Creating with Depression // Tips and advice for Struggling Artists

[@Yourlocalabandonmentissuefren]

Your my favorite black artist I love how you tell us your own opinion and actually really chill.

[@WILLOW.___.2324]

YES!!

[@HiHi-pt3hn]

This didnt age too well

[@sadpianist5846]

I thought I was the only one who didn't get that journaling thing. I swear to god, even when I went to therapy they always asked me about it, if I'm doing it or not, and didn't even elaborate on that. You put it in a way that made me a bit less hesitant abt it. Thank you.

[@OwONekko]

I had that problem too at first! They key is to write atleast 3 pages worth. I didn't mention it in the video but if you keep at it your brain will lower its gaurd eventually and let it out. But yes art is easily one of the best vents

[@therealopaartist]

I just got over a THREE MONTH art block due to my depression because I lost my health insurance and therefore my medication. Zero motivation for anything. Didn’t have to energy to even brush my hair, let alone sit down and draw. But about a couple weeks ago, I finally pushed myself to draw SOMETHING. Anything! So I started with a redesign of an OC. Turned out pretty well considering I hadn’t drawn for three months. Now I’m back in the swing of things for the most part.

[@traumatized_artist4672]

Girl you always give the best advice I do relate to depression, I have it, so I saw this and the first thing I thought was, are you ok?? But I looked closer and I realized "Holy shit, she's giving out advice for artists!!" Yay🎉🎉

[@Snow-vk7th]

As someone who struggles with bp2 and bpd (rip consistency) I really appreciate this. I feel like even when I"m hypomanic I still got the veil of depression TuT I tend to feel so behind career wise to other artists my age and those I admire, but like you said some of just have it real rough. We need time to heal and rest. But omg when I was a teen I used to hang at mcdonalds and random shopping centers with my friends to escape my house haha. American ass experience.. I really love the isolation message actually. This took me so long to learn and I wish someone told me it before. It sucks to keep putting energy into relationships that actively drain you and make you feel worse about yourself. I feel like everyone just says to keep trying to make friends and make peace with your family, but can we just like... breathe?

[@misspeachtails]

Dang i scrolled down to see this comment. i have bpd and bp2 too. wow. hope ur doing well

[@TheRealOreoJedi]

I genuinely needed this to listen to. I had locked myself in for two weeks because I couldnt process what I wanted to do as a Young Adult artist. I have been doubted , questioned or in some cases let down by people I know. There was one time I made a Tiktok randomly of my favorite Tiktoker and drew it all in one night. Well it blew up and even the Tiktoker followed me back cause I had done something different. In that moment I felt validation but also this stress of keeping up. I had ditched posting my art for nearly 2 YEARS because I was in this state and because of it I wasnt able to grow. I am working on posting again but sometimes it's hard to get out of your own head as an artist. Lately the part where you said the body starts learning to take care of itself was true. I had started doing things for my body and mentality that those around me started to notice. I became more vocal , started eating better and crying less. The body really will tell you what it needs. And as a Semi Starving Artist I guess this video summed up what I've been trying to figure out for a few months now.

[@Stims_La_Jester]

BRO THIS IS SUCH SUCH SUCH GOOD ADVICE These tips are absolutely wonderful. You are incredibly kind hearted

[@MomoDearestt]

Hello. I 5:03 made me so happy…. when I lived with my sister and brother in law, I was in the worst headspace of my life. I retreated to my room because it was safe. They thought I was lazy. I would sit at my drawing tablet and fear their opinions of me. Do they think im lazy for making this? Or what’s the point of making this if I don’t make money. They absentmindedly stole my creativity because I was so obsessed with being in their good graces. But after I moved back in with my dad, they have an image of me. When I was depressed and locked myself in my safe space. Like “we all know you don’t go outside” I’m like, are you at my house 24/7? How do you know that? What gives you the right to assume about me even after I moved out? It sucks. But now, I don’t give a shit about what they think of me. As long as IM happy. I’m good. And I’ve been slowly but surely regaining my creativity back! Like I drew a character yesterday, not thinking if it’ll make me money or impress someone. I drew it because it made me happy. It took a year, but my creativity is coming back.

[@2obydamned]

giggling so hard at "journaling is like your brain takin' a shit" like. bro i needed that today 🤧

[@masterflips1958]

These are all genuinely helpful tips. I’ve been to treatment for depression and most of the tips you mentioned are stuff they taught us. Thanks for sharing, I bet it helped (and is gonna help) a lot of people. Luv your art btw!

