So like, everyone agrees that NSFW artists are the lowest of the low, right? Barely even human. They're the bottom of the barrel, the scum fuck bacterial infection of our culture's festering taint, utterly without value, a fetid plague upon all that is beautiful and healthy and right. Every political group hates us in various ways for different reasons, and all of them are valid. We contribute nothing except pain and suffering into the world. We are a cancerous memetic blight on the tapestry of life, the drug dealers of the artistic 'hood. We out here stealing children's dreams with drawings of their fave cartoon characters fucking, ruining the innocent, ensuring that more of our filthy kind will be created in the future, as though we were grooming them for a life of moral crime and depravity. It has been scientifically proven by hundreds if not thousands of peer reviewed studies that nsfw artists were responsible for not only Hitler's rise to power, but the fall of the Roman Empire. There's a theory that we're even responsible for man's ejection from the garden of eden, and supposedly we even ruined video games for women.

We're only 'artists' on a technicality, because we 'draw.' It's like we're 'skill adjacent,' so normal artists put up with us existing, but we all know we're just pornographers and self-glorified intellectual prostitutes who sell our imaginations on the street corner like cheap diseased whores with bleached buttholes that smell like weed. We're embarrassing and useless, and the larger art community would rather gas us and pretend like we never were.

It's not that that bothers me, though. What bothers me is that, despite nsfw being regarded as the easiest and laziest and cheapest form of 'art' that even the most mentally challenged bag of semi-sentient shit can excel at, *I* still fucking suck at it. Despite my best efforts, I am still garbage at it. What does that make me? Garbage at being garbage? Can a person fail at life more utterly than I have? Failing as an nsfw artist is like failing at suicide (I did that, too,) so I'm like 4 times shittier than the shittiest failures at this point.

How am I supposed to live under the overwhelming weight of my own inescapable inadequacy? Why should I live?

Maybe start by not blaming other ppl who seem to have it better than you and worry about getting your own skill up. Grow a spine and stop self deprecating and looking at your own work as not good enough. People expressing sexual situations via art are not the reason you're "inadequate". YOU are.

No one can make you improve besides yourself. No one can hinder your technical growth besides yourself.

Trust, trying to actually break into being "successful" as a nsfw artist isn't easy at all. You're only looking at the small fraction of the top of the ice berg. And even then most sites, because card companies are weird for whatever reason, don't want nsfw content to really exist so even the biggest nsfw artists are at risk.

But yea, get off your high horse and put that energy into making your art better.

Also I just looked at your page...you are a good nsfw artist. Wtf are u shitting on urself for. If you're gonna constantly view yourself like shit how do you expect ppl to view you.

You have to get out of this mentality. Self deprecation is self harm. You deserve better.

You can't prove that. You can't win a court case like that. Where's the evidence? Where's the research? Where's the smoking gun? I haven't seen any real, tangible proof that I am a good nsfw artist. Ain't no kokujin's of mine sent me any 8k pictures of their dried tissue papers, or stained panties in the mail. This is the internet. They can claim to like me, but I can claim to be a meth addicted history professor with IQ of 160 that draws hentai on an ipad in between lectures about fascism. Doesn't make it true. Fake people say fake things online all the time.

You've gotta step up your game if you're gonna be an ace attorney like me, son goku. With basic bitch kung fu like that, you'll never convince anybody not to kill themselves in a court of law.

Just wanted to wish y’all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Glad to have this as a place to openly talk about things that trouble us in our creative pursuits. Thanks everybody!

The advice I wanna share is gonna be more general and not only for artists, but I believe it will still be worth to share.

I remember a moment in my life when I was like 17 were I actually lost my focus and didn't know what was my real passion. As a result, I kind of lost the point of enjoying life, as I didn't know what really made me happy.

After many reflexion and looking back to my past times, I realized there were a few things that remained untouched through my life, some of these being:

• My love for art
• My love for making games
• My love for helping other artists to outstand

Might sound crazy, but all these were present even when I was a kid. When I had like 6 years, I decided I wanted to create games when I were an adult, and forgot about it for a very short time until eventually returned to that idea (which is when I began to learn how to program games).

