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[Mild rant and tangent post, please feel free to ignore.]

I wish I could figure out why I feel like my art sucks one minute and then is on par with my skill level the next. Like, I fully understand and can get behind the "Art is a journey" spill but I don't understand why it never feels like I'm consistently happy with my art. (I've been drawing traditionally for close to +16 years now and digitally for +4.)

I can't even tell if I have a style like other artist do. Looking at other artist, I can instantly tell who did it because the way they do lineart/color/shading/composition is so distinctive. Me, I vary so much between things I can't tell. My lineart switches between being thick and thin constantly, my color theory is absurd, the shading techniques I use are all over the place, and my compositions never follow the same pattern.

I know comparing myself to other people isn't helpful because everyone is different, but it just feels like I'm doing something wrong. This is what I'm seeing though, so I have no idea what it looks like from the outside. Legit just stuck in the fishbowl of my skull. Maybe it's a good thing because I can be whatever I need to be, but the inconsistent nature of my art makes it feel off. I have no idea how to fix it beside making an instruction guide for myself and refer to it every single time I make a piece. Because, just like in real life, if I don't have a script I'm just going to wing it and see what happens.

I just like so many different things and have so many different ideas that they all leak out into one another. It's like a collage of random ideas, theories, and knowledge that just gets thrown into a blender but instead of putting it on "~puree~" it's set to "crush ice". I have no idea if I even "have" to be consistent with my art and maybe I can have multiple styles but "something" in me keeps telling me I have to have a style. If I didn't have a buzz cut I'd be pulling my hair out at this point.

I can tell that my art has changed over the years and I've grown as an artist but it's just been nagging at me more and more. Looking at art I did back in highschool and now I'm a completely different person. Looking at my art from 3 months ago and now I should be able to tell some sort of similarities, right???

Maybe I just can't tell. Maybe it's like reading the same word multiple times and then thinking the spelling is wrong even though everything is fine. I'm sure other people have this same issue and I'm not the only one but man is it disheartening.

If ya made it to the end of this ramble congratz, you deserve a star. Me, I need ibuprofen for the headache this is giving me.