/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

[Anonymous No.3300848]

>have had massive procrastination/laziness problems my whole life, including with drawing
>my basic instinct is to cycle through vidya/fap/shitpost until I die
>read what various normie sources have to say about procrastination
>"of course it's natural to procrastinate in the face of the dreariness of modern work! people are mainly motivated to do joyful, creative things, like make art!"
>read what artists say about procrastination
>"there's nothing that I love more than waking up each morning and immediately drawing for 12 hours straight. If you ever procrastinate on your art, you just don't love drawing enough!"
Anyone else a) have massive motivational problems and b) feel completely broken and worthless for it?

[Anonymous No.3300852]

Fuck you for making another blogthread.

[Anonymous No.3300853]

start somewhere, draw for 1 hr, depending on that goes, stop. the next day try to extend that time. 1:30hrs maybe. Keep going. Make it a routine. You can't just magically for an everyday 5-8 drawing cycle out of nowhere. You have to get a routine and stick with it.

[Anonymous No.3300869]

>>3300848
Literally me

[Anonymous No.3300877]

>>3300848
"Men are even lazier than they are timid, and fear most of all the inconveniences with which unconditional honesty and nakedness would burden them. Artists alone hate this sluggish promenading in borrowed fashions and appropriated opinions and they reveal everyone's secret bad conscience... When the great thinker despises mankind, he despises its laziness: for it is on account of their laziness that men seem like factory products, things of no consequence and unworthy to be associated with or instructed. The man who does not wish to belong to the mass needs only to cease taking himself easily..."

"Each of us bears a productive uniqueness within him as the core of his being; and when he becomes aware of it, there appears around him a strange penumbra which is the mark of his singularity. Most find this something unendurable, because they are, as aforesaid, lazy, and because a chain of toil and burdens is suspended from this uniqueness. There can be no doubt that, for the singular man who encumbers himself with this chain, life witholds almost everything - cheerfulness, security, ease, honor - that he desired of it in his youth; solitude is the gift his fellow men present to him; let him live where he will, he will always find there the desert and the cave. Let him see to it that he does not become subjugated, that he does not become depressed and melancholic. And to that end let him surround himself with pictures of good and brave fighters, such as Schopenhauer was."

[Anonymous No.3300879]

"Such a heroic life, to be sure, together with the mortification accomplished in it, corresponds least of all to the paltry conception of those who make the most noise about it, celebrate festivals to the memory of great men, and believe that great men are great in the same way as they are little, as it were through a gift and for their own satisfaction or by a mechanical operation and in blind obedience to this inner compulsion: so that he who has not received this gift, or does not feel this compulsion, has the same right to be little as the other has to be great. But being gifted or being compelled are contemptible words designed to enable one to ignore an inner admonition, slanders on him who has paid heed to this admonition, that is to say on the great man; he least of all lets himself be given gifts or be compelled - he knows as well as any little man how to take life easily and how soft the bed is on which he could lie down if his attitude towards himself and his fellow men were that of the majority: for the objective of all human arrangements is through distracting one's thoughts to cease to be aware of life. Why does he desire the opposite - to be aware precisely of life, that is to say to suffer from life - so strongly? Because he realizes that he is in danger of being cheated out of himself, and that a kind of agreement exists to kidnap him out of his own cave."

- Nietzsche, "Schopenhauer as Educator"

[Anonymous No.3300880]

>>3300848
do you have the webm when the game crashes

[Anonymous No.3300881]

>>3300852
this. I don't get the point of these threads. what do you expect to happen OP, someone has a magic workhorse pill? pick a goal for yourself (become game artist, draw comics, draw veiny dicks, etc) and do it.

And oh god, someone is even quoting Nietzsche.

[Anonymous No.3300885]

>>3300881
>someone is even quoting Nietzsche
What's the problem?

[Anonymous No.3300942]

>>3300885
>le ebin god is dead fedora tier xdd im SO not like that im a true intellectual
I guarantee you the majority of the people who saw those posts their eyes just glazed over after a few sentences.

[Anonymous No.3300947]

>>3300848
Laziness is a symptom, not a cause. The cause is probably fear.

[Anonymous No.3300952]

>>3300942
>le ebin god is dead fedora
If that's your opinion of Nietzsche, then I can almost guarantee you haven't finished a single book of his.

