Handling Self-Doubt and Insecurity as an Artist

[1,892 words, 10 min estimated read time]

When talking to other artists about self-doubt and insecurities with our art, I found that I tended to repeat a lot of the same points of advice and ideas, so I figured I could just collect it all in one blog post to look back on! I’ll be talking about some things that have helped me, and at the end share a couple extra videos that may help.

I also plan to write another blog post soon specifically about art block and burnout. I intend for the two to act as companion pieces that can hopefully help others, and also be something I can look back to when I’m struggling with it myself.

Don’t compare yourself to others- Compare with your past self

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard is instead of comparing your art to others, compare it with your own past artwork. It’s easy to see someone else’s work only as it exists in that moment, and not see the years-long journey it took to get there. So rather than comparing to someone else’s path to get to where they are, redirect to look at your own artwork! How does your art now compare to your art from three months ago? What about three years ago?

I look back at older pieces and kinda cringe and think “oh man that looks so bad”, but that’s a good thing! What I now see as obvious mistakes I didn’t notice while originally making the piece, and it means I’ve grown a lot since then. Instead of it being something to cringe at and be embarrassed by, it can be spun into something positive. Plus it’s easier to break down improvement into individual things; for example “I got better at lineart”, or “I got better at drawing eyes”- whatever it is you think you improved at, hold on to that and be proud of how far you’ve come.

And now when I do finish a piece I’m super proud of, and I think about the fact that in a couple years I’ll look back at it and probably find a ton of mistakes with it and think its cringey? That’s super exciting too! Because it means I’ll have grown that much more again. Art is a skill that grows like any other, and it’s good to look at it through the lens of a skill that develops over time. And I think learning to love the process of your art developing and recognizing what you like about it is a skill that has to develop alongside it.

If you’re going to keep comparing yourself to others, then at least commit to it

I get that it’s easier said than done to just not compare yourself to others. So if you really can’t help it, then lean into it. Take it 110%. Don’t just let it be a passing thought of “oh their art is so much better than mine”- stop and figure out the exact reason you had that passing thought.

Figure out why you like it. What exactly draws you to their work? Do you like that their lineart has texture to it? Do you like how they use cell shading? How they render? How they use bright colors that pop against the background? The highlights they add to characters eyes that makes them seem to light up? The way the poses they draw characters in look so dynamic and fluid?

Whatever those reasons, figure them out and write them down, and hang onto them. Maybe you don’t want your art style to be all of those things, but it can give you a better idea of what you may want to do with your own style! Something about analyzing another person’s art or art style and breaking it down into individual pieces helps me break that mindset of holding others up on a pedestal and comparing myself negatively to them.

If you want somewhere to start the artist Duchess Celestia (here’s a link to her Youtube) made Style Analysis Templates on her Tumblr, which I think are really useful!

(A Recent Example of How I Dealt with This)

Lately I’ve been catching up on watching youtube videos by the artist PricklyAlpaca. Usually I’ll draw alongside youtube videos, but I found while watching one of her recent videos that I was starting to get really self-conscious. Even though I was just working on little doodles I kept comparing what I was making to the art she was showing in the video, and ended up stopping and just watching the video because I felt like my art was so inadequate next to hers.

Usually I’ve gotten pretty good at telling when this happens and pausing to think it through, but for some reason it was just getting to me and I wasn’t really processing it. Thankfully the next video I watched by her helped to snap me out if it. In the video she was drawing other people’s characters, and through the whole beginning of the video she’s gushing about how cool all of their art styles and characters are. And in the video she even talks a bit about balancing what she wants out of her own art style, and some of the uncertainty she feels.

It helped remind me how much better it is to direct those feelings of doubt into something positive and lift other people up rather than tear yourself down. It also helped serve as a reminder that self-doubt is something pretty much every artist struggles with, even those that I admire the work of.

After that I was able to catch myself and start thinking through the self-doubt and jealousy I had started to feel while watching that first video. I can admire and appreciate her artwork without comparing it to my own artsyle. Firstly, because we have completely different styles! Even just looking at the lineart- I try to go for thicker, bolder lines in a more graphic style, where her lineart is more subtle and painterly to focus on adding more detail and depth. It’s not fair for me to compare myself just on the basis of us both drawing characters and making digital art- we’re going for two completely different styles in how we portray those characters!

Thinking through these initial thoughts and doubts can help reassure what direction you want to go with your art. As much as I love the look of painterly detailed artwork styles, that’s just not something I want to create myself at the moment. And because I was reassured of this, I started to get motivated to look at more graphic styles to study!

I could’ve just left it at ‘I’m jealous of her art’ after seeing that first video and letting that fester. I could’ve just stop drawing and wished my art could look like hers. But instead, and thanks to this same artist being open about her own doubts and lifting others up, I was reminded that self-doubt is something all artists struggle with. And as an added bonus, I felt more reassured with what I wanted out of my own artwork, while still being able to admire the work of others!

I want to stress though this is something I’ve been working on for a while. Like I just talked about here, I still slip up and sometimes it takes me a while to catch myself. But in this case it was thanks to the very same artist I was comparing myself to that I was reminded again that it can turn into something really positive. And I hope me talking about it openly here and elsewhere can help someone else too! (Also if it wasn’t clear at this point please go check out Pricklyalpaca’s art cause her work is so goddamn incredible and she seems really nice, it’s awesome that she uplifts other artists the way she does.)

Go Back to your Comfort Zone

When I get caught up feeling like I’m not improving or learning enough, sometimes it helps to go back to some art that comes more easily to me. For you maybe it’s a medium that you really enjoy working with, or a subject matter that just comes more naturally to you.

Going back to making art that falls in your comfort zone can be a great chance to gain some confidence back and make something you already know you enjoy making. You can spend the time falling back into enjoying the process of creating the art, rather than spending energy on trying to come up with something brand new.

One of my characters, Morrigan, tends to be the one I go for when looking for a comfort character to draw. Whether it’s a quick scribble in my sketchbook or a detailed illustration, drawing them feels a lot more natural to me now than trying something new. And even when I do try something new, like a difficult pose or an art style study, I usually draw them first since they’re most familiar to me.

Just make “Bad Art”

If nothing else works, and you still feel like your artwork is awful, it’s garbage, it’s quote on quote “bad art”… why is that so bad in the first place?

My current biggest insecurity when it comes to my art is my lack of understanding of anatomy. Not knowing such a fundamental thing when it comes to drawing characters has been something I’ve been constantly self-critical of since I started to take my artwork more seriously.

But lately I’ve started to think to myself- what happens when I see someone else’s art and their anatomy isn’t great? It’s not like my response would ever been “well they should’ve just practiced more instead of sharing”. I’m just happy to see some cool art! So why am I holding myself to a different standard? Even when I notice a fundamental flaw in someone else’s art like the proportions of the anatomy being off, it’s not like I sit there admonishing it. Those flaws don’t make it bad in my mind, and even if someone considered it “bad art” it was still worth making, right? So what if it’s bad, so what if there’s flaws with it, it having flaws doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have been made or shared.

I think especially from seeing so much incredible art online, we forget it’s okay to just make art that we know has issues with it. It’s okay to create something flawed, something you know is flawed, and still be happy for it to exist. I think it’s better to make “bad art” then no art.

Some other resources I’d recommend

Below are some Youtube videos I would recommend watching that talk about dealing with self doubt or similar topics. They’ve helped me and I tend to go back to them when going through a rough patch with my art. I hope they can help you too!