#the dead speak!

[ghostofsnails]

rambling about art "Perfectionism" (+ my experience)

Lately I've been looking for advice about curbing perfectionism but couldn't find anything that worked for me. I feel that so much of the advice out there is just too surface level. It wants to target what I consider the symptoms (perfectionism itself / fear of messing up) and not the real source of the problem, or the "why", which is something that will look a little different for everybody. If you really want to curb perfectionism, the serious answer, in my opinion, is to start by looking inward. If you've done that and found that you're anything like me, with problems that feel like compulsive fixing, uncontrollable hyperfocus, and/or paranoid thoughts that your art career is doomed and everyone is secretly making fun of you because the angle of your oc's mouth is off by 2 degrees, hearing the advice that looks like "Here's a fun little drawing exercise to do every day!" over and over again is probably starting to feel more demoralizing than anything. So instead, here are some tricks/reframing devices that I use in place of some of the really general ones.

The first piece of advice I see everywhere is to "make bad art on purpose" to get over the fear of making mistakes. As a literal exercise, this just doesn't work great for my specific problem. Sure, I can draw some crappy sketch in 5 seconds if I want or waste all my spoons on making something I hate, but it offers no real support in terms of my "compulsive fixing" issue, which is where everything really goes wrong in my process. If it was as easy as saying "I'm just going to Not Have Compulsions!" I wouldn't be here writing this. But I have learned to relieve a small amount of the paranoia and anxiety that my compulsions stem from with the following exercise!

Essentially, I look through some of my favorite artists' work and find some stuff I really enjoy. While I do that, I look for mistakes, confusing choices, and inconsistencies in the work. I then ask myself: Why do I think this art piece still works so well despite all these errors? Does seeing these errors change my feelings about the piece or about the person who made them for the worse? (Spoiler alert, the answer to the second question is always no.)

I will then literally repeat the answers to those questions over and over and over again to myself while I draw. Does this completely or even mostly fix the problem? Definitely not. But if you're like me and at the point of desperation, this is something that's had a small yet significant impact on my workflow and my mindset as I approach making art in general. If my favorite artist can make a weird mistake on something and I love the piece anyways, then maybe it's okay for me to also make and leave in a weird mistake or two. The other good news is that I've noticed the effect of this has increased over time! In the past few months, and for the first couple of times in my life, I've been able to actually ignore a small handful of my compulsions to fix things while drawing. Which is actually so insane and probably my proudest moment of "invisible" progress I've ever made.

It's definitely worth noting, however, that this exercise is not going to work if you don't or can't approach it in good faith. You cannot give up immediately with "I'll never be this good, this artist's work is perfect." Nobody's work is perfect. If you look for ages and genuinely can't see any mistakes, that probably means you're looking at an artist way outside your skill level, and believe me, I've been there, it's super demoralizing. That's why most of the artists I look up to now are those whose work is just a few levels above or next to mine, because being able to spot errors not only makes their work feel more authentic and easily relatable, but functionally speaking, it keeps me inspired without getting locked into self-pity mode.

I'm obviously not going to put any artists I love on the spot here, but I'm going to list a few errors that I myself see very frequently in my specific corner of the art world: Inconsistent or straight up weird limb lengths, floating facial features, broken lines, color spill, and awkward tangents. Often times, the "errors" I notice aren't even true errors, just results of stylization that I get paranoid about in my own work. And this is super important too -- seeing those kinds of "errors" in art that I unabashedly love helps to soothe the paranoia that I'm doing something "wrong" or that everybody secretly hates me because I drew the eye 2 pixels too far to the right.

Other times, what you notice doesn't have to be an "error" at all. Maybe you just see untapped potential or find something that you would have done differently. For example, maybe you think a different light source or perspective could have improved the atmosphere of a piece. I often feel that many of my favorite artists' work suffers from a lack of contrast.

But the point of this entire exercise is that even when I apply a mock version of my compulsive behavior with art that I love and pick it apart as much as I possibly can, I realize that I STILL LOVE the artwork I'm looking at just as much if not more despite all the "mistakes". Rarely do the errors take anything away from the piece that they don't replace with a sense of life and authenticity. And as a bonus, now I'm ten times as excited to go draw and try out some new things!

And for the record -- this isn't the sort of thing I dedicate "15 minutes a day!" to doing, but something that comes pretty naturally to me whenever I come across art I really love. And speaking of TIME, one other piece of advice I see everywhere is to set a timer and give yourself just a few minutes to draw such and such. This is a piece of advice that logically I know SHOULD work, and despite the fact that it DOESN'T for me I would STILL recommend it heartily. My only problem with this piece of advice is that my brain just does not work this way. Time is just way too arbitrary and setting a "fake deadline" doesn't do anything to fix the issues that are making me take forever in the first place. So instead, in order to try and improve my speed in my digital art, I've started to stay more zoomed out of my canvas as I draw. This better mimics the experience of sketching on paper, something that's always been easier for me since fixing mistakes is so much less convenient than it is on a digital program.