My love in art was initially for drawings, but later I realized I just love every form of art. Even if I only do drawing, music, animation and bondage as forms of art, I like every type of art I see out there.

So, my advice would be: make sure to check every moment in your life, maybe you have already crossed with what makes you happy, and if not, you have a clear and perfect reason to exit the comfort zone and try new things.

So here's two things that have been discouraging me lately.

And no, it doesn't have to do with my ability to draw, being able to get stuff out there, or my age now that I'm about eight months shy of being 30 and feeling like I'm some old decrepit wannabe compared to all the younger artists that are out there. At this point those are non issues in my mind because I am confident enough in my skill to know that my work is good, even if I'm not churning out some Disney level shit.

Rather, the fact of the matter comes down to this: My ability to set time for myself and my own personal long term projects that I would like to make that I haven't openly talked about, and trying to do what I can to keep myself on pace with the projects I'm currently helping out with.

And that's just it I'd like to take on as many projects as I can to get my name out there and get better exposure, that's something I've been trying to do for the past couple of years and now it feels like that for all the things I'm doing for others I'm sacrificing my ability to set time aside for myself to work on personal projects that I want to really take the time to develop in the sense that I'd like to create a personal project.

This is something that I've been experiencing a lot as of late and I'm not sure if it's because I'm making myself my own worst enemy in being able to keep up with the amount of work I've been putting onto myself or if there is something else going on that makes me yearn to do more with the skills I haven't used in a long time in conjunction with the ones that I have built on in college, like writing for example.

And that's where it feels like I'm either hitting a plateau, or I've found myself between a rock and a hard place with how I would like to move forward with my creative endeavors.

Even if you were a godlike creator, you can't push many projects at once. The correct thing is you focus on one project: better one polished diamond than many old rocks of coal.

I understand you wanna be renowned and get visibility, but if you focus on many projects, you'll take forever to deploy 'em and thus, will never get the recognizement you deserve.

I saw once in a webpage that every creator should threat his most ambitious works as WIP's, why? Because that way you first focus on the important, see if people likes it and begin to build upon that. Take almost every old series in NG for example (like madness combat or salad fingers).

As much as you have big desires, you have to remember we are humans, and we have some limitations: work clever, not hard

I feel really motivated, have no imposter syndrome and love my art. Problem is, I can't find any success what so ever and it's so so frustrating to watch my peers get the success they deserve and leave me behind (I'm an art student at uni so I'm surrounded by other artists). I've been posting online for at least 5 years (started on a different website) and post like, pretty much everywhere, and yet I just can't get any reach at all or any commissions. I hate being told that I just need to be patient by peers whose stuff comparatively blew up overnight. It's so discouraging to get absolutely no success in what is likely one of my main career paths at this point.

Sucks to hear that. I'd recommend you that if people can't find you, you can make 'em find you, how? interacting with communities and advertising yourself in some different ways (here in NG, people make art threads and join collabs to show off their skills, but it's just an example). People love to be hearded and noticed (just like you want attention, everyone else does), so, step up and make people feel attended by you, speaking of your trait as an artist only obviously.

And yeah, in other aspects you have nothing to do but to be patient. We all have different luck, and reach success earlier or later in life

easier said than done

Got a name for you: George Bridgman.

Websearch him. Then buy at least one of his books. Seriously, do it. Get a used copy if you want to save some money. His stuff has helped maybe three generations of artists now. It's certainly helped me. If you can only buy one book it should probably be Bridgman's Drawing from Life.

I really wish I knew how to make more like... solid art? Like. All I can really do is pump out portraits/headshots and like, obviously I enjoy drawing them, but I really wanna draw more. Shit like interesting backgrounds, or just interesting scenes in general. Just sucks because I rarely have the motivation to push myself more.

