It's A Total Bust...

This sums up everything...

Yesterday, for the first time in a long time, I actually had some inspiration! I had this wonderful idea in my head and had a very clear picture of it and how I wanted to create it. So I sat down, laptop and tablet on my lap, pen in hand, and committed myself to drawing. And that's when it all went south... What was in my head, clear a vision as it was, my hand was just not able to put it on canvas as I had wanted it to...
Before I got too frustrated with what I was trying to do, I decided to give up for the time being and work on another image I had in my mind. This one was just as clear a vision and I knew exactly how I wanted to create that one as well. So I moved on from the first idea and tried the next. And things went just as far south as the first one... Again, my hand just wasn't putting things on the canvas despite this clear vision I had... I decided to move on from that one before I got too frustrated as well and work on the third idea I had. But that one, too, didn't go as planned...

The pains of being an artist...

And so the art block continues...
It's hard for people who aren't artistic or rely on visions to create things to understand exactly how frustrating and sometimes devastating it can be to have this sort of ebb in the creative flow. And the longer it lasts, the more you begin to believe that you'll never be able to create again. For anyone creative, the inability to create is like a fate worse than death. We live to create, we create to live, plain and simple. Without that ability, it's as if life no longer has any meaning at all and everything comes crashing down in this horrible avalanche...
But I digress...
Usually when I have such blocks, I turn to the basics... I draw characters I have created or the characters of others just to keep my hand in the habit of drawing. Most of the time, that helps me to raise the art block. But not this time... It's so bad that I can't work on other avenues that I pursue, such as writing. I've written myself into corners that I just can't seem to get out of. So the block has grown into this massive, crushing weight that is holding all my creativity captive. It's a horrible feeling...

"Blah blah blah..."

But I do have some good news...
A few weeks back, I was feeling a bit down over the loss of a few forums I belonged to that had gone the way of the dinosaurs. I found myself missing that feeling of belonging, of having friends that shared my interests. It was a feeling I thought I would never be able to recapture no matter what I did.
However...
I found a forum a few years ago that I had thought about joining but, for some reason, I never did. This came to mind while I was lamenting the loss of the defunct forums, so I decided to take another look. This one, thankfully, was still active, so I decided to give it it a closer look. Needless to say, I decided to finally join up. It's a forum for fans of the anime Kagaku Ninja Tai Gatchaman, my favorite anime. Granted, I just joined a few days ago, but so far things are going as they had when I first joined other forums. Perhaps this one will become as the others had for me, a place where I can be myself and people are accepting of who I am.

My signature bar...

And who knows? Maybe joining this forum will help lift my art block. It did help in some ways so far... The picture on the right is the signature bar I made for the forum. It's a portion of a photo I took of one of my collectible figures of the series that I doctored up in one of my artsy programs. It may not be terribly creative, but it's something. And, at this point, I'll take whatever I can get...

Toodles...!

I really have no expectations on if or when this block will be lifted... It's better that way. It saves me from disappointment should it happen to fail to get rid of this damned block...