Furry Art Pile

Do you other artists ever feel like this?

When I’m not doing something creative, I’m often tormented (to use a bit of hyperbole) by the need to do so. When I am doing something creative, I’m often tormented by frustration.

The problem with the picture I’m currently drawing isn’t even that two of the characters are *gasp* human – it’s the poses. Never, never again will I draw anyone sitting cross-legged/Indian style. The legs either look way too long or way too short. Chairs! Chairs for everyone! Even quadrupeds like Ballad will sit in chairs! Or they’ll just stand up!

Due to many circumstances, this is only my third picture so far this year. Much of the time, it has been downright torturous to work on. Villaintines Day was like that too. The Easter Bunny pic was slightly better for some reason, perhaps because she was in a standing pose of the kind I’m used to drawing.

I cannot get the logic of the crossed legs straight. I am now doing something I’ve never done before – tracing from a picture of a man from the internet. What I draw looks fine on him, and totally wrong on my character Sequiel. I am currently working with the model picture at a much smaller size than Sequiel, because when I make it the same size as him, the legs look normal on the guy but they like they belong to a freakin’ giraffe on Sequiel. I don’t understand it. Even as it is, they look very, very long.

I can’t physically do the pose the guy in the picture is doing (apparently I even sit cross-legged differently than everyone else) and I can’t figure out why his legs look sooooooooooooooo long when he doesn’t appear to be much taller than me.

I have spent most of the day on this and they still don’t look right. And after I do his, I’ll have to do my other characters Sondrew’s. And then Ballad the gryphon’s weirdly positioned body. I haven’t even done any of the background yet, except a campfire I’m wildly dissatisfied with.

Some people would say 'Just quit. Who cares?', but that would be throwing away all the work I have done on it, and there are still parts that I like. I wish I could just hire somebody to do all the boring anatomical crap. “Here – make him look at least remotely like he’s sitting cross legged.” And they’d be done in like 10 minutes.

For my next picture I might have to do some sort of abstract squiggle or something that doesn’t have to conform to any preconceived notions I have of what it should look like.