I hope this advice can be helpful to you guys. I worry about giving bad direct advice, but please let me know if it helped (or if it didn't)

I'd like to ask how are you currently setting aside your time? Is it kinda off the cuff hopping from project to project? For myself I had help building a more consistent schedule, and depending on the type of person you are you can either do this digitally through excel/sheets, or physically with notes or a planner. I have both a dry-erase board weekly planner and some old index cards that I make quick lists with on what I plan to focus on for the day. I'm usually loose with what I decide to do, so I set an hour or so per each 'assignment block', that is up to your own discretion.

I don't think there's anything wrong with taking on a lot projects to increase your own visibility, but like you said it's interfering on your personal pursuits. Take a step back and look at your current projects, how many do you have at this moment? How difficult are they and how much time can you give to them per week? The average work day is roughly split: 8hrs Work/8hrs Free Time/8hrs Sleep, and you can rearrange this to fit your needs, but I say to try to avoid tapping into your sleep schedule unless your absolutely certain, it'll more likely leave you too tired to work on something. Talk to the people you're helping out, if it's something that you are pitching in for on your own time but isn't pertinent, there's no shame with telling someone that you have to back out of a project, just be sure to be courteous and let them know ahead of time.

Try a weekly planner, digital or physical, and keep yourself accountable and realistic with the amount of time you can give to a project. And don't overwork yourself, if all those projects either prevent you from your personal passion project or leads you to burnout and you work halfheartedly on it, cutback where you can. It's a passion project so it's personal to you and you'd want to make it the best you can.

Great to hear that you're motivated with your work! It's extremely tough to put yourself out there as an artist, especially with the intent to make a career out of it. I struggle with some of the same things that you talked about and it does get pretty disheartening. And while it is tiring to hear, there's a lot of truth about remaining patient with your work and its visibility.

There's also a saying I like "Comparison is the thief of joy", and it's a tough thing to do but what matters most is the standard that you hold yourself to and not anybody else's. It's okay to compare yourself to others for the sake of healthy competition, but don't dwell on their successes, but maybe come up with your own short-term goals for your own success. I've spoken about something similar to a friend of mine that it's not true that all you need to succeed is either working hard or being lucky. It's both. You have to work as hard as you can (within healthy reason) so that way when a lucky break comes around, you're prepared for it.

Outside of that, a good practice would be to keep yourself consistent with both your artwork and your engagement with it. Newgrounds is a great place for this, but there's other communities out there as well (Discord, Twitch). Join groups especially ones about things you like, respond to comments on your art on whichever social media you use, and post on others works as well! I posted in here a while ago with some info that I think might be helpful in that regard.

Motivation can be hard thing to maintain, especially if you feel burnt out or disinterested because of personal reasons. There's this tweet I saw about cropping that might help with drawing/showing off more of the body but shouldn't dissuade you from drawing the whole thing from time to time. Backgrounds are also something that I aim to improve on, and I think the best advice I can give, is to find environments (real, videogames, animation, comics/manga) that you love and draw inspiration from that. I usually skimp out on my backgrounds and only have this pokemon one and my recent secret santa gift for examples of my own backgrounds. Also here are some videos that might also help!

(Winged Canvas)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IQoBr1-c3k

(Ethan Becker)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9f58K7r9X8

Hope some of this was helpful and feel free to let me know if something wasn't clear (typed this up pretty late)

Honestly I've been using a white board as of late however I don't really have a strict structure in how I approach scheduling. I would like to get a weekly planner and try to organize my time better for once I get out of my workplace but even then, that's easier said than done for me.

I would say that physical is probably the better option if I go that route because to be honest when I'm on the computer it's easy for me to forget to look at a worksheet and say "This is what I need to get done" when I have a ton of other things going on.

I do see where you are coming from in regards to communicating because I do think that's important. Because at that point it's better to say something instead of nothing in regards to keeping an eye on your own mental health and what not. Otherwise I generally agree with everything else you are saying here.

This one might be pretty interesting for y'all. Whether its for good or bad reasons I don't know.

