fickle, I’ve found that my pics would either get 10 notes or like, 100 notes. Until recently it seems to be more like 50 or 500.
Tumblr doesn’t have much of an in-between haha. But remember it doesn’t so much tell you who is LOOKING at your art, just who took a tiny bit of effort to slide over to the like button.

I don’t think I’m “popular”, though plenty of people I know tend to disagree with that. I have had some friends disregard my points and feelings too because “Oh sure you can talk, getting 500 notes on a picture!”. But I would have to agree with this post, notes really don’t matter much.

Sure, the day when I exploded literally overnight because of a piece of fanart I made was the most validated and happiest I’d been. For a while, I did sorta rely on notes a little, though it wasn’t only as a gauge of how well my art was doing, it was also cus I was struggling with life and every note I got felt like a piece of my soul being glued back into place when life was trying to break me.
And THAT, is what I wanted to talk about.

The most important thing to me is how people receive my art. Sure, getting more popular is nice, but for me what that means is my art is reaching more people.
For me, the most validating thing of all is what my art means to other people. I have honest to god received comments thanking me for making a picture and telling me it made their day, or even that it just really made them happy. That kind of feeling brought me to tears. I don’t think I’ll be able to have much of an impact on the world IRL, but here, here I can make a difference to people.

Even if that is just a smile. Because I think that is pretty powerful.

But that’s what matters, I think. Even stepping outside of Notes and the like, it’s easy to get funnelled into a mindset of creating art as a means of simply making something cool online that people will fav. But art is not a process of manufacture, it is a means of expression.

A little while back I was in quite a bad block. I couldn’t find a passion for drawing and while I still doodled things for fun, I just felt so blah about the tedium of it, and lacked faith enough in myself to try anything daring. But with the help of friends and some moments of inspiration, I pushed through that.
Now, I can make art to touch people’s hearts. And that includes myself.

Cus the bottom line of it is, I make art that I love, That I want to make, that makes me happy, and in doing so it makes other people happy too.
I can express my feelings, draw up an idea, but whatever I do, the important thing is being creative and not worrying whether or not you get hundreds of notes on it. All you really need is to know that something incredible that YOU MADE, that came right out of your heart, reached the heart of others.

That is what makes art beautiful and is what you truly should be fighting for. Wherever you draw your passion from, draw it.
And love it.

What could be better than having a gallery full of art where each piece you look at is a piece of you; your emotions, ideas, and passion. When you look at them and think of how joyed it makes you feel to see the things you created? to remember how happy you were to finish them and how proud it makes you to see them?
THAT should be your goal.

Yep! I went 2016 and 2017. Definitely wanna go this year, but may be a little different as my friend and I were *hoping* to get a table for vending.
Only problem is we have no idea what we’re doing XD

Awww you are too nice thank you ^-^