Libertades

These days, I get more questions regarding art, I suppose it is because I am growing.

These questions may be asked differently every time, sometimes they may seem like different questions, but they all have the same answer.

“Do you have any tips for drawing better?”

“How do you stay motivated to draw all the time?”

“I want to be an artist, can you give me any advice?”

My answer is always the same: you have to love what you do.

You see, for some strange reason, whether it's the promise of becoming popular and earning lots of money or a big dream project, most people aren't having fun with art.

I didn't start my artistic journey for money or fame. As a 5 year old kid drawing a 5 legged cat in elementary school, I didn’t think “I want to sell this for a few hundred bucks to pay rent” or “I wonder if this will get likes on social media”. No, I did it because I enjoyed drawing a 5 legged cat. Kids don't put worry in between their little project and them.

The problem for this 5 year old starts the moment they tell mommy “when I grow up, I want to be an artist!” or when they don't want to become a professional artist, but art remains a major hobby in their life and adults around the kid constantly tell them to “grow up” and “get a real job”.

Then the kid learns, somehow, that art is either a worthless skill or that it'll be difficult to earn money doing it, and even if they manage to get past that, they've been so brainwashed into believing it's a competition (because if it's going to be my job then it means I have to compare my performance and success with others…. Right?) that they feel absolutely miserable seeing how other people “draw better than them and have better results” so they should give up.

Even in cases not so extreme as this one, where parents and their environment are supportive enough, these beliefs still play a part to some extent, people have lost so much touch with creativity and the love for it that they cannot intuitively tell that art is meant to be a fun process, a creation process, something entirely up to the creator and they doubt themselves so much that they need other people’s advice on it.

That is just one side of the take… on the other hand, skill is more or less a requirement as with any activity. I myself majored in graphic design and took professional illustration classes for a semester, but I am technically not ESPECIALLY a professional artist. I started this as a hobby when I was a 5 year old child, and through my own determination and enjoyment, improved by watching videos and observing people, animals and objects in real life, as well as a couple of years of college experience.

For anyone looking to improve their skills, I always reply that there’s plenty of resources out there. The art community is so big, we have them to thank for thousands of really good and free YouTube content on the matter, on just about anything you want to get better at, there’s a video for it and exercises that come with them! You can certainly go to college or university for art, it is a very gratifying and fun experience if you put the stress of deadlines and competition aside, and especially if you love art… but it is not necessary, you can definitely learn on your own with enough discipline and a few people to look up to.

There isn’t much else for me personally to say on this matter and in reply to these questions. Skill is important but it’s not even the most important thing. Whether you may have the skills or not, those more often than not come by themselves once you’ve put in the love and the practice, that is my best advice!

Have fun above all, but if no matter how hard and long you try, art is not fun to you, then why try to make a pig sing? Perhaps you should really quit if your motivations are not love and genuine interest, like only for money or to please other people, these motivations never take you very far… But sometimes, there IS such genuine love and interest for the activity, but art becomes stressful due to limiting beliefs we have about it and the peer pressure to do better. I know for a fact once I moved out on my own and quit my toxic graphic design job right before the pandemic, I was in a situation where art became my ONLY source of income, and suddenly an activity that had been fun ALL of my life, became utterly stressful because NOW I cared how much money I was making, I had to run ads, draw more often than I ever did so I could get more commissions and secure rent, I had suddenly begun worrying about whether or not I drew good enough and what I could do better compared to more successful artists… my mind was clouded with worry for about a year and a half before I fully stabilized and reached a place of consistent positive results! But that experience made me realize how easily I could’ve quit art if I hadn’t corrected my thinking, and it especially taught me how an artist that loves what they do, can easily spiral downwards when they forget why they became an artist to begin with.

EDIT: Small side advice for the above paragraph; I would suggest doing art as a side hobby at the beginning along with your regular job, then working your art income up until you are COMFORTABLE either reducing your office hours or replacing your job with art. Some people don't really want to do art for a living so they do it as a side thing!

So always keep this in mind… this has been my story and my experience, hopefully this advice is helpful to you, even if it only moves one person… then it’ll have been worth writing. I’m sure other people have learned different things along their path, I’d be interested to hear your own experience and advice if you’re a full time artist as well!!

With lots of Love,

Liber.

Thank you all so much for participating!! Had generous participation and new watchers! As promised, here are the winners of the many prizes!!

ONE MONTH CORE WINNERS

1. DemonBloodLust

2. GREENBEEN24

3. Elioenai

4. Blue-Wolf713

5. DraylaDarielGexie92

6. BrickMasterG20040903

POINTS WINNERS

1. DrPhoenixJKZ

2. bellygirl7

3. Langusaur

4. StarFoxTy-871X

FEATURE WINNERS, CHECK THEM OUT!!!

1. D023RW4NN4CRY

2. TheDarkHuntresss

3. Shade-the-AshClad

4. Brookpelt-Artz

5. AnimeFanKpopStan

CONGRATS TO EVERYONE AND MANY THANKS!

