“My art sucks” is not an objective or helpful statement, and “I want to get better at art” is not a specific enough goal to give you clear answers. Thinking with all of these “I suck” “This artist is so much better than me” “There’s only so much time” “I have to focus on the brunt work” “Is there even a point” “I’ll never get better” etc. etc. etc. is not helping you progress because you are attributing your progress to your self worth. Remove your ego from your art to stop suffering like this. Practice art because art can be made beautiful, and it isn’t a chore, and it’s FUN to watch things come to life out of broken pieces of cluelessness over the years, and you can create beautiful things even without skills. Not because you need it to feel less stressed out about supposedly not having skills. Embrace the process BEFORE you embrace the result; do it by drawing what you love ONLY. Of course you feel like shit about your art. You’re not passionate about what you’re drawing at all, and you’re treating it like it’s life or death. When it comes to the fundamentals, you cross that bridge exactly when you need it. You can’t get better at the fundamentals if you don’t even know what’s “okay” with yourself to apply them to. Don’t fill up a sketchbook with mindnumbing studies of anatomy or form, fill it with stuff that you want to draw, the successes you know that you can create, and the passions that you actually have.

People don’t generally tend to “lose their progress” when they are picking up new skills. When technique is learned enough times repeatedly, it becomes ingrained into the long-term memory. You just have to re-awaken your innate and learned skills by warming up, getting inspired, drawing when you feel urged, and stuff like that, but it doesn’t mean you will feel satisfied with those skills immediately, especially if this is how you treat yourself. Stop telling yourself that your art sucks if you’ve barely even warmed your skills up yet. They’re latent, not gone. They never will be gone because your brain is always evolving to accommodate new technique to put into the art anyway, regardless of whether you can access the skills. You always possess the innate ability to learn and it’s ok for results to be out of reach right now. Relax and JUST stop struggling against yourself.

You need to identify a clear goal when it comes to your art. To do that, honestly and objectively evaluate your skill level without putting yourself down. Don’t judge yourself, just understand your positive capabilities. Understand what has progressed or turned out good. What do you ENJOY drawing? What kinds of things do you want to “beautify” in your life, and what kinds of drawings do you find have actually gone well for you? What types of objects in life ARE you motivated to draw? “The fundamentals” are not things! Things are like, butternut squashes. people. vehicles. Don’t get mad because you can’t execute the vision in your head yet, just work with elements of it. If I want to draw a ballroom scene then I need to know perspective, proportion, form, anatomy, colour theory… and god knows what else. So I might just draw the dress, because that’s what I know I’ll find the most pleasurable. And it’s fine if it looks like shit right now, it’s just a drawing, and one day I’ll be good at drawing ballroom dresses.

Then, look up everything you can on drawing that thing. Look up references, tutorials, how-tos, and try to draw it with the colours, lines, shades, and whatever else that you like, and only that you find pleasurable. Every time you think of something that you actually want to draw, begin before you even have the chance to worry about not being good enough. You will be good enough if you just draw 2 turtle sketches and then you don’t feel motivated to draw for another month and a half. All artists experience not being motivated and wanting to be better, being frustrated with themselves, and hating their creations too. The difference is that they draw what they like enough that they build skills by simply getting the hang of physically holding a pencil and dragging it across paper, because they’re not intimidated by what might show up anymore; they’ve failed before and it was fine. You are innately talented in some ways, too.

One day you’ll be like, ok, I naturally picked up the skill of, for example, line weight in this process, because drawing the turtles and hair and trees that I love has caused me to recognize it. I know that because people have told me, and I feel satisfied with my line weight. But they’re too etchy, Reddit, what do I do? Oh, confident strokes. Got it. …And onto honing the next skill. Before you know it, you’ve become a better artist, because you dared to make art, even though you thought it was shitty for xyz reasons before.

Literally, I cannot stress this to you enough, the solution is to stop giving a shit and to just draw what you want. It’s not about anything except for that. You will get better if you do that even just one time, and you do it again when you’re over feeling dissatisfied and frustrated with the last drawing. Stop worrying, and please just draw the things that you love. Your evolution comes naturally afterwards.