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Please be patient with me, I have an extremely hard time with self expression agony-wholesome

I am not good at like, observing a thing and putting my interpretation onto paper. I try a lot, but it never meets my (probably impossible) standards. This really started to frustrate me recently, so instead I started just drawing interesting shapes and filling them with patterns. The image attached to this post is an example of one.

But now I have these little sketches that look cool to me but feel unfinished. I don't know how to develop them any further. If I try, I feel like I ruin them.

And then it dawned on me: I don't have a fucking clue what I'm doing. I've been trying out art as a fun hobby for the past 2 years. I read a couple of textbooks and took notes, I've filled a few sketchbooks, painted a little, and had a great time. But I can tell I'm still shit and I want to be good. How do I do that? I guess I have a few main questions:

-What should I spend my extremely limited practice time on?

-How can I incorporate the things I like about others' art into my own? Do I just straight up try to copy them?

-Some people I've asked irl have said it's just a matter of time. I haven't been creating long enough to be good yet. Is there any truth to this? Am I just impatient?

Here's some more of those weird sketches if you're interested. I can also post some more uh... grounded? art for comparison?

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[-] QuillQuote@hexbear.net 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

making an image and having it not be one of the coolest things youve ever seen =/= you made a shit image

and just curious, "I see all these beautiful works and designs" are the works you mentioned here the same kind of art as yours? comparing apples to oranges and all that

[-] lurker_supreme@hexbear.net 1 points 2 days ago

I don't really know where to find art that's like mine, or what one would call my art except abstract. I'm going to be looking into artists that others recommended, so if my stuff reminds you of any artist or style please let me know. I really am quite new so any "obvious" artists would be new to me

[-] QuillQuote@hexbear.net 2 points 1 day ago

Im a unhelpful person to ask for artist recommendations unfortunately, outside of architecture and like the 10 artists the world knows

I kind of value the lack of exposure to the kinds of things I make, I literally have only seen a couple things remotely like my fractal thing I welded and its nice not to have an ocean of things to compare myself to, I just get to make what compels me :D

that said, thats not a great approach to specific mastery, which maybe you're more interested in

this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2026
49 points (100.0% liked)

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