Artistic Crisis Ahoy!

I'm having an artistic crisis.

The one adjective my illustration style seems to evoke in many people - whether they be my friends, tutors, or random people on the internet - is 'interesting'. Or if not that, 'strange'.

(Or, as Shallman kindly put it, 'like Japanese manga but with Western influences', something I can definitely deal with anyday.)

I kind of view it with an amused raised eyebrow, for those two words usually mean 'Um, it looks weird, but I don't want to hurt the poor artist's feelings, so I'll just settle with this ambiguous word that may or may not have negative connotations.' Most of the time, I just nod my head, grunt, and move on. After all, at the end of the day there seem to be a handful of people who still like my work.

But as I am viewing some of my illustrations now, I am starting to see...the strangeness. The lines are very harsh. The shading is non-existent. The chins may as well be forged from steel, with the power to cut through diamonds. The eyelashes could be used as a substitute for a duster. Eyes are simultaneously too big and too small, yet either option seems to look fine on the face. It looks weird, things jut out at uneven angles, things are missing that shouldn't be and replaced with things that aren't there.

While I'm happy my style is anything but generic - and dare I say, extremely unique - it certainly is not the type of style that will capture everybody's aesthetic appeal. And even now, it doesn't capture my own.

Maybe at the end of the day I'll look at all of this and just laugh at my arty-farty moaning, but sometimes I wish I could draw...prettier.