The best I can do
I draw for fun.
That’s the long and short of it. I may get frustrated with it, I may make pieces with the express interest of selling them, but I come back to art time and again because I enjoy it. And these days, I draw almost exclusively for fun of the craft itself.
Lately, that means a lot of unfinished pictures. Admittedly, time and other priorities are a huge part of it, but mainly, I just don’t get taken with the sketches I do enough to see them through to completion. It’s a lot of work – to the tune of up to 20 hours on a single piece.
To an extent, it has always been this way. I have drawings I have yet to finish, and still really want to, that are ten years old, or older still. Life just gets in the way, and I never get around to coming back to it. At least, I haven’t yet – I still hold out hope that I will some day.
As a result, I rarely end up finishing a picture that is the best I can do. Even when I have a very important piece of art to do or one that I really want to make look good – or both – time or interest run out, and I just focus on getting it to a point that I can call it finished, even if I could make it better. I still might be very pleased with my work, and I certainly don’t go back to work on it later, but I take shortcuts or I accept something a little (artistically) messier for the sake of getting it done.
Currently, I am working on a drawing in which that is not the case. It was a fairly quick idea, not necessarily the picture I wanted to try so hard on. And admittedly, this picture is on a schedule that might run out on me. But I wrote last year about how I am pleased with my art, and this drawing especially so. I am trying some new things that so far are working out very well, and time and interest are both there for now.
The drawing is still early in its creation, despite having put 5-6 hours in already, as the lineart isn’t even done yet. I don’t feel like showing anything off yet, but I am planning a step by step post for after it is finished. It might be a while yet – the deadline is a while off still – and I apologize for that.
But of course, I’m only really doing this drawing for me.
