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WhiteRaven90

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hhhhhhey

2 min read

Hello  

I live. I wouldn't be up to talk much about the past year, but i'd be up to slowly post some art  

It was an overwhelmingly good year for me. From June to now. I just don't think i want to go balls-deep into it. I don't mean to say it was a carefree vacation - it was great and hard and it was worth it. I achieved and started some things that are crazy to me, in a good way. I really needed to retreat for a long while, to rethink my life, to be alone in my own head for a while. I continue doing what i've been doing since June (i need to), but i mean to integrate it slowly into a more well-rounded, more sustainable daily routine.



I didn't draw much, but i did draw a little. I still need to keep drawing to a minimum for a while. Personal art specifically. I need to repair my relationship with it, because it's been messed up for the past 10+ years. :T



The global stuff almost didn't affect me at all, almost  

I hope everyone had a good... or at least bearable... time, all things considered.

I miss journal emojis

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part II

5 min read

An update on the previous thing.

First of all, i'm still alive. >_>
Secondly, it's better now. I'm going to need to be low/no activity for a little longer.
That's the TLDR version.

-------

During the past two weeks i haven't drawn a lot, but it doesn't make my anxiety rise, and i don't get flashbacks to that bad night, and i don't get particularly unnerved by the break from drawing, and i haven't had to force myself to have this break.

I discovered something that's been poisoning me for at least 16 years. There is a case to be made that it's been present all my life. We could call it... a falsehood? A concept corruption? ...Fuck that, let's call it Bob. Not necessarily a lie... and nothing  like "i actually don't want to be an artist, i was just pressured into it, my life is a lie" , nothing like that. Something more primal/simple? Something older. Something even a baby could process and be harmed by. My brain keeps resisting, it doesn't want to believe that i found something significant. I have to wrestle doubt when i write this entry. About every 4 hours of self-analysis, i get overwhelmed and think that actually i probably overestimate the importance of what i found and i look stupid. I found that meditation quickly and efficiently gets me back on track. Within minutes i realize that it's not bullshit, i simply got overwhelmed because it's genuinely a lot to process. I wake up every day feeling doubt, but go to bed feeling relieved and not doubtful, because in the morning i re-read my notes.

I've been leading a mindfulness/self-discovery journal since 2014. Beside the fact that the entire thing has to be reviewed and rephrased, i also put about 35000 new words into it in 2 weeks and i'm still not done and my brain is still not done bombarding me all day with "remember when...? Yeah. It makes sense now". It feels like cognitive behavioral therapy on steroids. It's exhausting. Can't stop. I don't know why therapists didn't put their finger on... Bob... ever? But i'll probably find that out soon enough. I did figure out that Bob was sabotaging therapy, so that could be partly it. It was sabotaging my self-analysis too, it corrupted meditation, made people with good intentions come off hostile, and it led to my nervous breakdowns and self-harm as well.

So this thing is pushing back very hard. I still have no therapist, i can't discuss if i'm just imagining this shit or if it's valid, i only have myself. I don't want to talk about it to anyone else because i don't trust that it wouldn't backfire, at this early point. The point is it seems to me that it would be best if i minimized my internet usage, so that i can carefully and methodically analyze what does come in, while i also process data that's already got me half-buried under it. Stay away from stressful social media and news, to keep my anxiety level under control. Be well-rested, be hypervigilant for a while, and be with myself. I'll rephrase the entire mindfulness journal, note down all the new insights, reflect on them, evaluate and deal with the self-doubt, and strategize.

I have read everything under the previous journal entry and i've been replying slowly when i felt that i can + should, and i'll continue. All the help given has been valuable to me. I'm sorry for being slow, late and inconsistent. Before, my presence was patchy because i wasn't functioning well, and now it's because i'd really like to do right by myself... which is.. not something i've ever done or decided to do, i think. Sometimes? But it always came with a "but." No buts now.

I hope that by the time i finish digesting this and integrate my conlusions, i'll have enough life left to live and do things i enjoy free of this thing. OTL
It feels like i exorcised a demon from myself. Or broke a decades-old curse. I want to know what it feels like to do my routine things without it, i want to try everything without it. I tried some things out already - without anxiety, guilt or fear. Things that usually come attached to significant feelings of anxiety, guilt, and fear. Field-testing results reassure me that it's not just wishful thinking. My sense of humor is coming back (i didn't notice it was lacking). My voice seems to be coming back (not in the physical sense). When i feel apprehensive, i can stop and defang it. Not meditate it off, or something (i've been doing it wrong anyway)... But properly deal with it. I can do it, repeatedly, with help from my new notes. It's not perfect. It's clunky - they are crutches - but feels good.

