u/StarnyArt

Does anyone else feel like drawing works different for you? Ever since I was a child I always felt very "behind" when I compared my drawings to other kids. I would either draw things very literally, or I wouldn't be able to comprehend what I was looking at and just wing it.

I remember one time when I was around 12 years old, we were tasked with drawing ourselves, and I had so much trouble figuring out what a body looked like. Other kids pointed out that my anatomy made absolutely no sense (as in, arms are just straight up in the wrong place) and back then I found it strange how other kids were able to perceive things so much better than me.

Despite this I never stopped drawing and I've even been a freelance illustrator before my autistic burnout. However, I've developed these skills because I've been studying art and anatomy for over 15 years at this point. So when people nowadays tell me I'm "so talented" it just feels wrong. Because as a child and teenager my art genuinely looked worse than my peers. It took so many years and so much energy to have my art skills at my current level, and even then I still feel like I have so much left to learn.

I also have trouble drawing more freehanded, sketchy stuff. As in, my lineart is always very clean and "literal" and I've developed a vector looking style of coloring/shading. (Not sure how else to explain it.) And I know there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but I do sometimes wish I felt more freedom in exploring different art styles that are less "literal".

I'm curious to hear if anyone else recognises this.