Reflections

A long while ago, I left a group that, for the longest time, I was very close to. And at that point I went and put all those pictures into storage. Here I am, months later, finding myself thinking about them, the stories, the characters... and so forth. I also think of those in the group that were wrongfully denied art I did happily of their characters. Even if I myself am no longer a part of that group, and no longer find any desire to return to it in its current state, I feel I must acknowledge that I DID to a TON of art over that period. While it may not be my finest, I realize now that it was rather childish of me to take it and hoard to myself what I should have allowed to shine. I'll admit, there was fear involved with quite a bit of it. An a sense that what I did was very unappreciated....  but that is neither here nor there, and now I find myself on the threshold of a milestone year looking back. I have moved on, and in reopening much of this art to the public again, I feel as if I'm making amends to those I left behind. To those that do not talk with me anymore. To all those who were sad to see me leave.

In creating art for my current RP group, I found myself thinking of the old one from time to time. A short while back, I found a flash drive that had a lot of old unfinished pieces. I will likely not finish them, but I realized a few things about my mindset then. Much of my art, I wanted people to recognize what I could do. More often than I should have, I drew to please others. Along the way, I forgot about drawing for the sheer point of enjoying it. That even if I spent 6 hours on some piece or four hours on someone's FOOT, I could find happiness in the task even if it was not technically perfect enough for me. The last several pieces I've done I've done in such a way that I wanted to have fun, or just played! I've found a sort of freedom, and with it my view on my talents is shifting...

My view on my own art is slowly changing, but I hope that this is only the first of many steps in the right direction.

TL;DR -- I'm removing a bunch of stuff from storage and my artist-self is maturing