Kristina Ness  ✨

I almost always come away from my art feeling like it's more stilted than I want it to be—I can tell when I'm overthinking something and relying on particular angles when drawing characters, faces, anything.

(Incidentally I started a secret sexy side blog and not having the pressure of an audience has relieved this pressure somewhat? So, as with all things, maybe twitter is to blame)

I also freeze up when I don't have everything figured out from the get go—loosely painting a landscape breaks my brain because I go into "well what about the GEOLOGY" mode and I can't just put pen to paper and feel something out.

I've also gotten to a point where I'm not letting myself fail, like I'm not letting myself just be BAD at art, even in private, which is such a bad idea! I have like ten copies of Art & Fear on my bookshelf and yet I'm having a hell of a time actually taking the advice

This is all really insightful, btw- thanks for opening up about it. I don't want to be reductive- but would you say it would be a fair summary to say that progress for you would look like "less fear"?

I think "less fear" is like half of the key, and "just puttin' my nose to the grindstone" is the other half? There's a lot of stuff I want to do that I know is just going to take conscious effort and practice!

The idea that you, of all my friends of all time, feel that you're not "putting your nose to the grindstone enough" really rocks my worldview

I think I've tricked my brain into thinking that because I exist in a constant state of "Not Being Done Yet"—because I almost always have outstanding freelance gigs, or day job tasks, or personal projects—it means that I'm also constantly failing