[opens tumblr briefly to make this post and then fucks off again to avoid TOH finale spoilers]
So I’m at the con right now. I’m in the Artists’ Alley, where I spend most of my time at cons because I love looking at people’s artwork and getting a few new posters for my wall every year. (Well, it used to be every year; this is the first in-person con I’ve been to since 2019 and I’ve missed it a lot. I’m very glad people are being conscientious about masking, and I watched someone get turned away at the door for not having their booster shot, so I’m not really feeling in any more danger than I am on campus. Which is to say I’m still a little nervous but also aware that so long as I’m careful I will probably be fine, knock wood.)
It’s weird. I’m so out of the loop on a lot of things. There’s so many anime that have a strong presence at the con (both in cosplays and on people’s art tables) that I’ve just never heard of. I would have thought there would be a ton of Owl House, given how popular it is right now, but I’ve only found a very few things, only one of which appealed to me enough to purchase. I might go back for that cute keychain of Eda holding King, it’s just a bit long so I’m not sure how I’d use it.
I also expected a decent amount of Infinity Train, given how popular it is, how beloved and highly rated, but I haven’t seen any. I really wanted some posters for my wall! There’s nothing! A few people have recognized my Amelia Hughes cosplay, and a few more have just pointed at me and gone “Oh, Infinity Train!” or in one case “Conductor!” but still. It’s odd.
The reason this ramble is going on my art blog, though, is that I keep looking at the artists who have booths here and feeling so conflicted. They’re so damn good. The vast majority of them are so damn good.
(Not entirely relevant, but I could swear there’s a higher proportion of boobyass-artists this year than there usually is. No shade to the boobyass, nothing wrong with being horny, but bc I don’t want that kind of thing on my wall it means I keep looking at booths like “oh those colours are nice— woah that’s a lot of titty, woah she sure is bending over away from the camera in skimpy skivvies, oh dear”)
But the point here is that I don’t know how to take it, I don’t know how to handle it. I’m never going to be good enough of an artist to sell prints even online, much less as good as these folks, and I’m usually fine with that, you know? I draw to have fun, myself, and to get my dumb jokes out, and to illustrate my song associations, and to sometimes make something I find fairly pretty. I’m usually fine with that. It’s not my career path, I’m a writer, that’s the way I’m going, that’s the thing I’m actually good at. But at the same time I see these people and I think “what if I could, what if I did, what if I did a ton of TOH and IT and Utena and fairytale and SU posters, I could even have a Cain Saga one off to the corner for old goth nerds like me, what if I was actually good at this?”
But I’m not going to be good at it— I’ve been drawing consistently as long as I can remember, and I’m nearly thirty, and if I chose to make it a full time job I could probably get decently competent but I can’t, I’m in college and I’m a writer and I’m exhausted.
So it’s giving me this very weird kind of inspiration, where on the one hand I’m having all these ideas of things to draw, the Posters I Would Make, but on the other hand I’m aware enough of my lack of skill that it’s immobilizing.
I’ll get over it. It’s just weird right now.
