I don’t know about the rest of you but I have always had Imposter Syndrome. No matter how far I’ve come in my art, no matter what I do, it’s always there.

As artists, it’s really hard sometimes to fight that voice in our heads. Especially those of us who are self-taught. I’ve covered my feelings about AI in another post, so I won’t digress into that. What I will talk about is how I silence the voice in my head that tells me that I will never be “good enough”.

When I get to the point where I feel like giving up, where I feel overwhelmed or wonder why I am creating things in the first place, I stop posting. I start doing things that I want to do. For instance, right now I’m making a comic just for myself. I’m learning new techniques, new ways of creating things because I want to tell a story for myself. I’m sketching things and practicing things that aren’t meant to be shown to everyone else. This helps with the process. Sometimes you have to do something just for you to remind yourself why you create in the first place.

If you decide that it’s something you want to share later, that’s fine but it’s also fine to keep a “junk practice” sketchbook where you deliberately try things. For years I muddied my posting with stuff that I hated in an attempt to “show my work”. Things that I shouldn’t have let see the light of day because it was absolutely terrible. I did it because I wanted to “prove” that I was creating. The problem with that thought process was it doesn’t really help me prove anything. In art, we’re always being judged by our recent work. Sometimes harshly.

Do not give into the pressure to share something that you are experimenting with. You’ll thank me later for that advice. Hopefully I’ll follow it myself.

Back to the comic I have been creating for myself. It’s called “Betwixt and Between” and the concept is “What would happen if you wandered halfway into the Faerie realms?”

Those who wander there are in the “Between” and they become “Betwixt”. They are no longer the person they were before but they are also not completely fairy. I’ve been drawing the first location those who end up “Betwixt” land in for several variations and I may share it eventually or I may not. Regardless, as I develop the story I am considering writing paragraphs here to see what you, dear readers, think.