Until the next milestone ;)

HELLO

Well it seems after all these years I've finally hit 4k followers on DeviantArt!! Thank you so much! To all the old and the new, I appreciate you! I am a happy artist!

As a celebration and a token of my gratitude, I'm doing a MASSIVE giveaway to all my followers and offering LOTS of things I've been hoarding for this very moment

4k FOLLOWERS MASSIVE GIVEAWAY:

Rules:

Must be a follower

Must signal-boost this giveaway to help more people participate

Comment on this journal with your signal-boost link and you're in!

Every person who joins will have a number assigned that I'll be using to pick the many winners of the following gifts:

SIX (6) one month core membership will be given away through badges... which means you could be one of six lucky winners of core membership

100 points giveaway

Another 100 points giveaway

YET another 100 points giveaway

AND 36 points left to give away haha

(a total of 4 winners of prizes in points)

Lastly, I will pick 5 winners and feature their art on my front page for a whole month

This is a total of at least 15 people winning prizes of some kind, you could be the lucky winner of one of these!! What are you waiting for!?

Additionally, I would like to shout out my friend Kida who is making a bunch of BEAUTIFUL themed adopts and other arts you should 100% check out on her FurAffinity or/and her Twitter

Extra points in the giveaway if you follow her!

Hello everyone!! Some of you may have read that I recently started a new goal. So much is happening in my life. Among some things, I'm getting married! And I've set my eyes on getting a place of our own. You have no idea how much I'm looking forward it, some special offers and opportunities came up that would allow me to achieve this by the end of this year if I hit the money goal by then! It's not a huge goal compared to what prices for land out there are... but it is big enough to pose a challenge for one person alone (or even two) when my fulltime job is art! Even so, I fully believe it is possible and I have 100% faith that it will come to pass, even if I can't make it to the end of the year, this is a great step towards that direction!

So I came up with a "GoFundMe" kind of idea! I would actually use GoFundMe but they don't have my country listed, so I'm enabling my Ko-Fi page for this new goal too, you can see the progress being made in real time here: ko-fi.com/kofitades

I don't have much to offer, but as a token of my gratitude for all and any support, I shall doodle a 5 minute "thank you" picture for all who send out $10 or more, and additionally I'll be doing goal based gifts for people after each milestone, here's what it'll look like:

❤️ If I hit $500 or more in donations, I'll randomly pick one donor to draw a fullbody, shaded picture for!

❤️ If I hit $1000 or more in donations I'll randomly pick one donor to draw a fullbody, detailed painting with detailed background for!

❤️ If I hit $5000 in donations (I can dream lol) I'll randomly pick two donors to draw yet another fullbody, shaded picture, detailed painting with detailed background for, and probably make all my commission prices go down 60% for a whole month to those who donated!

Even though these milestones seem big, my goal is 30k by the end of the year, I have a difficult time believing I might get this much money donated so I can't imagine what I'd offer if I got anything more than the last milestone mentioned... but I'd find a way to make something!! Like probably offering 100% free art of ANY kind to everyone and anyone who donated for a whole month LOL.... I think I'd do that even if I just got $10k

Any amount of money helps. Even the smallest amount adds up and I am grateful for it! I believe the world goes around by helping each other and I've witnessed people achieve their goals many times in this manner, and been really happy to be a part of it, so I'm giving it a shot!

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Whether I make it possible through Ko-Fi or not, and whether it happens sooner or later than I would want it to, I'll stand firm and at the very least use this as a motivation on how far I can go! And if any of you would like to support me through this goal, I will be forever grateful to you <3

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Donate through my Ko-Fi here:ko-fi.com/kofitades

Thank you so much! I don't know if this is a crazy idea but I'm doing my best! If you'd like to support me in other ways, there's currently some Patreon tiers available for $15 where you also get art as a reward: www.patreon.com/Libertades

And it's finally over, I haven't been this sick since one time I was in high school haha, thankfully it's over.

I'm also thankful to all of you who stayed patient and understanding during this time, I have never had such a huge art backlog in my life and it makes me uncomfortable to have commissions sitting in the back for over a month, that's a first.

The Akashic Chronicles comic will return soon too, been itching to draw more of that, I just couldn't bring myself to draw more pages while I also owed so much stuff, I'm going to binge draw the comic soon after I'm fully done! I estimate by next week my queue will be finally clear, then I'll take a short break (few days) and start a brand new queue, I'm excited to save up money for a lot of upcoming, fun stuff I'll tell you about...

Also a heads up! I hope to be hosting a giveaway on DeviantArt soon, if you don't follow me there but are interested in a chance for getting core membership or some points, go follow me now and stay tuned! There will be a number of prizes, not just one, worth giving it a shot, right?

I hope to tell you more about my adventures soon, I want to share myself a bit more and discuss all the fun stuff I've been learning to do, like permaculture! It is my goal to live in a neat house where I can have my very own garden and even community to be self sustainable with hehe, there's just something very satisfying about that to me... but more on that later time for me to sleep a little more to heal this stuffy nose I still got...

How about you? Any interesting news on your end this month?