[Anonymous No.3301035]

>>3300848
I feel the same.
Though I'm still very /beg tier so I think when I get better and I can make stuff i'll be proud of I will enjoy it alot more.
>pic related unfortunately
the lighting is pretty bad so it looks a bit better in person

[Anonymous No.3301104]

>>3300848
There must be a reason for the tendency for procrastination. Nature dont play dice anons

[Anonymous No.3301108]

>>3300947
Elaborate please. I think you are going towards the right direction

[Anonymous No.3301137]

>>3300848
Relateable feel. Maybe it's my porn addiction, maybe I'm depressed, I don't know. It pains me to see other people enjoy their craft, whatever it is, because I don't have such a thing.

[Anonymous No.3301139]

>>3300952
I never read Nietzsche, but wasn't his point that in a non-religious society you have to create meaning to live for yourself or something?

[Anonymous No.3301144]

>>3301139
he has many points
the god is dead aphorism (which was several paragraphs long, not just the three words you see so often) is about the imminent danger we are in after the christian monopoly on truth and values vanished, and that the people who take it lightly are foolish

[Anonymous No.3301153]

>>3300848
Its the same for me. I just dont have the patience anymore to sit down and draw. My head is too much full of fuck and i basically hate this earth.

[Anonymous No.3301159]

>>3300848
could you not do this
like why attack /ic/ when you're bored, why be a wrecker just because you're not creative, just get a job and stop posting inane anime threads

[Anonymous No.3301177]

>>3300877
>>3300879
thanks for posting this

[Anonymous No.3301182]

>>3300877
>>3301177
lol, those dubs

>solitude is the gift his fellow men present to him; let him live where he will, he will always find there the desert and the cave.
>and that a kind of agreement exists to kidnap him out of his own cave.
could I get some explanation on those parts. What did he refer to with the cave and the dessert? The compelling in your current state and lack of motivation? the freedom to do what you like? Who are the fellow men? the ones who are not lazy too, or the lazy ones?

[Anonymous No.3301200]

>>3301182
check out this brainlet struggling with metaphors

[Anonymous No.3301210]

>>3301035
if that's beg tier then i'm literal trash tier
i should just hang myself but i'm even to lazy to do that, someone please come to my apartment and hand me a noose and drive me to a good location with a sturdy tree so i can hang myself you can ofcourse have all my shit i have which isn't probably gonna amount to more than a thousand bucks if you sell everything

[Anonymous No.3301212]

>>3301200

[Anonymous No.3301213]

>>3301200
Please no bully!

>>3301182
The "cave and desert" are the isolation you feel from people when you make the promise to yourself to start becoming an authentic human being and fight against what society compels you to do. We are faced with the familiar compulsions to do certain kinds of ordinary and "practical" work, and to not stray from familiar morals, but far more insidiously and far more importantly for people suffering from "laziness", we are also compelled to make lots of time for leisure and to use that time in certain ways: when your work is done you should turn your brain off and watch Netflix, visit the beach, see friends, etc, otherwise you're a boring workaholic, you're missing out on life, etc. There is hardly a waking moment that is not regulated in some way by these compulsions, so naturally, resisting them quickly starts to lead to isolation.

At a basic level, Nietzsche was not thinking about "resisting laziness" in the sense of, say, "I'm going to work twice as hard at my office job but leave everything else the same". He was thinking about resisting laziness in the service of more refined goals. In one case, you can imagine a philosopher or an artist who realizes that they can't achieve their goals unless they dedicate everything they can to their craft; this will obviously lead to more physical isolation (the cave and desert), since they have less time to spend with other people. They will also find that fewer and fewer people understand their goals and methods, leading to psychological and spiritual isolation.

At the extreme end, when your goal involves challenging existing morals (when your art will get you thrown in jail, for instance, or maybe your entire life's work is to resist a corrupt political regime), not only will you be isolated from people, but they will actively hate you and fight against you. This is truely the "desert and cave" at its purest, and only a deep resolve to continue to be true to yourself will sustain you.

[Anonymous No.3301219]

>>3301213
thx for the explanation, it will make it easier when rereading this from time to time

[Anonymous No.3301222]

>>3301212
that's quite useful, i'll remember that if i ever have to work with an asp, the only other advice i've seen is that you can pick them up by the tail and crack them like a whip, which is a relatively safe way to kill them.