To clarify, i'm not "asking for permission to take my time" or anything, i'm letting you know what's up. It felt fair, after the previous journal?

Here's a thing i did a while ago. I'll upload it properly later.

Griffinpegasusr2sm

horse balls - i said it so you don't have to

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Skip first 3 paragraphs if you are in a low mood (yes this is a content warning).



Some unholy fuck happened in early 2020. Never experienced anything like it before. I was extremely emotional, at all times. Anything and everything made me cry. Even when i felt happy, i cried because of the realization that i wasn't feeling funeral vibes. Everything made me feel extremely deep sorrow, as if someone i loved died, or is dying, or if i was going to die soon and must say bye to things. I went to a Sabaton+Apocalyptica concert, which is pretty metal, and it made me cry, like i was seeing an incredibly moving drama film masterpiece. Who the fuck cries at a powermetal concert?



A few weeks later(?) my anxiety disorder joined in and I was entering a certain dark state of mind that i've been terrified of since about 2014 (i'm not sure but i'll go with 2014 for the sake of brevity). I wrote this out in vivid detail because my brain won't stop putting the scene in front of me. I want to make it sound more emotionally detached, and i half-accomplished it, but i just don't seem to be able to do it to a sufficient degree.



I was in such an intensely bad mood, that one night i just sat for hours, doing nothing but crying, non-stop, not being able to think about anything but my combat knife and of "i don't want to die". The last time i cut myself was in 2014. I knew that i would also cut my self-respect in half if i did it again, but i craved it like you'd crave food after not eating anything for 72 hours. I sat roughly 6 hours just focusing on not knifing myself while imagining how good it would feel to do it. 6 years ago it got to the point where i thought "what if i cut deeper, not to hurt but to kill", and i did not want to get there again. So... i'll skip to the part where i asked a friend if he could talk me out of it and that it worked, because i can't write this shit down without getting my panties in a twist. But I felt like i needed to get it out, in some form.

In hindsight, i thiiink i know what led to that initial funeral mood. (hindsight 2020)



2019 is a year i was proud of. I was having success getting financially stable and socially sufficiently functional, i was on an upward slope more often than not. I thought i was happy. In the meantime, "Drawing Spontaneously And Without Restrictions", my spouse of 20 years, has gradually ceased being attended to. "This is not the time." I tried to schedule it, to fit it with everything else that needs doing. I thought it was working. Slowly i became aware that i'm not getting enough of it, but i pushed forth anyway. I hoped i'd get accustomed to it, everybody else seems to be doing exactly that. (didn't think to think "and everybody is depressed out of their fucking minds")



This has been my main theme song for almost a decade. A little bit of faith in myself leaves my body every time i hit some kind of mental rock bottom due to a failure in this matter. "Congrats, you have achieved financial self-sufficiency! Your prize is an instant nervous breakdown". ...What? Why? I thought i was doing well.

Everything isn't hunky-dory, i'm not Mr/Ms Cheery-Strictly-Brief-Art-Updates, what else is new. I'm... Verbose-Mega-Neurotic-Crazy-Person. Something like that. Howdy!



figuring out how to word all this is not easy



I've been "Drawing Spontaneously And Without Restrictions" for a month or two. I often feel elated, during bedtime I no longer think of what would be a foolproof way to kill myself, i sleep well again, sleep schedule is back to normal (that is, batshit crazy by normal people standards), the combat knife doesn't feel like a me-magnet, i sing like a crazy person along with what i'm listening to while having furious sex with Photoshop. Can't socialize because guilt. I'm afraid if i stop i could get too close again to having thoughts of knives again. I'm afraid to stop. I remember that this is an unsustainable state every time i'm not facing a canvas.



I've been seeing a therapist for a while, but not since the covid curfew. I can't ask what the fuck am i supposed to do. I got diagnosed with Asperger's in early March (two and a half decades late but thanks) where i got anti-depressants prescribed for the anxiety (a decade late but thanks), however i have relevant eye-health issues (which i did not have a decade ago), those make me too anxious to take them. Meditation decreases the high-strung state of mind i've nailed myself to in order stay elated, so i've not been doing it.



