Whinefest, beware.

I despise what college has done to me, especially in the last semester that I was there. It has been a double-edged sword. While I know more techniques and I am better at drawing the figure... actually they told me themselves I was very good at the technical portions of assignments. It was connecting what I wanted to what I had been taught where the trouble started. It was a mistake to show them anything I wanted to do. My entities should have always remained a secret, stored away deep into the unknown depths of Deviantart where nobodies finds them unless the image is semi-pornographic or fetishist.

I have to confess. I felt guilty when I completed Sapphire and Nevae's pictures. Guilty. I felt like I broke a rule, or a deep-seated sin against art for drawing my and my friend's characters with the same utmost sincerity that I used for my technical drawings in college. Rules are easy for me to break, I do it all the time. So why this time? Because it directly affects my ego. I hear the echoes of their continuous critiques and know precisely what would be said about these drawings. Incestuous subject matter, poorly drawn, and why didn't I question every move I made with these images. I've had worse said to my face, and I've learned how to take insults and destructive criticisms with a straight face. The worst came in the thesis show I had to do where even my well-known-to-be-strict advisor even had to turn to the faculty member and tell him in a professional manner to stuff it. But these things still fester. I burned out months ago and I've been struggling to pick myself back up. The reason I haven't even tried to look for a job is because I don't want to bother trying to put together another mother fucking portfolio that would just be torn apart again anyway.

I felt like I shouldn't have even drawn Sapphire and Nevae in the first place. I want to do another image of both of them together, and in my head it is as beautiful as any head-image is with any artist. It's always more beautiful than the physical piece that's produced. I hear voices of other students and faculty asking me the same questions I was always asked over my subject matter. It didn't matter what question it was or how it was phrased, the debate always boiled down to, "Why are you even doing this stupid shit in the first place and why can't you prove that your spirits exist and express what you want to express at the same time?" And yes, it has often been as insulting and unprofessional as that sentence. There was another girl who did spiritual-type artwork, but she was very Christian about it. She often got the same questions and I do believe was asked to prove that God exists and express her connection to him at the same time in her pieces, so I know that I wasn't alone. Hers was more orthodoxed than mine, because I'm not even a traditional pagan. I'm not even pagan. I just practice magic.

I digress. These things have been crippling when it comes to image-making. I've started dozens of projects and none of them have been finished. I look back in my archives at old images and wonder how the Hell I managed to do so many so smoothly. The technical aspects are lacking, but the emotion and expression are there and at the time it was all that mattered to me. What the Hell has changed?

I can see why Nevae was wanting me to wait before I tried to make anymore images after his. I get too excited, and I get too worked up and then I crash down on myself somehow. This is a pattern that I need to mend somehow. Perhaps I can convince him to help me.