Sea of Lights Fanart

So it's 4 AM as I stayed up finishing a piece of art for a fanart contest. Since I havent done digital art in a while and furthermore haven't colored my art in a while it ended up taking a long time in total. I spent two and a half hours inking it and maybe five hours coloring, plus however long the sketching phase took. 

I'm not completely happy with the result and I'll probably regret staying up tomorrow as I still have work to do. I just really wanted to get this piece in on time, and the deadline is at 8 in the morning so I didn't have any choice. Honestly, I doubt I will win anything (they have several tiers of winners, overally probably a hundred or two qualify?). It's discouraging to admit that, but it's an issue on my end that I started working on this in a sudden burst of inspiration like three days before the deadline. And, that I finished most of it in the dead of night and in sleep-deprived delirium. So it's not my best work. The coloring reminds me of how I used to color years ago when I did lots of digital painting, and I'm... not sure if that's a good thing? It's safe, and it feels kind of boring. 

I'm having some difficulty not feeling sad about that. I mean, I stayed up for a while, I've been feeling stressed and kind of depressed and turbulent already lately. I've consistently felt work pressure too and I still have work left that I could have done instead. Lately though I've been telling myself I want to draw more, and one facet of that is making a habit out of it, and drawing even when it's not turning out great. I have had a habit of abandoning pieces when they don't seem to be turning out well, or abandoning art entirely for some time out of discouragement and frustration. So I just want to draw more, and for that to happen I need to learn to accept failure. I'm not very happy with this piece, but then again I have very high expectations of myself. 

I think if I'd seen foreward in time how this turned out while I was still sketching it I would be happy with it. But the delirium and stress (some) of working on it has made me kind of cynical and detached from it. Maybe it'll take me waking up and looking at it again in the morning, or in a month or so. Right now I probably just need to sleep. Sleep, and a sincere hug.. 

My mind hasn't been treating me well lately.

Sigh. Something about coloring always seems to ruin pieces for me. I love the inking phase. It seems to bring possibility and create beautiful complexity. But the coloring phase feels like it closes off possibility and locks into one specific idea, which I don't like. I like stopping at the inking. I could do anything with the piece then, but I don't, and I like looking at the crisp lines and intricate shapes. I mean, at the root of it all is that I am very unconfident with my coloring ability. I feel like I freeze up every time I'm confronted with a color wheel or tube of paint. Color is so unobjective, impossible to quantify, there are literall millions of possibilities and millions more combinations- it terrifies me. Whenever I work with it I just feel like lamenting my absolute lack of ability, every color I choose seems wrong and it all stacks up into something miserable. 

Sigh. I shouldn't be so hard on myself. Finishing this piece is enough. It's not the best but it's certainly not the worst. And I resolved to not be so quality-controlling with my work, and to be unafraid to put my work out there even if I don't think it's good. Because chances are, someone out there will still appreciate it. So it's fine. My only regret is staying up so late for it. I guess I regret doing it a little too because I don't like how it turned out. But I think that it would be healthier to see an act of creation as inherently positive. I made something, and that's a good thing. I made something. That's good.