Struggles with art, validation, etc. magnified by a random contest

09 Apr, 2025

I drew a piece the fastest I've probably ever done that was incredibly self-indulgent. I did this for a loading screen contest for the MMORPG I play (Latale) because I entered one for this game 14 years ago and the pull of nostalgia and thinking of how I could show how much I've improved kept following me through the days that the contest was announced. It was unlike my typical creation process which usually has a lot of thought put into it. Rather, it did have some basic thought to it, that was that if I wasn't going to win I would rather draw a piece that could maybe be for me. That would prominently feature my game characters, which I knew might be annoying in a self-promotion kind of way (though I wasn't planning on signing it with anything that actually points to my identity).

That was in line with the piece I drew 14 years ago though. 14 years ago, I drew a piece that featured the character I play the most along with two friends' characters. It even had our usernames above each character, so it was honestly more annoying in that respect. At the time, I thought it was the best thing I had drawn, even though I wasn't completely happy with it. It was maybe the first time that I had actually managed to put multiple characters together properly. Needless to say, I didn't win. I stopped playing, but then found out later that at some point the company that owned the rights to the English Latale at the time had featured participation art as loading screens, too. Even if they didn't win.

I never got to see this in person. Or if a friend ever showed me, I guess I forgot afterwards.

I didn't actually want to come back to this game, because it represented a time in my life where I was spending all my time thinking about some game instead of enhancing my actual skills (whether in drawing, Japanese, etc.). But one of the friends whose characters I drew for that contest was playing, and she showed me that they had a new class that used umbrellas and was water (!) and blue (!!) based. Well, I couldn't not play after that.

It's been like a year now and they came out with this contest. New company, 14 years later, and I'm back here doing the same thing, somehow. I told my friend it would be fun if we participated again because we did 14 years ago and included each other's characters in our art pieces.

I didn't think I was actually capable of finishing this piece, given my usual habit of taking months on end due to overthinking literally everything. The first sketch draft was garbage, so I thought that was the end of it, but my brain couldn't let it go and spat out a composition I actually liked. So I drew as fast as I could personally manage. It was taking over a lot of my brain, even as I hit another wall and then another. Somehow a little after 2 weeks though, I had finished it, and I was pretty happy with it. I thought I might at least beat my friend to posting it because I had started earlier than her, but that wasn't the case.

We posted on the same day, with her a few hours before me. And well, the community votes on the art pieces have been stark right from the start. Last I checked, my piece has about half the votes of hers.

I tried to think about why this was, when I had taken longer and spent more time rendering literally everything. Hers is a chibi-style piece. But then I realized that even though I tried to include somewhat of a joke in the background, her composition was far more community-oriented and by virtue must be far less annoying. She's pretty good at chibis also, so even if there are technical elements on her piece that I think could be improved, the outcome makes sense. If I wasn't the person drawing the piece I did and I saw our pieces side by side, I would probably vote for hers over mine as well.

This hasn't been easy for me to take, personally. It reminded me why I don't post things online anymore. I've never been good at reading what other people want to see and thus don't draw according to that well enough. I don't even draw things that I personally want to see all that much either. This piece was the first time that I really put aside what I thought I "should" draw, and now I was paying for my choices.

Wasn't the point of drawing something for myself supposed to guard against the outcome of the competition? I don't need to place, I just need to finish this. Is what I said, anyway, but I guess my heart didn't believe it.

Wasn't the point of entering the competition for nostalgia and to show that I had improved? Both of those points have been fulfilled. I guess not entirely, then, because secretly I was still hoping that something that I made that was entirely for me was also good enough for other people, even with all of its faults.

The "voting" system on the Discord channel is simply heart emoji react. So it's not like anyone was even limited in the choices of who they voted for. So that means that half of the people that saw both of our art pieces just straight up didn't like mine.

I ended up asking some friends about what could be a way to accept this outcome because my negative spiraling feels counterproductive and it's not like I want to wish anything bad on my friend for displaying different skills than me (including being able to guess what other people want to see more). When talking about it more though, I realized the core issue is just that at my core I don't believe that making stuff for myself is worth anything. This is also why until last year I only ever drew half of the year because the rest of the time I was so disenchanted with my lack of skill and figured that meant I would never make something that was actually worth looking at. It goes into how I plan my pieces, too.

