Have you ever wanted to draw something but you fought due to your skill level at the time you decide not to do it
Ohhh man. I’ve got so many projects that I want to make but haven’t because I view my current skill set as lacking— and they’re almost always drawing related, because I’m very insecure about my drawing skills— even moreso than my writing skills. To go on a tangent and paint a picture of how severe this visual art insecurity is, I will list off how many people I have directly permitted to read my major written pieces once I passed my mid-teens:
My older sister, because she was my co-writer for the project and not letting her read my work wasn’t an option
My mother on one occasion
My aunt, who has experience with writing and publishing, and I have only ever sent two pieces to
Look at that number of people. The number of pieces I shared with them, in total, was four out of the hundreds of projects I’ve made over the years. I was so precious about my writing because I’m insecure about it. I’m even more insecure about my art. I couldn’t list off all the drawing projects I hesitate to make because I think it’s impossible with my current skill level, not even in a thousand years, but I’ll give a few examples that are always in the back of my mind lately.
A semi-animated pilot to a fantasy-comedy cartoon parodying The Office, starring a goblin secretary who’s trying to assassinate her employer and take over as the final boss of an RPG-esque dungeon that operates like an office building, while her employer is a lich who misinterprets all her efforts to kill him as her being flirty, leading him to develop a very severe crush on the goblin. The project is titled “Boss Fight”, and I have all the resources I need to make it, but I drag my feet because of my art insecurity… also I would be doing all the voice acting myself, and I don’t find my voice very appealing even when I change it to fit different characters.
A webcomic about a fantasy world populated by bipedal bug people that features a very brief “save the world” plot, then focuses the rest of the storyline on how the characters recover from the events of their backstories and the trauma the experienced while saving the world. It’s titled “The Creeping Chronicles”, and I love the project but am so insecure about being able to do the story justice with my art skills that I’ve tentatively pivoted to making it a book series instead. It’s got 21k+ words across 10-ish chapters because I’m too insecure about my art to draw it fully.
A slice of life comic titled “Welcome to Wayside” that’s basically Gravity Falls meets Stardew Valley where a young girl saves a cryptid’s life and now he’s stuck helping her until he repays the life debt he owes. The story features a vaguely men in black-style evil secret agency called G.L.O.O.M. (Gents for Ludicrous Oddity Organization and Management) who have various ranks are named after facets of fashion (khakis are their grunt labor and pocket squares are researchers) and they use a threat-ranking system based on dress codes (i.e. “WE HAVE A BLACK TIE DOWN ON SOUTH STREET, REPEAT: BLACK TIE DOWN ON SOUTH STREET”), and I adored G.L.O.O.M. along with the cast of characters featured in the story, but I don’t feel confident in my ability to design interesting-looking original cryptids.
I could leave this post at that, but I’ve got an important thing to say on this subject—
If you want to make something but are hesitating to because your skill levels are lackluster, make it anyways.
Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever can. Let yourself make the thing, and let yourself make the thing badly. Love it and how ugly it is. The perspective is all askew in this part, and that character is horribly off model there, and isn’t it all amazing? You made that! You made a thing! And you wouldn’t have this thing that you made if you waited until the conditions were perfect to make it and refused to create the thing before your skills were sufficient.
There’s this terrible thing about creative projects— one that is very noticeable in drawing projects especially, in my experience. As your artistic skills develop, your artistic vision also develops to become more and more detailed and masterful… and it’s always going to be outside of your grasp. If you wait until you’re ready to make the thing, you will never make the thing, because you’ll never feel ready no matter how much you build your skills. But if you make the thing before you feel totally prepared, you’ll learn and grow artistically as well as personally, and will be able to feel more confident in future thing-making efforts.
