Hello.

I’m still in the midst of de-rusting and warming up with drawing. I’m currently working on another remaining commission, an NSFW one with a choice of fem! Malik x tkb (pocket citron) or fem ! Ryou x yami marik. (Pocket deathship)

It’s so difficult to choose, haha.

I still am currently deciding which ship I should do. Part of me wants pocket deathship because I’ve been drawing a ton of citronshipping this year and deathship needs more love from me since it’s been my OTP for six straight years but at the same time, citronshipping is admittedly, hotter af compared to deathship which is more on the fluffy, cute side. _(:3 」∠)_

Ahh such a trivial problem to choose which ship I should make an nsfw drawing on, lol.

Anyway,

Today, as I was drawing other stuff aside from the commission, I found myself falling into this shit habit of mine of making simple doodles into detailed illustrations. Instead of leaving the drawing with its simplistic elements, I get carried away with making more details and rendering as if I’m doing a full blown illustration.

It’s not exactly a bad habit to most people when they hear it at first but it is a bad habit of mine that I developed this year. I said this before in a previous blog post but this habit stems from my self consciousness with my art skills.

When I was preparing for opening my first ever commissions last January, I had to look for decent, full coloured and polished illustrations that I could use as samples. The problem was, after all these years, I barely had any full coloured, detailed and polished illustrations. From 2015 up to 2020, I doodled very simply and so casually that it didn’t exactly show what I was capable of with details and rendering and other elements of illustration making. Polished illustrations were quite rare unless they were a cover to a fancomics (auu and co).

From that moment on, I told myself that I should make more polished illust so I could have more samples in case of future commissions and to show what I’m capable of. Now, I have those finished commissions I could use as samples for the next time I open commissions but I always feel that there needs to be more full illustrations and this is a problem because making a polished one takes A LOT of time.

So, for example, today, I was drawing a digital version of the chibi kairene from my diary entry. It’s a chibi drawing. It was meant to be a very simplistic artwork, a casual doodle that’s not meant to take so much time to finish but I ended up polishing The heck out of it; rendering, adding textures, shadows and highlights. It took more time, more than an hour to finish it.

My intention was to make very simple doodles and instead of leaving it be, I ended up making it more detailed than necessary. That is a bad habit of mine. I still feel the need to add more polished illustrations in my gallery, to show what I’m capable of, etc.

It’s not bad ofc to improve; to polish your works, but it’s bad in my case because it stems from my problem last Januar. The need to show that I have skills.

The entire thing bred more perfectionism and anxiety in my case so I have to watch myself when I get carried away again like today, gah.

There is a time for polished and full illustrations and there is a time for casual, simple and experimental doodles and sketches. Currently, there’s an imbalance with the scale going heavy on the former and unfortunately, that takes so much time.

So right now, I need to remind myself to stop getting carried away and doodle as I please, be it a sketch or a silly doodle without having to think of proving myself and my skills to others.

Welp, I’m so sleepy, gah. It’s almost 1 am so I need to go to bed now ORZ.