I didn’t plan on stopping and I’ll be blunt: Going back to work is a big part of why I stopped. Not because it took away time to draw (because I can always find the time, and have in the past) but just being back in a joyless job sucked the drive out of me. Not just for drawing, either, but for writing–even just posting silly things to this blog. My creativity has been replaced by playing so much Diablo 3 that my right wrist hurts. My level 70 wizard is totes powerful, though (his name is Spellsworth).
When I haven’t been playing Diablo 3, I would find myself sitting and staring at the screen. Then go to bed. I mean at night, not at one in the afternoon or something. I still have some standards.
But another part of my drawing ennui was the general direction of the Making Art Everyday prompts. A month of plants was not great. Really, it got kind of boring by the end, and then it was followed by other stuff I was even less interested in. I mean, Week 20 is making patterns. I don’t want to spend a week drawing patterns. I’m not even sure I want to spend a day drawing patterns. Running with a theme for an entire month is maybe not the best way to do the prompts. Or more accurately, it’s not the best way for me. I prefer Inktober’s approach of doing something different every time, often with the prompt not being a thing (like as plant), but a mood or expression or something else (to be fair, Making Art Everyday did have some of these for the month-long People Skills prompts). But I realize that the MAE prompts are as much meant to be tutorials and that doing so through themes might make sense there. Maybe it’s just not for me.
Anyway, I still haven’t decided what to do yet. I might return to MAE, I might try the weekly Inktober prompts, I might try coming up with my own prompts. I don’t know.
I’m playing less Diablo 3, though. My right wrist is thanking me.
