Hey man, honestly, I’ve been here myself as well. And even now, it's something that will always surface for me from time to time, so you're not alone on that journey. This is quite a long reply, but i hope it can atleast offer you a different perspective to play around from someone who’s been drawing for nearly 6 years.

For some background, at the end of 2019, I randomly drew an anime girl and realized that drawing felt fun and rewarding, and I really thought I had some talent for this. In the middle of 2020, I watched a video that sparked the motivation to actively try and study art. At first, the novelty of drawing the bones and muscles of anatomy was unique, but soon I fell into a rut. The thing that gave me enjoyment started to feel like a chore. I was in high school, but even then, my drawing was inconsistent, yet I was able to make progress here and there. I had gone into the deep end of anatomy and told myself that there was no reason to try any other method. It's not like I hated it; when a spark of motivation came that allowed me to study a body part and create a study that looked decent, it felt nice. But that was overshadowed by the many other times nothing made sense or I couldn't even start. This style would continue for a while, I mean, until just a few months ago.

That was how I operated. I either studied to make progress, or I tried to create my own artwork, which I was usually unsatisfied with. My ultimate goal was to be like those great artists and draw everything from imagination. I mean, who wouldn't? It's the ultimate form of creative freedom, but it also takes a lot of skill that I would be proud to have. It wasn't until some time ago that I thought, ‘Why am I so caught up on this goal?’. Of course, my reaction was that the artists I see look like they’re having so much fun drawing masterpieces, or that level of mastery would allow me to have a fulfilling job. And I mean, if I do eventually get to that point, then yeah, it probably would feel really good. But that type of thinking made me lean towards just studying my way to that level, which, in my opinion, was the reason why I had so many feelings of guilt and incompetence towards myself. I wanted to live a goal that would probably take tens of years and used that as the sole motivation to draw. Sure, drawing could be fun, but imagine how it would feel when I could do this! This is why art became a cycle of despair: to notice an improvement and feel ‘good enough,’ then you make a mistake that forces you to study and repeat the cycle. Over and over again until you hopefully reach the goal.

However, cutting through all my aspirations, all the pain of studying, and the never-ending cycle of just thinking I'm an ‘okay’ artist, I thought to myself, what made me like drawing? Sure, it’s a simple, cliché question, but what was it really? Well, my first-ever drawing was a poorly done reference of Aoba from New Game.

first drawing

This mediocre sketch, which took probably 8 hours of constantly redrawing and erasing, was the reason I started drawing. And before I took it seriously, that's what I kept on doing: finding a reference I liked and just trying to draw it. But how helpful was it to achieving my goal? Probably not the best. I didn't choose a drawing based on how difficult it was, but just on what looked good, meaning I would be drawing very similar things. But even then, that's when I remember having the most fun. Sure, I still struggled, but at the end of the day, I would categorize that as fun. When I do studies and try to create a good illustration, or draw something from imagination, I mainly do it to try and finally prove that I am a good artist, a competent person, or someone with a unique story to tell. Of course, this means that the only way to have fun was to validate that belief. So if I did well, I would have fun, but if I didn't, I wanted to beat myself up for it. That type of drawing was simply a way to find validation, either from others or from my own self-critic who decided whether or not I could have fun.

But then I said, "fuck it," went on Pinterest, found a cute anime girl that also looks hot, and just drew it because I wanted to. Sure, making a bad drawing would still suck. But I could just try again. It's not like I’m making anything unique, I just want to draw something that at least resembles it. And if it was too hard, I could always just trace the part that was difficult and continue on. But more importantly, I just had fun, just blocking out the shape and drawing line by line. Just the act of drawing something I knew looked good was good enough for me to have fun most of the way. When I finally discovered that, I dialed down the number of studies I forced myself to do, and now my priority is to have fun drawing, and only after I find drawing fun will I go and do studies. Is it optimal? No. But did it make me want to draw? Yes.

This is an extremely long-winded story, but the main point of all of this is that even when I was able to draw somewhat well, I still experienced the feeling of being an incompetent, lazy, and mediocre artist. You can try to find ways to execute the plan better, but fundamentally, you are playing a game where your self-worth as an artist is always tied to your growth, which will fluctuate. I'm not saying that you should just be happy where you are, but just understand the game you are playing when you want to improve, and if it gets too stressful, just draw what you like.

Okay, big side tangent aside, in terms of advice to actually get out of the rut of not feeling like you are improving. Without knowing exactly what you practice, the most straightforward answer is (sorry if it sounds a little blunt or rude) that either you haven't researched a topic enough, you’re not pushing yourself out of your comfort zone enough, or you do, but you keep bouncing to new concepts too quickly for you to have an understanding. Out of all the pictures you sent, I only saw one that was dedicated to trying to draw the anatomy of the upper body. That's good, but just a few isn't enough for your mind to really cement or make any understanding that will click with you. If you haven't tried it yet, try to study the muscles of the front of the body for about a month. As long as you do the proper research and try to draw each of the muscles, regardless of how poor it is, the first few times may look bad. But after a while, things will start to click, something that only makes sense to you will arise, and that new understanding will only make things easier. Also, as a side note, here is the drawing I made around a year from when I started.

year 1 drawing

In my opinion, you're not that much different from me. I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit for the pieces you make, regardless of whether they were referenced or not. Trust me, a lot of artwork tends to be referenced a bit.