"When you do fan art, you get all the elements of that character or story to help elevate the emotive impact of a drawing - the character you are drawing already HAS a past. Doing original works is harder - you have to give that character a history, a past, something that people can connect with. If you are good, you can do it all with one drawing. You can cheat and do what i do - put a truckload of crappy drawings together to get your point across.
"Often, for many people, no one else seems to see what you see in a drawing you did. All art is really about putting your feelings down on paper. Learning how to do that so it effectively communicates it to others is a major undertaking. The mistake that people make is that they feel that if it doesn't communicate well to others they should not do it. Don't EVER think that. If it makes you feel something, remember that your frustration with it is that you haven't been able to communicate what you want effectively enough - and doing that takes time. Just don't give up on it.
"Thats where the frustration in learning to draw comes in - from thought to paper is never as potent as you feel it. Thats why i will never be satisfied with my work."
Arigatou, Piro. *smile*
...I think that's a lot of the reason I like megatokyo as much as I do, Piro's rants and how he carries over himself into the strip...I'm an artist, too, so I can identify. ^_^ Granted, he's a lot better'n I am, but then, he's older, and has probably taken more than one art course. -_-;;; ...but I'm not really so bothered right now as I sound, I'm liking a lot of the artwork I'm doing right now, pencil-drawings with watercolour, which is what I'm doing for grad cards, really work well for me. And some of the desktops I did in photoshop today I'm *really* impressed with. ^_^