It's a complicated tangle of a lot of factors, since I also firmly believe that art and stories should be used to represent those who are underrepresented — at least the things I make, anyway. This naturally means that over the years I've thought longer and harder about art and stereotype tropes and how to reverse that type of stuff in my own work. The other stuff that I maybe wanted to draw that was literally just "thin blue girl looking beautiful", on the other hand, felt like the impulse to eat junk food all the time. (I don't actually feel this impulse but as an example.)

And if I was taking months to even do a single piece (my record is one year for drawing something like 20 characters on one piece), then how could I afford to have time for junk food? Makes no sense. What is the point of another thin, light skinned, abled, cis anime girl existing in the world, anyway? I don't think there's a point; literally everyone else is doing that. The bases are covered and it's saturated. Meanwhile, not enough people are studying how to draw fat people, people in wheelchairs, etc. Which means that people who live those lives rarely get to see characters like them represented in positive light. Of course, there are people doing this and doing it far better than me, but I should try to join their ranks if I'm going to post anything publicly.

There is always the choice to simply not post publicly, but then I also don't see the point for me to draw at all. "For me" is not enough. If it's only for me, spouting the same societal biases, then I might as well not draw at all but try to build another skill that might actually be useful for helping improve this world that is steeped in bigotry and oppression, somehow. Even the stuff I do for my original work is with the idea that it'll eventually be seen by people when I actually draw the comic and post the character designs and stuff. I'm just not sharing it right now.

I said this and my friends seemed to have the impression that I don't enjoy what I make. I had to explain that the part that I enjoy is the problem solving and the idea that I'm helping other people, but the other part of the enjoyment (drawing something just because it really gets your brain gears turning) is not what I pursue. There always elements of that, of course, because art is fundamentally based on what you think looks good (unless, I guess, you were purposefully making something to be hated, which is a choice I suppose you could make). But it's not the source of my creation, it's not the reason for my creation. I don't embrace this feeling to make something.¹ Rather, I try to use my art to evolve my thinking by pushing against my biases and then finding enjoyment in the process.

So there's all of that and it basically comes down to the same stuff that it always loops back to: Ultimately, whatever I do in this world — or what I hope to do, rather, since I can't say I'm doing such a good job of it — isn't for me. My enjoyment is nice but not a requirement, and it can be sacrificed for other people, the greater good, yada yada whenever it needs to be.

At least, that's how I'd like to live, but I think humans are not great at living by self-negating principles. So instead I just have shame about giving in this hard and then essentially receiving feedback that it isn't very good to begin with.

Maybe the issue with art in particular is that when I drew what I wanted and I didn't get any positive engagement for it (or at least not to the degree as any of my friends), no matter how much time I spent on it and how hard I thought about it, I learned that what I wanted wasn't good enough for other people. So I decided that if it wasn't good enough and would never be good enough, then I should at least do something that "mattered" by another measuring stick altogether (how "useful" it is), or else I might as well as abandon it. Because I could see the other path, which is that I continued to draw what I wanted to see, no one cared, and then, worst of all, I would have to live with the shame of not doing something better with my time that helped literally anyone else at all. So I decided to ignore the parts that wanted to have fun for fun's sake.

I thought this was quite optimized, actually, considering that I am one of the slowest artists on Earth. So if I could only have so much art to begin with, then I better just pick the thing that matters more. (This is somewhat funny because over the years I've recognized that people who improve in skills the most are literally the ones having fun.) I suppose this is known as "time hoarding" in OCPD lingo. And well, in practice, I didn't actually... draw... more... necessarily. But I continued keeping my critical eye and found that I always improved after every break in drawing no matter what, simply because I was practicing in my brain. Though, of course, none of that would've been as useful as sitting down and actually doing the practice and not giving up on art every year.

But that's the optimization speaking, again. I don't know what I'm doing besides not using my time right, I guess.

Man, I have so many problems in my brain.

Anyway, more friends replied in the vent channel than I thought and someone who I hadn't shared this piece with (why bother, when it clearly has faults and the like), asked to see it. So I posted it in the art channel and more friends said nice things about it than I was expecting.

Getting that kind of positive feedback feels good, better than I'd like to ever admit. I resent that in me though; I wish I wouldn't seek validation at all. I have friends who can create as fluidly as breathing, and thus have a lot to choose from in terms of what to share and what to keep just to themselves. That's not me, though, given my speed. Honestly, this aspect of me makes me wary about calling myself an "artist" since I don't have the live/breathe aspect that is so prized and held up as the ideal artist. Even when I think saying that artists all have to be a single way or the best artist is XYZ is by definition not embracing the diversity of the human experience, I still feel like I don't match up because I would rather be like that, if I could. I guess. Maybe only if what I was making was useful.