That is the gist of why i fell off the face of the Earth THIS time

What do? =,=

Gottem3-sm

What i've also done is isolate myself socially. It's what i tend to do. "You'll talk with people AFTER you sort your shit out ALONE."  Trying to find a better way out, my brain sees an opening here (communicate before you are done sorting your shit out, coward). Once i've broken into the walled-off Danger Zone, at that point it usually goes like: "Well i'm... already here... it's been 5 seconds and alligators haven't eaten me alive yet, maybe i could get done what needs to be done in here." I tried breaking in through a different way a few weeks ago, but it barely made me stay inside for a day and my disappointment in myself grew. I only half-understand the key difference between the two openings, and i don't understand enough about this entire situation and i'm even less adept at finding the right way to express what little i do think i know, but i think i do need to express it because it's a source of anxiety and you should headbutt anxiety if you can because it will make it go away, and it would help if i could tell valid anxiety apart from stupid anxiety but i c a n n o t in this state of mind but to get out of this state of mind i need to get rid of anxiety and now the problem is circular.

I also know that other people can break through more... gently... (everyone but me seems to be able to do it more gently) but i'd just like to break through already in any way i can. May i. I've been writing and rewriting this journal for 5 days

I guess what i mean is.. ... uhhhh.. help

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Prints1000

:star:  https://gumroad.com/whiteraven90  :star:



This is just a limited test run, tailored for Christmasy needs. I’ve been meaning to test out Gumroad forever. I’m planning to add both digital and physical products there, long-term.



I’ve limited each print to 5 - that way if something goes wrong i will not go completely bankrupt. If you’d like to have some more print variety, my InPrnt shop has that covered year-round: http://www.inprnt.com/gallery/vassmelinda/ 



Leave feedback on the Gumroad shop, if you’d like! I’m a complete noob, so if i can do anything to make it better, i will.



Thanks for looking!

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*inhales*

Every now and then, something will set me on a disjointed train of thought that could be roughly summarized as "What is the point of my art? And just how much is it worth in the grand scheme of things?:thinking: Not specifically monetary worth, but general. I had this happen yesterday when i was trying to meditate on more immediate/pressing issues. It hijacked my thoughts today, again, so i thought maybe i could get it out of my system for a while by writing about it, and I haven't written a journal like this in a while anyway. So here we are.

The value of art as a profession


I sometimes compare art as a job with a purpose to other jobs with a purpose. Like how does it compare to, for example, the job of cashiers, shopkeepers. The purpose, value and necessity of those jobs is immediately evident, but art, like illustration...? I always come up a little short for that... It would be even less fair to compare it to heart surgeons, firefighters, and the likes. No one in their right mind would say "we don't need firefighters"

In art school, where i was in the graphic design class, back there i did hear hard-to-argue points about the value of design. In a nutshell: design is everywhere. Let's take cars - designers work on the look of cars, make advertisements for those cars (illustrators, animators, photographers, filmographers), designers refine the look of tools made to manufacture cars, a designer (an architect) designs the building in which cars are made, the building in which cars are sold, an artist (craftsman) designs the reception desk in that building, the clothes the receptionist wears (fashion designer), the logo of the company (graphic designer)... You get the point. It's a kind of invisible category of work that has its fingers in every pie.

But design is art, and, again, how necessary is it for it to exist? The world wouldn't stop turning if design - and art as a whole - didn't exist, or even if everything man-made looked like absolute anti-aesthetic garbage fire. I wouldn't like that, but that is just an opinion, not a strong argument. A firm opinion, like if someone tried to ban art jobs i'd say over my dead body, asshole, but it's still only my subjective opinion.

I then remember to think of illustration - or whatever the hell it is that i'm doing - as a category of entertainment. Maybe a hybrid of art/entertainment. It's for the "soul". It's to make people happy. It's why i care what people think of my work, why i care about feedback, whether what i made seems to be well-received or not. I do not want to do art as self-serving cerebral masturbation. It's part of the reason why it's monetized in the form of commissions and such. I wonder if people who commission art are made happy by the art they receive, and how happy? I wonder how satisfied are they with my work. I wonder how i could make the process even better, nicer, more pleasant - i know that i can make it better by speeding the hell up, and i work on that, it's just the hardest for me.