[@BunnyQxeen]

Thank you for these tips 💜💜

[@MadameQuackers]

I have an anxiety disorder and depression. It's great to hear it from the outside instead of rooting from myself ❤ thank you for sharing

[@dazzledoodle]

I have to say, thank you, so many of this tips are so relatable and hearing them was so sweet, I feel better

[@blue-raptor4017]

“You’re on guard duty 24/8” God that feels too real

[@OppaiMelonn]

Girl, your videos make me sooo happy. I love your vibe and just feel like theres an artist i can look up to like me. Thanks for this video really. so real and so chill and funny but so real.

[@lazyartist1984]

Honestly you're the reason I'm cleaning my room rn, because I realize my nasty room makes my depression worse. So thanks for this

[@KittiLumpo]

this is an *amazing* video - the ways you describe your depression, the solutions you used, and FINALLY SOMEONE explaining what "journaling" means in the context of helping to feel better; its nice to hear relateable, *plain english* on all of it additionally, in the video itself its nice to see your drawing process from the *real* start, the planning doodles, and watch exactly how it comes to life as you add more and more and change thinga over and over. lots of speedpaints skip to the final sketch and start with lineart, so its refreshing to see~!

[@psychopomp5636]

THANK YOU SO MUCH. It was great to hear someone say that the people around you might think that they know you, but they don't. I have a mother who pretty much won't believe that I'm depressed, and yet will still tell me that she knows me better than I know myself. She is sometimes the only person I have to talk to, and it's great to hear something else for a change.

[@Gore-Labs]

“Journaling is basically your brain taking a shit” got me rolling dude-

[@Eriaf584]

Wow, thank you for this video

[@jimmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm]

Your self sona is so cute >_

[@melteddarkchocolate000]

I really want this advice because as a artist myself I use art as a way to escape and I lost my passion by the abuse I've dealt with my family. Now that I'm out of it I want to get back into drawing. Just the interest and beauty I had just by looking at the image alone. I would practice almost everyday and I stopped. So yes this video is needed. I plan on making a Tumblr page showcasing my cute sim4 family. Just for funies and drawing a story behind It.

[@molly_404]

You be getting me thru ts ngl

[@leftyfizz]

this is so great, I love this real shit. Another thing that I feel about the isolation being good (sometimes), is that you can just need a break from the people in your life sometimes. It's really hard to be around people who think entirely different ways than you, even if you love them. Sometimes I need to cut myself off for a little while, just to dwell with myself for a bit and sort out my thoughts in a way where I can process them better.

[@sigh9257]

Commenting for the algorithm, this video really hit home

[@espresso5990]

May Yah be with you!! You’re very strong and keep up the good work!! Stay safe and take care!!

[@justanothercomment]

Thank you so much for this video, as an artist who struggles with all kinds of mental goop it's nice to feel less alone. :) Also btw, this is random but you have such a lovely voice. It's so so nice to listen too! And your art is 10/10 fr

[@Elle_wolf56]

HOW DO YOU NOT HAVE 1MIL SUBSCRIBERS!?!? I love you art style so much!! ❤❤

[@anqelz_in_water]

I’m glad she doesn’t

[@Elle_wolf56]

@@anqelz_in_water Um why…

[@humanconsumer2864]

@@Elle_wolf56 recent shit. They've been like transphobic and junk. Also painting someone as being racist when they were not.

[@spacecowboy7148]

i love your videos sm

[@brown7180]

I love this. So much of this was true for me, and the way you word it just helped everything feel like common sense and natural instead of like, some magic big-brain corperate secret to success that has to be executed in the correct way every day to work. Isolation is like resting, being free. it can be detrimental when you associate isolation with bad things, like feeling like you're alone bc no one cares or bc you're hopeless at decision-making, like its a punishment or a failure--- instead of being alone by choice and seeing it as an active thing to enable good things like self care and shamelessness and just resting. and YES when I write stuff out its like getting a bird's eye veiw of my thoughts and feelings and it even helps to be more truthful about whatever's troubling me when I try to write out what's troubling me and find that the first thing I write doesn't feel just and end up on a trail toward what's really bothering me- like, the core of the issue. It's a conversation, but without the hurdle of communication issues and time constraints and just the complication of someone feeling like they're responsible for you and feel pressure to say the "correct" thing to solve your problems.

