Wilbur & Orville update + Artist experience (Patreon)

Hi everyone! Here's a late update post on Wilbur and Orville so you can see what I'm up to for them. I also want to take this opportunity to share a personal experience I've had while working on this plus some artist feelings.

Probably this isn't the kind of artwork style that you'd expect from the monthly fanart illustration since usually I always end up making a full painting thing. Well, this is gonna be an exception this month because this time I decided to go for something that I personally feel more authentic to me an more "xelgot" in a way.

Initially, I was all up for an illustration of the two characters like I usually do but with a twist: I didn't want to go crazy with the rendering since I wanted to try something in between to a simple style to keep some of the original drawing features unchanged.

Well, it all was a total failure that costed me invaluable time (two and a half work days) and left me mentally drained. Not to mention my morale was below the ground.

If I'm being honest, most part of this month I've been feeling like.. not that everything I do is bad or crap, but more like.. what I do is just.. not good enough. I know it may sound stupid and upsetting but that's how I've been feeling lately, and that's what I meant about the artist crisis I talked about before. I want to change things and feel more authentic so I can make an impact on the people who see my art. I'm working at it.

I think I reached this crisis episode peak yesterday while working on this two guys when I took the decision to STOP (it was past 3:30am) and go to sleep and take care of myself. Things just... weren't going the way I initially wanted: without knowing it I was starting to go "crazy rendering" which would consume me even more time than expected (and got me even more frustrated since it seemed endless) and also the following:
1) I didn't have the proper references to work with so I was going kind of blind on some things.
2) Drawing was starting to feel forced and losing its charm which lowered my morale
3) I was mentally exhausted; burnt out. I wanted to quit.
4) I realized that sometimes LESS is MORE and there's nothing wrong with it

So after struggling very hard with that art piece I came to the realization that it wasn't a solid art project to begin with. You cannot build a good house without solid foundations you know? That came to my mind and decided that I needed to stop and do something. I didn't want to give up and was determined to make this work one way or another.

That's why I decided to take a different approach on this project by working it as a character collage instead of a full illustration like I usually do. This way I felt it was more authentic and more live to me and I started to actually enjoy it to the point where I just cannot wait to resume and finish it. I can now say that I am LOVING IT.

After experiencing all this art burn out and existential crisis, I'm more than motivated to take all the challenges that I have ahead of me and go victorious. I won't give up.

If you read until this point, thank you and also thank you for having my back with your support through patreon. It means a lot to me. Also there's another personal experience I want to share with you all about it but I'll leave that for another day ;)

Please stay safe and take care <3