Anyway, caring about what people think and adjusting myself to them is not synonymous with "people-pleasing". I do not lose out on anything by caring, i gain from it too. If i hear genuine positive feedback, i feel happy, fulfilled, confident, eager to wake up in the morning. I care because i want to be useful. Oh Noes! Everybody wants to be useful, i'm not different. I feel like with the skills i have i could be useful by doing "entertainment". Making the days of people more bearable. Pointing out the worthwhile qualities of things one might not notice otherwise, through a visual - and sometimes literary - format. I don't think of entertainment as a "lesser" thing than art. I think art and entertainment are good neighbors. So i listen to feedback, care about traffic, read comments (all of themmmm), appreciate critique (regardless of tone really, or whether i asked for it or not), even why i keep making puns and word-play and write silly things (if it gets even a poker-faced, loud exhale through the nose it's a step in the right direction).

Hence this train of thought. I wonder what my purpose should be in life, if i'm worth the space and energy i take up, just how valuable am i to people? Society? The planet as a whole? What is a good place for me to be, what is the best fit for me? Would it be better if i just got a job in a supermarket? I have no answers except that art is my only skill and when i tried applying to Burger King i got rejected, twice, based on a personality test lmao, and i tried to tackle this topic multiple times already. Roll Eyes The most i walk away from it with, normally, is that i know that my work inspires more than one artist, apparently (that is humbling and motivates me to do my best); that my commissions (the ones i manage to get to in time...) often exceed expectations; that many people like my work enough to follow me to other sites, for years (they must be getting something good out of it..); i'm told by some that seeing my art on their dashboard/feed/inbox makes their day - that makes me feel like i might be in the right place, after all, although i hope there are plenty of other things that also make their day. The more the merrier.

Tragedy as a genre


But that doesn't really cover the whole thing for me, either. It's at this point that my train of thought revealed to me why the hell it sneaked into my mind again. You'd think of entertainment as this happy colorful sweet positive thing, all fun and sunshine and comedy, unicorns shitting rainbows, the typical things. But truth needs to be told, for entertainment i personally like the dark brother of comedy better - tragedy. AND its neighbors - horror and gore. It might be why i don't like "candy gore". It's just "candy" to me. I might write/speak like a drunk jester in a casual setting, but when it comes to the stories i write, i like realism, i do not like theatrical comedy. I do not like reading such things from other authors either, unless i get my fix of realism alongside the fun parts, or if the author is godlike-good at organic fun. I do love comedy, and happy things, it's just that when those things are not done well, it stands out to me more, and bothers me more (despite the fact that my least favorite movie is a tragedy). Comedic plots can feel vapid, like there are no stakes, no thrill, "nothing ventured, nothing gained" so they shake up none of my emotions, beside mild annoyance. 

Entertainment is commonly viewed as "it needs to be happy happy joy joy fun times". That's how it seems to me. "I thought you said you want to make an entertainments, so how come you made a sads???" So i feel like i need to justify the existence of tragedy as a genre. I shouldn't feel that way, but i do. A little. I think most of its value comes from the catharsis, the "release" the story builds up to, and regarding horror, the adrenaline rush, the "i'm so glad this didn't happen to me irl oh boy" but not so literally. I like the trace remains of heartache i get when i recall a sad story. The kind of story that moves me, anyway. I watched Martyrs (the original french version) and it just seemed like anti-cathartic torture porn to me. I didn't like it, sorry to say. It might be my least favorite movie of all time. Grump In what way do i like a movie to move me, inspire me? Tragedy can inspire many good things. It can inspire compassion, for one. It can soften a heart, call upon empathy, make one thankful for their things and friends in life, inspire one to be more gentle toward others. It can inspire tolerance, acceptance. It can make one feel kinship, like they are not alone with their pain, and there is someone who understands the pain, whatever that pain is. It explores one's worries to the very end, in a safe way. Both tragedy and horror makes me feel more alive, in a good way, in a way only they can make me feel alive. Many of my favorite stories contain mountains of thrill and tragedy. Yes, real life contains unending mountains of horror and tragedy too, but that is not the same as the events and ideas people carefully and purposely distill into stories for the purpose of coping, learning, reflecting, getting stronger.