Don't get me wrong though, if you're like me and used to drawing while so zoomed in you can count the pixels, this is going to be even harder than it sounds. I avoided this piece of advice for years because it was so viscerally uncomfortable to let go of the feeling of "control" I had over my pen strokes while zoomed in. But I gave in a few weeks ago when I was having such a hard time getting a pose down after days of attempts that I was willing to try anything. And honestly, the results were a MUCH needed morale boost. I saw improved speed, dynamism, and stylization pretty much instantly. I've been pushing myself to do this with all my subsequent art pieces and while I forget to do it every 15 minutes it's still made a surprisingly large and positive impact on my workflow.

Yes, I still feel the compulsion to "fix everything" in the refinement stage. But if I pair this with the advice above, the amount of compulsive fixes I makes goes way, way down. Especially if I remain relatively zoomed out during the refinement stage!

In conclusion, I'm not saying that the og art advice was dumb or bad or never works. This post is extremely specific to my situation. As far as I know I might be the only person in the world who spends extra nightmarish hours on every piece adding and deleting and readding unnoticeable layer effects, color adjustments, and details and "fixing" and unfixing and "fixing" every conceivable possible detail whilst sitting there begging myself to just stop so I can go eat or move on with my life or do literally anything else. And the fact that on top of that I go into hyperfocus every time I so much as LOOK at my Ipad makes any "take a break" solution near impossible if I don't have a seriously involved outside support system to take my mind off of art, which I don't.

Thanks to all of this plus typical life stuff, I've been drawing less and less in the past few years. It's hard to start anything knowing that once I do, I'm pretty much not going to have a life again until it's finished.

And drawing less also means that when I do draw, I'm drawing much slower, which draws out the length of time I have to deal with these problems and therefore makes them unignorable. I used to be able to finish up a full piece in 5-8 hours, basically a school night, and because it was finished I could focus on my responsibilities the next day until I started to draw again. But now I'm spending anywhere from 8-16 hours on simple bust up character drawings. That's crazy! Honestly reading all this back, I guess it's no wonder I'm so burnt out and exhausted all the time!

I'm never going to completely stop drawing. Even if I wanted to, I don't think I physically could. But I would really love to get to a point where art feels fun and freeing again, and where sitting down to sketch on paper for 10 minutes doesn't mean throwing the entire day away.

So if anyone else out there has got advice for me I would absolutely love to hear it. And I'd also love to hear from anyone who can relate to any of this, because as much as I was joking earlier about being the only one in the world, I haven't actually been able to meet anyone else who gets what I'm going through. And wow it is so difficult to put into words, too. I rewrote this post a million times. But that's all for now! Thanks for reading.

[caspalooza]

It sounds dramatic, but growing up, I agonized over the fact that I was repulsed by sex. I thought I wanted to be in a relationship but that it wouldn't be possible (or at the very least, not fair to the other person) to be in one without sex in it. I was convinced that romance is The Thing That Completes You, so I thought my options were "deal with sex against my will" or "be alone forever".

When I finally learned the term "asexuality"... well, I didn't really grasp the concept of attraction types, so I pretty much went, "man, I WISH I was asexual, instead there's just something wrong with me" and carried on.

I think I was nearing 17 when I finally decided to look into asexuality for longer than 5 minutes, mostly out of sheer desperation. I had vaguely known that sexual attraction and romantic attraction were separate terms, but I had always thought of sexual attraction as being a hyperbolic term for romantic attraction. And that sexual attraction only actually existed in movies and books and the like for dramatic effect or comedy. I don't remember what made it click, but when it hit me that it was fucking REAL and that most of the people around me had been experiencing it for a LONG TIME I finally felt that moment that I guess every person has at some point in their life of lost innocence. At SIXTEEN. LOL.

It is undoubtedly funny, but it was also scary. Over my life I had experienced things and acted in ways I thought were fine and normal, purely because I was straight up clueless about sexual attraction. It was never taught to me in any form because I guess there's an assumption everybody experiences it and therefore knows for themselves what it's like. So while there was a feeling of elation, I guess, because I wasn't alone and I wasn't broken, there was also a lot of horror and disgust that came with it because a lot of memories from my life were being dug up and put in this new context in a very not good way. And I can be more careful now, but dear lord what I would give to have been taught these things way, way sooner.

The romantic side is a nightmare in a different way. Ages ago, I developed a pretty silly-sounding fear that I secretly had crushes on all the people I met (and/or worse, that they reciprocated) that still won't go away no matter how hard I ignore the voices! That's paranoia for you, I guess. So it's hard to know for sure if I actually have a crush on somebody or if it's just the paranoia, but I think the fact that I know how it feels means I probably have, at least once, even if the thought of actually acting on romantic feelings sounds like the worst thing ever. I used to be really big into the idea of it, though, that's for sure. For years, I lived vicariously through my hundreds of fandom and oc ships. And I do still love exploring romantic relationship dynamics through fiction, but now it's more because I think The Inner-Workings of People and Relationships Are Fascinating than because I have any desire to live it for myself.

