I think I've always been an artistic person~

My earliest memory is drawing Mickey Mouse in Kindergarten and getting it put into a kid's museum show thing and everyone praising me for it and it altering my brain chemicals to like drawing. I remember drawing Nickelodeon characters a bunch and coloring in coloring books as a little kid, then when I was around 8 I discovered MSPaint and did a bunch of terrible art in that~

In middle school and high school, I did a lot of vent art in my notebooks- a school counselor in middle school even gave me a notepad to draw in class with when I was stressed and that I wouldn't get in trouble for it (but then I still got in trouble for it anyway), that was nice. I remember mostly drawing Naruto and Final Fantasy/Kingdom Hearts stuff back then... In high school the back pages of my notebooks were filled with doodles... Digitally I drew in GIMP a lot around that point. I had a lot of aspirations to be an artist (my family kept being like "you're not going to be an artist, be an architect, that's kind of like art"), and when I went to college I wanted to go to the art school they had on campus, but they required a portfolio and I was at the stage where everything I made in the past looked awful to me and not something I wanted to submit and it was a bit humbling, around that time I realized I don't want to make money off art, just do it for the love of the game (and maybe get famous and make money that way but that's a far off expectation).

In college I got a Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch for my birthday and I started using SAI, and after that I essentially stopped using physical media to draw with... not having to deal with paper texture and buying supplies and making mistakes without an undo button was really nice... It took a while for me to adapt and I used to rely a lot on the stabilizer tool but eventually I got a knack for it~ Once I switched to SAI2 it was like a whole new world, it was so much faster and had so many features I wanted and I still use SAI2 as my main program to this day~

But yeah, after dropping out of college I became more vain and mainly just focused on drawing my own characters, I really love character design... the hard part is coming up with scenarios to put said characters in and then bringing them to life- Stuff like comics are something I want to get better at, but pacing, paneling, etc are tricky, and these days no stories come to mind at all... Nagata Kabi was a huge influence to me though, her manga really hit hard and inspired me to make a story about my own life, since I was always super depressed and anxious lying in bed narrating my life and how I got to this point.. and then once I started making it I got burnt out and too self-critical and felt like I stopped living a stressful life and no more narration in my head to tell...

In terms of other mediums I've explored.. I used to work at a silk floral shop and I learned to make wreathes there, that was fun, but they're expensive to make and now that that place is closed down, I barely make anything like that anymore.. I also like using Inkscape for Vector art, though I've mainly switched to using SAI2's vector tools for that kind of stuff. I used to do Kingdom Hearts sprite comics in high school and eventually got into pixel art that way, and spent a lot of time making pixel art for a Yume Nikki fangame that would never see the light of day.. but I do like pixel art as well even if it used to give me constant migraines when working on it.

3D modelling is a medium I have a little experience in, but I want to learn more.. I can make low poly models, but refining the topology to something I'm satisfied with can be a bit tricky, weight painting is a nightmare with my OCD, and I have no idea how to make clean symmetrical UV maps like video games have.. then there's stuff like blend shapes and animation that I get the general idea of but need more practice in, and then crazy stuff like shaders and nodes that I haven't messed with whatsoever...

But yeah, in short, I used to draw fanart of characters I like in the little AU situations my friends and I would roleplay on MSN Messenger, and then I started drawing my OCs instead~ The kind of art I want to make these days is tricky, though... before, I had ideas and kinks and stuff I wanted to explore, but I wanted to bite my tongue and use them as the "reward"- basically, if I drew a whole thing, I could insert some self-pleasing stuff somewhere as a treat. But eventually I stopped caring about it and just openly make that art without any kind of strong desire behind it, and I think that also took a lot of drive away from me to draw..

I want to make characters that suffer, I want to insert my past fantasies and life experiences into my work and to make compelling characters.. I want to make awful characters that are controversial, but for no reason other than to show I can I think... I want to encourage people to make what they want in this silly world we live in... But those are more feelings I have than specific things I want to make I guess? It's tricky, any time I try to make something I just kinda get burnt out and feel nothing behind it, but I want to feel that passion again... Vent art used to be a big motivator back when I lived at my old house, with an ailing mother, a sociopath drug addict sister who made my life miserable, and $110K in debt, I had a lot of anxiety to vent, but these days for better or worse I'm just floating along in a comfortable lifestyle...

I admit, I kind of hate scrolling through art on social media these days, because it just makes me feel down on myself for having no strength to apply myself to learn or try anymore, maybe it's envy or jealousy or something... just lots of "I can't do that, I should give up" kind of feelings.. but I do still want to make art, or at the very least, I want to want to make art... I want to find motivation again to draw a lot, but it still hasn't come to me yet. Maybe somedayyy... These days I'm just happy to be able to get out of bed and do anything.

On a previous topic, I'd love to want to do art for money, but drawing commissions for other people is very stressful, and morally I feel wrong charging money for art- especially assets like on Booth or etsy or something, I want to do that, but my own moral code stops me- I hate and refuse to buy the majority of digital things because digital things are infinitely copyable and pirateable and stuff. Why would I be a hypocrite and charge for my own art if I wouldn't pay for it and would rather people have more free resources to do what they want?

Anyway yeah a lot of thoughts that I just want to ramble~