[@emilyh.6276]

This is actually rlly good, i wouldn't mind hearing more if you got the time ❤️

[@narc9742]

I love you so much, and it sounds like you really understand a lot of what others deal with. This is just what my life has been. I started out drawing and animating, but as I started feeling more, I lost motivation and the energy. Then I moved on to writing, and it helped me so much. Until I moved back to MN to stay with my dad. I started feeling hopeless all the time, even more than before. I just wanted to run away and be by myself, in my own space. I still do, but it's hard, also thinking about leaving my loved ones behind.

[@Magosspud]

I remember for a while I felt there was something wrong with me because it felt like nobody understood or they kept comparing me to other people who "had it worse", as if that would suddenly change who I was. Realizing that I just wasn't like them and it wasn't something wrong with me genuinely helped a lot and I'm so glad you brought that up. All of this advice is great but that was the only one I really had a lot to say about lol.

[@plaggsock]

its very true i feel much happier alone and im glad i clicked om this i really needed to hear that

[@PixilatedLives]

(Warning: self harm) I tried journaling once, when I was in depression. And I mean BAD depression, I tried to break a pen in the school restroom so I could to cut myself (luckily it didn’t work cause I’m so week and couldn’t break the plastic) and I tried to write down my feelings. It didn’t work, if anything it made me feel worse. And everyone I opened the pages when I was feeling a little ok I’d see those words and it’d bring me right back. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’ve heard it genuinely help people before. And if you’re in a depression I think you should try it just to see how it feels for you. Love you, love your videos, love yourself ❤️❤️❤️❤️

[@OwONekko]

Journaling is more a self discipline thing. It’s not there to make you feel better in the moment. If that makes any sense. You have to journal with intention every single time even when it hurts even when you have no energy or don’t even have the brain space to put words down. Just doing it once or a few times doesn’t work. You have to commit to the idea that even though it’s not helping you in the moment, it will overtime. If you can write down these questions and things clogging up your brain, your brain will have more space to come up with answers for you. Depression is just a side effect from being stuck in a. Situation you don’t want to be in. Listen to your real self, in between the lines of pain and hurt. The answer is there. Love you too fam. I see your hurt. I’m here for you fam 💖💖

[@Kiki_bun180]

Wow this made me learn more about depression even my depression. Like when I yous to go to school and then my parents they home school me so I become depressed and I got lazys and lazyer and more depresses and I move homes and I thought I would die from eating bread Bec I thought I was choking but I wasn't and when I move I got more emotional and when I was younger my heart got broken a lot of times but yea it probably don't make any sense 😖👌

[@pacifist._pyre]

This helped me so much thank you

[@taylorpatterson8845]

OMG I LITERALLY SAY I'M A CAT SURROUNDED BY DOGS ALL THE TIME! Thank you

[@oceanlillywolf]

i was not the biggest artist back when I was in middle school (I've only been drawing since 4th grade and I'm a freshman in hs now), but somewhere toward the middle/end of 8th grade and *especially* the summer transition from middle to high school I started to draw a LOT more. it felt really good, but I've unfortunately been having my own issues since I was really young due to the household I was in (I moved in with my grandparents right before 4th which is why I felt comfortable drawing! so I'm in a better place now haha) and still struggle with things like my depression, osdd, and autism. only one of those can be helped-- and its the only one holding me BACK from art! i had really slowed down my pace of drawing because I was upset I wasn't making progress at the rate I wanted to, and so I never really finished any drawings. hell, I gave up on animating because I didn't have the motivation to draw all the frames! so now that I've been drawing much more, (past couple months after started high school), I've been struggling to create finished pieces or draw a sketch, then line, then color and shade. I'm really sad that I lost my endurance because of lack of motivation, but I think bringing my mental health up even just slightly was kind of worth it? haha.

[@fallen-down]

Something I learned about journaling is it doesn't have to be words! Something I've always struggled with has been putting my thoughts into words so when people told me to journal I never ended up doing it. Recently, however, I picked up an empty sketchbook and just put down whatever was in my brain, sometimes doodles, sometimes words or sentences, sometimes just scribbles or patterns. It's helped me way more than writing in a journal ever did and I feel a lot less pressure to be 'perfect'. There's no need to do a finished drawing or write anything coherent, as long as I get something out of it it's working. Just a suggestion of course but I hope someone finds use in it ^^ Edit: spelling

[@sst4rscr34m]

i know it's technically not the right vid but, haha... just bc you started talking about depression and stuff, i realized why i had a huge artblock for like 2 or 3 years. it was fucking stress. I'm not diagnosed with anything - and in my country mental health isn't taken seriously, so no hopes on getting any kind of diagnosis if i even have one. but stress? i get stressed everyday STILL, for various different reasons and my reaction is... mostly not the greatest to that. and after watching your vid, i realized that ay, actually something happened at the start of that artblock, something very traumatic and i just blocked it out as the reason bc my brain sometimes does that to go through stress. well, that was a funny discovery alright 🥺😭💅🌈✨ and about journaling - i think it works in some cases, but not all.