[Anonymous No.3301223]

>>3301222
spam incoming then

1/5

[Anonymous No.3301224]

>>3301222
reposting because I added 2 black dots by mistake when posting

2/5

[Anonymous No.3301226]

>>3301222
3/5

[Anonymous No.3301227]

>>3301222
4/5

[Anonymous No.3301228]

>>3301222
5/5

[Anonymous No.3301232]

It annoys me how smug people are about being lucky enough to have their brains produce happiness chemicals when doing something productive like drawing. Even though it's something outside of your control they act as if it's somehow your fault for finding drawing a chore. Then they claim that they ~worked hard~ to get good so they are virtuous and you are lazy even though it can be hardly called hard work if they enjoyed it. In the end all that is visible are results so no one will value the struggle you had to go through to get good if someone who finds drawing fun can draw better than you.

[Anonymous No.3301238]

>>3301232
It is what it is bruh. Try drugs

[Anonymous No.3301239]

>>3301228
I want to pat her head

[Anonymous No.3301275]

>>3300848

Almost any professional artist who has done material on motivation that I've seen says, essentially, 'motivating yourself isn't easy and requires discipline, you can't count on 'feeling like it' because you won't always feel like it'.

As long as you continue to conflate your motivational problems with your identity it's going to continue to plague you. If you tell yourself "I'm an unmotivated person" you're going to be unmotivated, and it's instinctive to offset responsibility to "I'm just that kind of person". What you need to do is reform your identity around "I'm a disciplined person." It's not easy and it takes a long time, and the way you do it is by making and keeping promises to yourself. There's a quote I heard once that I like,

>By making and keeping promises to ourselves and others, little by little, our honor becomes more important than our moods.

You can't always control your mood. 'Feeling like it' is a mood. You can control your self-discipline, which means being able to do things when you don't feel like it. Start small - small promises to yourself, even if it's just "I'll draw for 10 minutes", pick something you KNOW you can manage even if it's impractically minor, if you set the bar too high right away you'll burn out, so know your limits. When you keep that promise to yourself, reward yourself somehow, and then do it again. And again. And as you go, make bigger promises to yourself, and KEEP THEM. Even better, keep a log of it. Record it. There are plenty of habit trackers around, or use a spreadsheet. A list of promises to yourself that you've kept, to remind yourself you can. And, of course, be able to forgive yourself when you break a promise sometimes, we're all human and it happens to all of us, just try to make up for it.

And also there's the other advice for improving motivation and discipline: Eat well, sleep well, exercise. It'll help. Your physical health impacts your mental health significantly.

[Anonymous No.3301327]

>>3301275
Thanks man, this sounds like good solid advice.

[Anonymous No.3301332]

>>3301139
That's a basic summation of part of his thought, but like someone else mentioned, he had many many "points". You should read Twilight of the Idols if you want an introduction to his thought, it's like 40 pages so it's shorter than most other things he wrote.

[Anonymous No.3301418]

>>3300848
>have had
Get off internet and learn how to write, you ADHD cuckhead monkey.

[Anonymous No.3301628]

>>3301418
You absolute brainlet, read some books

[Anonymous No.3301636]

>>3301418
is this pasta

[Anonymous No.3301683]

Passion can be built

I used to procrastinate a lot a few years ago

Now I draw/render up to 5-6 hours a day, no
problem

But I think its a combination of two things

1.My level now is higher so its easier to stay motivated
2.I changed a lot of habits, now I eat paleo diet, meditate, drink omega 3, stuff like that, so I am overall healthier

[Anonymous No.3301686]

>>3301275
It's impressive how some people are willing to much effort into helping other people he doesn't know in an italian fish trading committee

I bet your art is great dude, cheers

[Anonymous No.3301734]

I used to procrastinate a lot. What helped me was understanding the neurological fundamentals of why we procrastinate and how it starts.
Understanding the framework makes it much easier to see the signs and avoid them, or combat yourself mentally knowing "I'm just fooling myself because xyz"
Procrastination is an avoidance response. Learn to see the signs of when it sets it and what you're avoiding - overcome it.
Healthy diet, good sleep and some sport help greatly with this challenge.

[Anonymous No.3301741]

>>3301734
what were you avoiding and fooling yourself about?

[Anonymous No.3301786]

>>3301228
Aspe-chan a fricken cutie patootie

[Anonymous No.3301819]

>>3301741
I was avoiding failure and fooling myself that maybe it's not just practice that makes you better but talent. And that I am just not meant to be an artist, ever.