At the very least, the realization that I was ace and potentially aro helped me to pull myself out of my sad pit. And though I've never been super involved with the aspec community (out of shyness), If nothing else I credit all the lovely people in it for indirectly teaching me how important and fulfilling friendships and platonic bonds of all kinds can be. And that platonic/romantic/etc. love and attraction shouldn't be tiered as more or less important or fulfilling than one another, just different. It seems like a simple and obvious concept to me now, but it genuinely changed my outlook on life when I was first exposed to it.

Looking back at the things I actually wanted (and didn't want) out of my hypothetical "perfect romantic relationship" (no romantic gestures, just cuddling lol) I realized I pretty much only ever wanted an affectionate, possibly committed friendship (something like a qpr) and only assumed it was romance because... well, everybody is supposed to want romance! And seeing as my early friends and family weren't super affectionate people, it was pretty easy for me to believe that physical affection only came from a romantic partner.

All in all though, I've realized that, at least for me, it's not super helpful to think of different relationship types as strict categories or boxes. Humans are just more complex than that. And It's kinda ironic that the same community that often faces the "loveless" stereotype is the same one that opened my eyes to the fact that there are so, so many ways to experience profound and fulfilling love. And I think that's beautiful!!!!! HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!!!

[misscrazyfangirl321]

Thinking about... Grieving the undead.

[spectralstitions]

I realized it'd be fun if kept an actual personal usable wordbuilding/lore/oc bible of sorts so I think I'll chip away at that this month. I used to have one, but it was for the first version of this project and SUCKS!

I'm also a little anxious about finishing my oc refs on time for art fight, but I'm trying to keep myself from stressing about it xD. I neeeeeeed this break. It'll be ten times easier to get back into drawing if i take a break first. NO DRAWING ALLOWED!!!!!!

[kermit-coded]

edwin being catnip for a bunch of gayass supernatural entities is fucking hilarious. his victorian sensibilities and autistic mannerisms have bewitched them.

[spinaholi]

sandra lynn’s dating history now includes:

the most red-flag, gaslighting, married guy who became a world renowned insidious televangelist and ruined her perception of love and self-worth

the saddest, wettest, cardboard-box-living, yogurt covered man with an ancient hereditary curse of bad luck

the arch devil of gluttony and living embodiment of insatiable desire and hunger

a former drug addict, high school student councillor, werewolf, who’s probably the most mentally healthy person to ever exist

sexy pirate

[aconfusedgoose]

AND DAN AND PHIL ARE BACK???

I started this year making a meme about John Green being back and I thought that would be the wildest thing to happen this year... Clearly I was wrong. I feel like the universe is just confused about what year it is... I'm in my mid 20s now and I don't need to be going through this again.

[daisydood]

i hate it when i refer to a woman as a cowboy and then someone corrects me "erm actually shes a cowgirl!!" no she's not. cowboy is all genders you cannot separate the power of yeehaw

[fulcrvm]

WHY. does the book say twink on it. hello. am i reading this right

[sacredfirmament]

dead girl media where their absence shapes the whole goddamn thing!!!!! the hole they left inhabits the narrative more than their presence ever would have. oooo wooooo

[ghostofsnails]

MAN I love tumblr for posting art. Even though my personal oc stuff gets like 2 notes max i don't even care because it's so freeing to be able to write as much as I want in captions and tags. And there's no terrible mind-numbingly stupid image cropping in the name of design cohesion. It's so satisfying. Yay tumblr

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[ellie-makes-mbs]

name moodboard for “kodi” for anonymous

[kermit-coded]

there's something about the fact that charles said he never finished reading the myth of orpheus and eurydice. he references it and yet he never finished it. he looked back, not out of fear but because edwin needed to be seen. he got edwin back. they made it out of hell. he never finished the story. he is not orpheus and edwin is not eurydice.

[unreal-unearthing]

Dead boy detectives is just Edwin and the bad bitches he pulled by being weird and autistic.

[konigsblog]

tw: rape/non-con, somnophillia. 18+ 🍪🍰

pervy-baker-könig who makes a fresh batch of cookies for the neighbour moved in next door.

of course, he can't just be normal - instead, he pours thick globs of his hot cum into the batter, mixing it together with his hung, weeping cock hanging from his black, tight boxers, hidden behind his apron.

he stalks you and watches your every move from his kitchen window. his breathing quickens at the sight of your pretty body, milky cum running down his veiny shaft as he jerks himself off, peaking out of the curtains to watch you bend over, picking up your moving boxes.

the curve of your ass, and the way the wind blows your summer dress up occasionally. july's heat causes you to become sweaty, whilst könig's shirt sticks to his muscular, burly body, stroking himself with his head thrown back, gritting his teeth and panting heavily at the sight of you.

and fuck, it breaks him to see you so sweet and gentle. your sweet voice rings in his ear as you thank him for the gift, so naïve and unsuspecting of the pervert, taking a bite infront of him and complimenting him on the unique touch of saltiness - how it's the best cookie you've ever had...

of course, he assumes you want more of his delicious, special desserts !! perhaps, he'll lean over your face whilst you're asleep at night, sneaking into your house next door, his fat tip against your lip, droplets of milky cum dripping from the head of his shaft, leaking against your tongue whilst you sleep peacefully.