u/detachelapse

I’m chill on it for the most part but the only real downside is that I do weird things with my mouth. If it’s not clenching my teeth it’s just moving my tongue around all weird along my teeth enough that my tongue feels raw. I don’t want to chew gum though because that would just encourage the habit. Maybe I should just focus on another bodily sensation, If I just take a couple deep breaths and center myself I stop for a moment but that never lasts too long.

Has anyone with a career or job in illustration gotten there without going to school for art and if so what was that like? And I mean employed by a company or taking on gigs instead of being self employed. I’m asking this as a college student who is NOT going to school for art, I’m studying natural resources after a semester of doing studio art and not really liking it. I want to continue what I’m studying but I don’t want to leave art off the table completely in the future, I still love it and I still think being a concept artist or illustrator is a really cool job, I just felt like I needed to actually experience some “real” school in order to be a well rounded individual later in life. Has anyone had a similar experience to me and studied something else in school and then pursued art as a profession later on or at a point in their life? I always drew with the intention that it would one day be my craft or livelihood but that’s not the intention anymore and it feels like i’ve lost my purpose to draw. I can’t really find joy in art as just a hobby, drawing just to draw feels so pointless.

Lately creating just seems so fundamentally pointless to my current needs as a person. I don’t want to just drop art completely since I’ve been drawing since I was a kid and spent the past 5 years self studying with the intention to pursue it professionally but I ended up doing something else in college so now i’m left with the worst FOMO ever, like I wasted my most pivotal years drawing when I could’ve just been living my life doing other things. My main qualm with art right now is that I honestly just can’t get myself to sit down for extended periods of time to draw indoors and that drawing now is incredibly boring compared to other activities I could do unless i’m high because that’s the only time I feel creative or can “unlock” my imagination. Also media in general just feels dead now and nothing really inspires me like how it used to. I tried wandering around finding interesting spots in my area to draw so that art didn’t make me feel like it was keeping me inside and immobile but cityscapes got old pretty quick. I feel like I can’t connect with anyone in real life through visual art the same way I can with other interests too. A couple months ago I bought colored inks to try a new medium but they’ve just been sitting on desk untouched so it’s not even like i’m just bored of my main medium or something.

The only way I could see myself enjoying art is getting into plein air painting but I just don’t have the money to drop on supplies and I don’t even a car to drive out to some actual nature. I’ll probably run up the plein air painting one day when I have the time and resources but for now I just feel so lost and disinterested. I guess the way I derived pleasure from art before was by grinding to be good at it “technically”, but being good serves no purpose at all to me now. Im also struggling with some kind of imposter syndrome since despite all the time i’ve dedicated to drawing I’ve spent none of it actually honing my creative thinking and conceptual abilities, I don’t think I’m a creative person at all and I can only really re-represent pre-existing things. I want to keep this interest alive but I really don’t know how. Back then it was easy because I was a bored kid with tweaker parents that wouldn’t let me do anything, so naturally drawing was the easiest and least offensive way to entertain myself. Have I just grown out of it now? Whenever I attempt to draw again it’s like theres a voice in the back of my head criticizing me for even putting my energy into something so silly and pointless and childish. Has anyone here dealt with similar circumstances?