[Anonymous No.3302417]

Here's one way of framing motivation - Most things I've read on cognitive science seem to agree on the fact that "you", your conscious self, is only one of many parts of your brain, and not even completely 'in charge'. You're receiving signals from different parts, sometimes competing with one another, sometimes very demanding signals that are quite difficult to override. The older and more instinctive they are, usually the 'dumber' they are, but also the more efficient. Much of your brain is doing things in the background you're not even conscious of.
In many cases, these parts of your brain cannot be outright forced, or at the very least it's MUCH less easy than it sounds. Imagine them like other personalities, colleagues of yours who will push back when you get pushy, or drag their feet when you're too demanding, or ignore you entirely because you're a nuisance. They need to be more subtly influenced, and negotiated with. You need to understand that some parts of your brain DON'T CARE about your aspirations, they just know that sugar is good, that you need to reproduce, that there might be a lion outside your door so you need to be careful. You need to make deals with yourself, you need to be able to make things 'good' for various parts of you, not just the conscious you, and you need to be able to understand, negotiate with and leverage these parts of your brain to create new habits and behaviors that align with your goals. It sounds weird to say that you need to interact with yourself, but it makes sense when you conclude that you have competing parts of your brain with different, sometimes contradictory, goals.
While "just do it" is good advice, saying it to someone with a chronic motivation problem is like telling them "just put the pedal to the metal" when they ask how to drive. Maybe they need to fill their tank, or maybe their engine isn't working, maybe they don't know the rules of the road. These things need to be addressed as well.

[Anonymous No.3302433]

>>3300942

You can always spot the people who've never read a word of Nietzsche by their pride in their meme understanding.

You shouldn't be proud that your eyes glazed over and you immediately jumped to attacking the writer without reading or understanding the content. All that does is shows you're willfully ignorant.

[Anonymous No.3302442]

>>3301683
>drink omega 3

What sort of drinks?

I always found that the best sources of Omega 3 was in fish that I hate.

[Anonymous No.3302543]

>>3301035
Anon, I'm very intrigued, do you know why that's bad and in which ways you should improve?

[Anonymous No.3302557]

>>3300848
For a quick and easy fix, try ritalin or speed. I went from completing 20% of my daily work + errands to 90% immediately. I dunno, maybe you build a tolerance though.

[Anonymous No.3302605]

Brain Fog, in my experience, makes it impossible to retain information, learn efficiently and comfortably, feel in full control of your faculties, and generally maintain any amount of confidence in your higher functions.

When you have confidence in your brain, everything unfolds before you as things you can manipulate, improve, or just understand.

When you don't, the blow can be so bad that all you do is live in a routine of mind numbing, games, 4chan, streams, shows, mangas, fapping, lying in bed, overeating.

Confidence really is everything.

[Anonymous No.3302610]

>>3302605
At my Lowest, I'd force myself to learn something or do anything productive, but I'd soon drop it because I could never escape from thinking it was just a big stupid farce.

Otherwise, I feel like there is a faith in the progress, and you just go forward steadily.

[Anonymous No.3302631]

>>3300848
I used to be extremely passionate about my art. It was all I ever lived for and all I would ever do, even though I was extremely /beg/ tier and drawing Invader Zim OCs on my Nintendo DS. I started to get better in middle school, branching away from the IZ shit, but highschool completely killed my enthusiasm for anything that wasn't pure escapism, like video games.

Now I definitely feel a mix of fear, laziness, and a tiny bit of shame toward my art. Mostly shame, especially at how slow I take to finish anything and how infrequently I post.

I have short hills and very long valleys when it comes to my art and it sucks dick. Idk what to do about it other than try harder and try to cultivate discipline.

[Anonymous No.3302643]

>tfw
>I don't like art that much
>do it because you are alone and got nothing else to do
>want friends but not have any.
>they see my drawings
>now they get along me just because of my drawings
>now they are only my friends because I draw some stuff
>never actually liked to draw but now is the only reason I have friends
>now I force my self to think I like art because is the only reason I really have anything
>did it to the point where I believe I like art

[Anonymous No.3302660]

>>3300879
>>3300877
Literally me

[Anonymous No.3302667]

>>3301210
Thats okay anon I was there too. When I started 3months ago I spent a good 1.5 wandering not knowing where to start but I got Schoolism and its been super helpful. I know it may sound like shilling but Schoolism has seriously leveled me up.
>>3302543
What I was told on /beg/ was that overall is lacked contrast due to the background being so dark and the frog being way too light, and that on first glance its hard to tell if its a frog because your eyes immediately wander to the background. So I think I have a general idea of what to look out for next time

[Anonymous No.3302671]