[@OwONekko]

I'm proud of you for even being able to recognize what it is! Alot of people are unaware and figure that's just how things are (just like I was) meanwhile it's stress in the background kicking my ARSE GIRL 😭 BE PROUD FOR HOW FAR YOUVE COME! Luckily all you have to do is consistently try to keep yourself in a good mood throughout the day! And with the Journaling thing, I can see the other perspective if course but there's little tricks I didn't get into Like writing atleast 3 pages a day, theres a phase where like the first page and a half I just trying to fill the pages up with words, then around the halfway point is where the truth starts coming out ;D hope this helps and I'm right there with you on this journey!! 💖💖

[@DrawinskyMoon]

I have struggled with art block/depression for 6 years were being creative and making art brings me pain but also not making art bring me pain. Switching from my 2008 acer computer to a iPad tablet terrifies me. Psychical media terrifies me. Anything other than sketching terrifies me.

[@flyingteacup8369]

Thanks for the advice

[@tenmasnumberone]

watching this video is realizing that nondi was describing you exactly

[@Ashurion-Neonix]

I so desperately want to be able to draw every day but I have to settle with every 3 days rn

[@OwONekko]

I don't believe in that at all actually XD art is a spiritual thing, you gotta take care of yourself and your spirit before you can make things you actually enjoy and are proud of. Dont put any expectations on yourself or your art. Forcing yourself everyday is the quickest way to burn out! Sheet if your body says 3 days til it's ready, 3 DAYS TIL ITS READY 💖 listen to your body and you got this!

[@Ashurion-Neonix]

@@OwONekko I don't. It's just annoying that I can't do art every time I would want to

[@Plastickit]

5:30 thx❤ i needed that

[@Topdb2]

The thing was that, when I tried journaling I never remembered that I had it or I could never truly describe what I was feeling so it frustrated me more and drawing was my way to show what I was feeling. But. Like this video conveys. It was a tiny bit hard with bs in my life 😇

[@appleheadking4581]

"When you think about journaling... its like your brain taking a shit" -owonekko 2023

[@appleheadking4581]

Lol not me having to fix the year bc of new-year

[@lettuse6099]

I got a little book to do poetry in, it immediately turned into a journal with my worst thoughts. When im dontewith it im going to have to burn it

[@brianb660]

I’ve always enjoyed amazing colors and beautiful scenes but my own drawing skill is very newborn. I’ve been surrounded by judgement my whole life and it makes me detest every thing I try to draw because I hear their scrutiny. How do I let myself practice and get better when I keep being revolted by my own work?

[@TiaStellaHaaland-Paulsen]

Thank you ❤

[@Lily-h5k]

Thumbnail aged well.

[@ArtemisMidnightVT]

I'm currently going through it because my old drawing tablet's pen pressure won't work on my new Windows 11 PC, and I don't want to go back to traditional art because it feels too out of my control.

[@Hot_SpicyGrill]

I want to draw like panty and stocking. But I struggle with that, and that’s a issue for me.

[@Lol-tr6cu]

ily

[@sinfall5280]

I mean I kinda get what you’re trying to say with the whole…creating an environment you can thrive in but it can become unhealthy when we make “being an artist” our identity. There will be days when you just don’t draw and that’s fine. You don’t have to draw ALL the time. But we’re all different too. I go through these periods where I just really want to be alone and just draw. And then I just don’t. I don’t know

[@OwONekko]

You don’t have to draw all the time to be an artist. All you have to do is create art. Hope that clears things up ;3

[@perytonpred2356]

What does it say about my home vibes if I absolutely despise school but it's the only place I can bring myself to draw/create most days of the week 💀

[@anthonywalker6268]

But I'm a dog surrounded by cats.

[@Ghostie_rue]

Something is wrong with you.

[@nrg__]

As a black artist myself, battling with similar issues, I appreciated your advice🤎 always nice to hear that I’m not alone in it