The other aspect I'm struggling with is that I never know if people saying nice things about my art are ever for real. Social rules say that you should say only nice things about someone's work, because people are very sensitive (me included) and thus coming out with negative things or critique when they didn't ask for it is actively demoralizing and thus very mean to most people who are sensitive at all.²

The problem though is that when people are basically required to say nice things, or if they know that you will feel better if they say something nice, then here we have some good reasons for people to lie. But I don't actually want people to lie to me. But I can see why they would if they care about my emotional well-being, and hell, I just vented and everything, so doesn't that make it more likely that they're lying at least about some of this? But then if you don't trust other people they can take offense to that, too. It's hard.

So... I'm stuck again where hearing nice things about my art makes me feel less hopeless, but I'm also trying to mentally allot for "these are probably not their complete true feelings" because I would hate to find out later that it wasn't true.

I'll feel like an idiot if someone is lying to me for my sake and I didn't see through it. Though if I never find out, does it really "hurt" me, someone might reason, and then figure it's better to lie. I've done this before, for instance, so I'm always on the lookout for other people doing this for me. It's hard trying to second guess everyone though. I guess in the end I can really only trust people who would tell me they don't like parts of what I do, even though that would probably reinforce other negative cycles in my brain.

Not sure what to do about all of this. I feel like the answer I've come to after thinking about this over the years is to get rid of the idea of the need to be "good" and to stop needing validation at all, but I can't quite kill it in me because I feel like being "good" is a measure of how useful I am to other people, too, that will indicate whether the stuff I make is even worth existing in the world or if I should be spending my time on something else entirely. It's hard.

I guess it helps to remember that even things that are badly made can be useful to people. But I guess my fear is that it won't be as useful, won't make them reconsider their biases, etc. if it is bad-der rather than good-der.

Everything is just one big efficiency sinkhole, as it always is. I think my therapist is trying to pull out the roots of me feeling like I need to be useful to other people or I might as well not exist by repeated EMDR about my feelings about my dad. I guess that could indeed be the emotional core of all of this and the rest is a bunch of scaffolding of reasoning added after the fact to the emotional truth that I just don't feel lovable because my dad inconsistently shows me love, where I'm rewarded when I make him feel better or play a part for him while he could never really give a shit about what I'm working on or what I care about.

I kind of hate that, though. I wish I could be rational more than anything and only focus on what needs to be done rather than on whether I feel loved and supported. That all seems like background noise, stuff that distracts from the work, stuff that encourages other people to lie for your sake. I can't count how many times I've lied for my parents. Putting someone else in that situation seems miserable. I don't want to have needs and I don't want to have to feel important. Other people get by without needing any sense of importance, why am I not like that? Why am I not more self-sufficient, better mentally adapted, time-efficient and actively training and learning new things that give me the skills to help other people?

I'm just failing to accept myself again. Which is probably counterproductive. It's also maybe disrespectful to the people who said kind things to me to immediately just distrust them and the feelings of relief I felt upon hearing that because there was no way to verify whether what they said was actually true. I guess I don't owe it to anyone to feel better but I also basically guaranteed that I wouldn't feel all that much better by going through this. Maybe I shouldn't have written this long ass post and just accepted that I can't tell if other people are lying to me but maybe the sentiment is enough. Even writing that though I have doubts.

I was thinking I would parse out what the hell is going on in a way that would be more conducive to not getting lost in some kind of negative art spiral, but I don't know if this really helped me as much as I was hoping for. I guess it's at least all out now.

I'm trying to mentally prepare myself for losing and not placing in this contest again while my friend probably places (might even get first). Honestly, after it happens I probably will have an excuse to stop thinking about it after the initial wave of desolation since I can just make up my mind to continue avoiding stuff like social media and contests, zines, etc. in general. Though one might ask if that's really the answer or if that's just building up another type of avoidance that reinforces the negativity. I dunno, tbh. I guess it's not like I'm anxious about this, which is generally what avoidance strengthens... I just feel bad about it. For all of the reasons listed above.

Contest ends on April 17th, and who knows how long it'll take for the final judging to happen. I guess until then all of this is an exercise in living with discomfort of these emotions. #PutMeOutOfMyMiseryAlready

Notes

#moping