when i was in middle school, i decided to become an artist.

you would think this isn't really something you consciously decide, i guess. but i decided firmly that it was what i wanted to do. i wanted to learn to draw. and i wanted to be like my best friend who also liked drawing, and i was so so excited to see every time they would show me their latest piece. lots of warrior cats and sarcastic wolves. stuff like that.

i guess they inspired me to take the plunge. certainly, making art is a human activity - or, at least, a sentient being activity, considering my previous articles about being nonhuman - but i feel that being an artist is something that is self-determined, consciously or not.

i had a lot of misconceptions about art. i thought that an art style was something you developed intentionally. and, well, that's not wrong or right, i guess. your art style is a conglomeration of all the things you've learned or styles you studied. sometimes style can be intentional, sometimes style is just something that happens because of how you learned.

for example, when i first started drawing, i decided i needed a good basis on what to 'aim for' - styles i wanted to emulate. of course, being a middle schooler at the time, i wanted to take examples from anime. i had recently learned about furries - or at least came to acknowledge that that's all i ever wanted to draw, which rings true today - but had trouble figuring out what anime had any sort of animal characters i could base my art on.

so, my summary of influences circa the late 2000s:

• fruits basket
• sailor moon
• peach fuzz
• hamtaro
• sss warrior cats, allikatnya, etc.

fruits basket is an anime about people turning into animals when hugged by ""the opposite sex"". i will be honest i hated the tf trigger itself (even when i was trying to pretend i was straight), but i do actually love the idea of turning into a vulnerable animal form when with someone you actually love.

not that that is entirely relevant here. what IS relevant is that i fucking LOVED how the eyes looked in fruits basket because it was so EASY.

sailor moon itself has - to my knowledge, at least at the time - a few cats and probably not much else? again, middle schooler with no high speed internet. so, looking at these cats, i decided the head shape was more or less doable, and i liked it well enough.

peach fuzz was a tokyopop "american manga" about a girl and her ferret (and her ferret's illusions of grandeur). i enjoyed the shape of the ferrets in that comic; they were fairly tubular and round. it was kind of at odds with thbe sailor moon style, but that was acceptable.

i also liked hamtaro, which had similar 'rounded shape' language that also comboed with fruits basket's animals.

so... round noses and cutesy, wet, watery eyes were most of what i drew after that. but i was limiting myself a lot with just those. so my influences grew. i started reading comics like shinka: the last eevee, or one of the older versions of the blackblood alliance, stuff like that. (i still draw my eevees with one solid fluff, just like shinka. by the way, shinka: the last eevee is still up in its rebooted form here.)

i think i had good intentions. finding things i wanted to emulate and copy and trace was a good first step. but, of course, like steel, it needed tempering.

and, i guess that speaks to the kind of mindset i had. i wanted very badly to learn. i had a lot of energy and a lot of things that made me feel. so strongly. and i think that helped a lot in my initial spike of quality early on.

that said, though, as i passed through high school and entered the ""real world"", i was tired, broken by years of bullying and gossip and intentional sabotage, and honestly, burned out after focusing solely on survival. i actually started drawing less. i kept thinking, why did i slow down? i used to draw so much. i still drew, certainly, though i had college classes to attend and all. at that point, most of my artwork was done in marginalia, alongside math notes and assignments.

it sounds sad when i put it that way. and i guess it is sad. i don't think there was a lot i could do about it. i got diagnosed with a mood disorder shortly after dropping out - a math class failed one too many times, even though i was so confident i finally understood it. this is only relevant insofar as i was extremely exhausted mentally and physically. i had no time for full artwork.

it wasn't until i joined new online circles, broke up with my then-partner (because, wow, that sucked!), and started dating my (current!) gf that i realized: i just needed to be put in some new soil.

medication helped a lot. the drive to create had, by then, been changed in such a way that i could not recognize it. i didn't feel motivation to draw, or had so few sparks to ignite that inner desire to create. i started taking testosterone, among other things, and although my body slowly degraded, my mood had gotten better. and i was ready to re-approach how i draw.

i would go as far as to say i had to remember how to draw.

my first lesson was that i needed to lessen the pressure to post everything i made as soon as possible. interactions are nice, but i had to wean myself off of feeling like i was performing for others' entertainment. i had to learn to draw for myself first.

my second lesson was to draw in some way that stimulated my mind. i wanted something tactile. something new. i swapped through various digital programs and, in this past year, started really grappling with traditional art. it's unfortunate that my wrist strength has faltered lately, but i have such a blast with new ways to draw now. sometimes you don't need to just do your usual routine. you can do anything. like, legiterally.

maybe that sounds silly to say. but, honestly. just try something you haven't done before. use things you wouldn't use on an average day, and focus solely on figuring out how it works, or how you can use it. you have to learn how to play again.

i had been so focused my entire life on creating something better each time. i knew, or thought, that progression to perfection was the goal. listen to me: art is nothing if you aren't having fun with it. you need to be exploratory. you aren't trying to "get better", you're trying to have fun. sometimes "getting better" is fun, but maybe you want to just mess with something with a nice texture to it. maybe you want to fold some paper and color it and fold it again and so-on. maybe you want to shred it up and make a collage. you know?

just get silly with it, and don't get distracted with perfection. it will never be perfect, but it doesn't have to be. it can just... Be.