>>3301213
After college, I moved back home and had too many pressures.
The greatest one being my parents splintering marriage.
I became motivated to turn around everything I studied beforehand and go back to become a doctor.
This made my mother and father increasingly happy.
But the fighting only stopped temporarily.
I lie when I say I do it only for them. I wanted the ease and security that came with choosing the path of medicine as a young adult - one example being the adoration of parents, but really it includes adoration from basically one's entire world.
How did I change my mind, how would I change it and stray from utter paradise?
I had a nightmare.
I saw myself. I was standing before a yellow brick road with the sun at the end of it. Idyllic.
I knew it was the path that I had chosen - the path to become a doctor. Next to me was myself, or someone faceless.
They implored me. Very gravely. "anon, if you go down this path, you are as good as dead."
I woke up, and gradually amounted courage to tell my foreboding father that I would, in fact, not be going through with medicine.
He was just irritated, contrasting to how I nearly wet myself stuttering out my confession.
First gen immigrant that he is, to him it is only natural the second gen eldest son laps up with glee the fruits of the first gen.
And so, I swept it all into the gutter. Everything. I debated parricide as well, sometimes the stress was just that great. Then I would have truly swept it all into the gutter, but it'd end up as a mirror image of choosing the doctor life. My life would be over, still. So I didn't go that far.
Still stuck in limbo, trying to fight out of it, but still getting distracted by societal pressures into what a 24 year old young man should be doing in america.
However drawing is fun!

[Anonymous No.3302742]

>>3302671
Cringey trash, hope your art is better or you're NGMI

[Anonymous No.3302768]

>>3302667
That's the problem with /ic/, they only give you theoretical advice, but not practical.

The first thing you should realize about your drawing is that you aren't using your tool right/you don't have the right tools. Your pencil looks like it's too hard, that's why you don't have enough values, try something like 8B or lower.
If you don't have a pencil that can make solid blacks, (or something dark enough to be considered black in pencil), and if you don't know how to make a seamless plane of the same value, you can pay all the attention you want to composición and you would still suck.
You should realize these things by just looking at your drawing next to any other pencil drawing, anon.

[Anonymous No.3302792]

>>3302442

pills

[Anonymous No.3302955]

>>3302768
Yea I only used a 2B for that frog and like I said I'm still very /beg/tier so stuff like you mentioned isnt very apparent to me, so thanks alot for the critique anon, its extremely useful.

[Anonymous No.3303010]

>>3301035
Okay, practical advice.
Redo it with 4 values:
3-as black as your pencil can go. 2-mid tier. 1-just scratch and 0 you don't touch.
Think about the photo in those 4 values. Add a black saturation layer on photoshop if you want to, it'll help.

[Anonymous No.3303020]

>>3302742
I don't get people that try to use cringey as an insult.
You are cringing, not me.
Also you likely cringe because you overempathize with what's being said. And you don't want to feel it so you recoil.
Sort yourself out. You cringing is not my problem.

[Anonymous No.3303088]

>>3303020
>I don't get people that try to use cringey as an insult.
No, you do you disingenuous retard. Your transparent attempt to put this on someone else is even more cringe you brainlet, no wonder you failed medicine. You're too stupid to see why your kindergarten attempt at prose and storytelling is cringey, like some 12 year old who can't see why his spiky haired sword wielding grim reaper OC with a dark past is edgy.

[Anonymous No.3303177]

>>3301222
>kek'd

[Anonymous No.3303256]

>>3303088

Not the guy you're replying to but you definitely got some stuff to sort out. Way too reactive for no reason

[Anonymous No.3303259]

>>3303088
>failed medicine
I barely took three premed classes. I got A's in all of them, I lost a lot of hair. I showed my parents the grades and said this is as far as I'm going with this farce. And I quit. And for the record I already hold a bachelors from the top uc. I don't like talking about it but you called me a brainlet and a flunky so there you go.

>kindergarten attempt at prose
What.

>like some blah blah blah
K look in a mirror you're just babbling.

>attempt to put this on someone else
Yeah you need to get off 4chan for a while.

[Anonymous No.3303299]

>>3303256
>>3303259
>this triggered
Cry to your dad about it, stick to watching Jordon Peterson videos you thin skinned, no father figure having brainlet.

[Anonymous No.3303308]

>>3303299
ooh running away. yeah this is typical.

[Anonymous No.3303310]

>>3300848
yeah but the main reason why i procrastinate is because i dont believe that art could be a real job is just for starving people

[Anonymous No.3303312]

>>3303310
Of course art can't be a real job if you procrastinate.

[Anonymous No.3303316]

>>3303312
i can solve my procrastination problem if i could get rid of that ignorance that drawing will starve us all i swear it