I have a parody action comic-strip starring me and my discord friends. It's about self-inserts, internet beef, and like Porn I guess. Some of it got pretty popular on here but for the most part it's not that big. I kept writing it because my friends wanted to see more and it was sort of fun. Anyway I wrote it in a way so that flanderized strawman versions of famous internet personalities would be the series major antagonists so I can use them to make fun of the real internet person, make fun of myself, make fun of the state of the internet at the time, or have a cool looking fight scene. I sort of just wanted it to feel edgy and unpredictable.

I bring this all up is because during the first year I was writing and drawing this, 2 things happened. #1 I got a job, #2 I got dragged into this other writing project in my friend's discord that had almost the exact same premise as mine (minus the making fun of porn bits). Not only that but they also started out with the exact same antagonists as my first 2 arcs in my comic. That was very demoralizing but I didn't give it much thought, I figured that my project would be able to stand on it's own 2 feet. The main point is that I had less free time to work on MY ACTUAL favorite project.

My job is pretty irrelevant to this story so I'll just bring up the secondary project. Since this new project that my friend created FOR FUN (a.k.a. take time out of your own day to do it.) was so similar to mine I assumed I could treat it pretty lightly since we were in a server with 15 other people who could write for it. But not only was I one of only FOUR writers for this project, but I was also the guy with the most creative writing experience, which was even more demoralizing in the complete opposite way. So not only did it end up stealing away MUCH more of my time than I wanted, I was expected to work on this project far more often than the other members. To put a candle on this cake of pure agony, the creator of the project ended up... Getting It Cancelled Due To Creative Differences. Big shocker!!!

With all of that aside, how this all ended up affecting MY motivation even WORSE was that because this project ended up stealing all of my time away from MY actual project that I wanted to work on, the two villains that the Other Project just grabbed and discarded still needed to get finished in mine. Cuz of that I was getting bored of them for obvious reasons, and even though I didn't really want to lean into the PORN aspects of my comic, I ended up creating 3 new villains out of spite because that I knew would NEVER get into the other project. It's also because I wanted to make fun of these people at the time.

Anyway the bottom line is I conceptualized these 3 back in September of 2021 (one of them way earlier than that) and basically fully finished writing their arc in February 2022. But I didn't get to draw them in the comic until early 2023 after the other project was long dead and buried. So by the time I got to that point in the story that I wanted, it was basically completely irrelevant, added nothing to conversation, and I feel like it came off like I was trying to respark some old drama that no one cared about. On top of that I also shortened the fight scene with the previous villains to get to this arc faster which feels kind of like a mistake in hindsight.

Anyways to close this rant, my discord friends were the reason I kept making my comic and they became the reason I hated making it. Seasonal depression is hitting and I've been ruminating on this. I know everything that held me back on this project is basically gone (except the job) but I can't help but feel like this self concious pit that formed is never going to leave me. I have some friends on NG that are helping to keep my spirit alive for this project, but they've never heard this rant and probably never will if I can help it. I also never told the other server members how I really feel about the other project, cuz its old beef at this point. But my frustration and resentment still hasn't fully gone away, so I felt like screaming into the void today.

Sorry for the long text lol

First off, I would like to thank this thread for being a really great help to artists. Even me. However, I had to learn most of this stuff the hard way (aka beat myself up about my art to the point where I gave up for a year.)

Personally, one of the greatest things that hindered my art (aside from my constant negativity) was the fact that I wasn't using any guide or referencing. I just thought I could jot the idea/concept I had in my head onto a piece of paper and expect it to work, which I realize hindered my knowledge on art. Essentially, I threw myself up in the air and expected myself to fly.

As you can probably see from my work in 2021-(Early)2023, it sucks. My OC (fursona) looked more like a shoe than a dog, and later iterations seemed like a ball of lint than anything. But the great thing I learned the most about it? How I'm proud to say my art sucked. Learning how to criticize your past self (or yourself in general, assuming that doesn't degrade yourself unlike some people in this thread) has been one of the greatest things I've learned during my career. Back in the day, I used to shelter myself from creative criticisms, like an artistic recluse. Now I can learn how exactly I can improve my work.

Hell yeah.

TL;DR look up "how to draw furry art". It'll save you two years of learning from scratch.