So i want to, but would hesitate to not mark it as "tragedy" when i compose tragedy, because people might take that as "it's a story that made me feel bad, you should be ashamed, why didn't you warn me" when that wasn't the purpose of the story, as i explained above. The mere fact of marking something a tragedy is a major spoiler that can sabotage the catharsis. Considering how many stories have happy endings. I feel like it's almost all of them. It gets predictable, thus unrealistic, to me, it lets me down, and then i yearn for something that feels more realistic. Many stories have a happy end even when a happy end does not suit the story at all, makes no sense, it's just thoughtlessly shoehorned in, when a more solemn, sad ending would be so much more meaningful.

I do not want to limit myself to happy things, and i'd hate to give a story a happy ending just because "it's what everybody else does and wants". I know a saying that goes something like "what the people want to hear is usually not what the people need to hear". A bit pretentious for a saying, and I don't want to come across like i know someone else's needs/desires better than they do, though, it's just some food for thought that came to mind. I'd like doing entertainment, but i'd like it to be mindful, is all i mean. Less people-pleasing, more people-caring. In visual art i'm more down with making fluffy eye-candy and doing technical/skill stunts for the heck of it, because i look at it more like a profession than a deeply-loved passion, even if that sounds... weird... and not what you'd expect to hear, looking at my body of work... It is passion, but more like a thrilling one, a competition. I like honorable competition, it invigorates me. Think of it like general storytelling is my wife, and visual art is my mistress, lol

Well anyway, my point is just that i'm conflicted about handling genres.

Instead of conclusions


Then - waaay back to art's value a bit - there's the fact of distribution and market size - by picking fantasy as the category of the things i create most of the time, i limit the size of interested audience greatly. Geography and technology and all the usual suspects limit it further. It's not exactly soft fantasy either, what i do - often, when encountering Pegasus, for example, people just Do Not Understand What This Is Supposed to Do. Too deep in fantasy land. Niche. Most people like art of other people doing people things. Not vaguely horse-looking critters begrudgingly performing handstands with no context in sight. Understandable, but an obstacle i need to deal with, regardless. I'm not really interested in doing epic fantasy (anymore) either very much, so that one cuts out fantasy-lovers who are in it for the epic saving-the-world-from-destruction plots. I have those plots, but i prefer to tend to the more cozy, small-scale interpersonal/introverted plots. I'd rather explore, for example, how Pegasus feels about omelette (a semi-intentionally dumb example). I'm using Pegasus as example because he's probably the most frequently seen creature of my gallery at the moment.

Anyway what i was trying to lead up to was that the potential pool of audience for me is pretty smaaaaalll. I'm almost at 10k watchers here so my worrying about audience size might raise an eyebrow or two. But when it comes to trying to make a living, one just gotta low-key worry about marketability even with that in mind. Sweating a little...  And even though i studied graphic design, which is a type of marketing, is suck balls at advertising and selling my work. Happycry revamp 

I'll cut this train of thought off here, though, and try to find a conclusion to this hot mess. Hmmm. Well there isn't one, as was alluded to at the beginning. Ashamed I suppose i do want to say thank you for being here, and i sincerely hope that you enjoy the ride. If you have an idea how i can make it gooder, lemme know. What would you like to see more of? Is Pegasus getting boring? Should i color my sketches more often? I have no need for coloring my practice sketches, but if it makes a difference then it would not be a hard change for me to make. How would you feel if i had more silent periods, if the payoff for it was a colored, +100 pages long graphic novel (might be tragedy, might be comedy, who knows)? Would anyone be interested in animated scene commissions, or just simple animated creature commissions? How about some plain old novels, the kind that has no pictures (although me being a triggerhappy illustrator, pictures for them might happen anyway)? Would anyone buy it if i compiled a sketchbook? If i made a short, themed artbook with maybe concept art included at the end? A tomato seed hatched in my turtle's aquarium and it died when i planted it, anyone know why? What do you watch me for? I know that question usually nets people a load of answers that say "everything" but maybe there is something more specific that grabs and holds your attention? Anyone have a favorite satisfying tragic/dark story? I like... hmm... Sweeney Todd (with Johnny Depp), Schindler's List, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Pan's Labyrinth, and the music album "Les Friction", off the top of my head.
Anything you disagree with in this here hot mess?

*exhales*

weird walls of text are back on the menu, baby
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