Lately I’ve been struggling bad.
Struggling to put what I see to paper or in my case the digital canvas.
It is right there in front of me and I get overwhelmed and anxious at attempting to put it to paper perfectly enough for me to be satisfied. In other-words, I cannot seem to get around the “break the form down into something like shapes.” For example if I was drawing the human form, I cannot figure out how to approach my subject, people online or in books and my teachers when I was a student always said break them down into shapes whether they be 2D or 3D shapes but I cannot imagine the shapes to begin with so I do not know what I should do in this situation because this advice is just useless to me as it does not apply. I try to think of the shape in my head, but no images are seen… it is empty space up there, I cannot even visualize it being pitch black.
How can I see the shape and know how to place said shape on the paper in the correct spot or however my thoughts had in mind. I feel like I am putting too much pressure on myself and over thinking everything.
I can only think in words, thoughts, concepts etc. I cannot even see the words when I think of them. There’s just nothing going on up there.
It sucks. I have so many ideas but because I cannot get a visualization in my head, I am unable to properly execute them on my canvas. So I end up feeling dissatisfied because it ends up being one of those, “not what I had in mind” but ok I guess, moments. Which is funny because I do not see what I have in my mind, it ends up just being thoughts on potential concepts but I still get this feeling that it isn’t perfect for me. I do not want my art to be copy-pastes of reference images. I want to make my own unique stuff. But its so hard for me to do this.
I find I have to heavily rely on reference, which I do not mind. But now its gotten to the point where I feel anxious straying away from the reference because perhaps without the reference I do not know what I am doing. I feel like I am just copy-pasting or even just cheating, it doesn’t feel like my work and I want to feel that satisfaction of creating something amazing- I’m not there and It makes me feel sad. I wish I could draw from the mind like others but what can you do. My favourite area of interest is mythology, so I want to draw from my imaginational concepts in my head but I cannot visualize anything. Even with reference I struggle to visualize how to break down what I am drawing in simplified forms. I get anxious and even procrastinate my studies because It starts to make me feel overwhelmed and do not know how to approach something in front of me. I could have a reference for example that has a necklace I want to draw but its positioned a certain way and I want to do a different position of it, but because I cannot imagine visually, I do not know how to approach the change. I could maybe edit the reference and move the shape another way but what if the reference cannot be reshaped or edited because the positioning is too complex…. It just another limitation.
I am even struggling with using references too. For example, I need one reference for the pose, one for the clothes, another for any accessories and or further references for whatever else but finding a reference with the exact pose, exact shape or fit for what I want to draw is very hard. So I struggle alot with trying to add additional subjects or topics to my artworks.
I’ve been thinking about it lately and it makes me feel like maybe I lack creativity. I have imagination to some degree but I am just feeling so ugh. Its like I am in a constant art block. I do not know what else to say about my struggles other than I feel so disabled by it lately.
I give myself a migraine trying to force a visualization only for nothing to appear in my head anyway.
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