How Comfort Zones Hinder Us

The importance of knowing our comfort zones play a significant part in our lives. But when is being too comfortable starts to set us back? When does comfort zones become a box that stops us from growing?

I want to share with you guys how this topic comes to my mind. It is when I tried doing my own art without reference. Sure, most experienced artists would probably be rolling their eyes at me and tell me that is a rookie mistake but hear me out.

The pressure of producing a good artwork that will get noticed is hard. Most times, if you want your art to be noticed, you will have to resort to doing fanarts of people or a a specific group. Especially for K-pop groups where there are a lot of fans thirsty for more content of their idols.

This is when my problem started. I was getting discouraged in trying to bring my own concept to life because it takes a lot of time, and I thought to myself, "Why am I forcing myself to do this when a lot of artists are known for their incredible fan arts and are already taking commissions because of it?". This is not to bring down the artists who grew their following by posting fanart, rather this is me being frustrated with myself for wanting to feel different or not part of the crowd group. I wanted to be known for my own works even though from my experience in Tumblr, I know that fanarts are usually more noticed than an artist's own creation. Most times, the interaction between these posts are so different that I would doubt my capabilities as an artist and think that maybe they only like who I drew and not how I drew it.

This along with getting tired of countless hours of pouring myself into WIPs that I never finished, led me to start posting fanarts again. Most of the ones I am going to share are already posted at my noise.cash account where I shared them for the very first time. Though what I have posted for now are mostly Jisoo fan arts because she is my bias.

Finishing this is a proud moment for me. I did this to procrastinate on doing my home works (like what I am doing right now) but I do not regret any time spent on this. I managed to pass my requirements on time and I ended up with this masterpiece too, that is a win-win in my opinion. I especially enjoyed the time spent on making sure that ribbon glimmers like a gold and taking care to make the highlights of her hair looks like molten gold flowing freely.

I would like to share what this output looked like while I was starting it. So here are the WIP pictures of this piece. As you can see here, my basic line are is horrible. Most veteran artists are probably cringing so hard. But I have an legitimate excuse for doing this. Just read on to find out, and you can even see why just by looking at the picture above.

This is the sketch/line art of this piece. I usually do not spend much time on getting it nice and neat because I would just discard them later on in the process. So I am just contented with wobbly lines. The font of the watermark is different because I did this line art on my phone while the finishing touches are done using my laptop.

After the line art, I would do the base colors. I did an experiment for this one by using my phone for it instead of my normal ones of immediately transferring to my laptop. Here is the base colors layer with the reference image.

As you can see, the process of making this look like the final product is not a walk on the park but it is very enjoyable. I also have not added the ribbon here as I prefer adding details at the finishing stage of an art process.

Now that I have shown you how I do my fan arts, I am going to share another finished one. This one is a BLACKPINK fan art and it took me countless sleepless nights before I managed to finish it because I went all out with the details.

The quality went down because this is a screenshot since the original file is too big. I forgot to change the image size before saving it so I will be contented with this. You can still see the details of this artwork though so it's okay.

The next one that I would like to share is a WIP of a fan art of Kim Jisoo from the music video of DDU-DU DDU-DU. I will be skipping the line art and base color layers and just attach the progress I have right now.

As you can see, this is another background-heavy artwork which will take quite some time before I finish it. Time that I do not have right now because the end of semester is nearing which means cramming the requirements I have yet to do.

These three fanarts that I attached will serve as a baseline for why I made this article and why I am feeling the way I am right now. With my focus on making fan arts, I have stopped studying the fundamentals of art and my own art suffers from it just as you could see from the image below.

It is clear that I have only a vague idea of how light will work in this particular position and that I am mostly just guessing where the light would hit. I know that I could have used a reference with the same light source position but I wanted to challenge myself because I thought I was doing good with my art progress.

My reliance on just recreating an image led to the deterioration of my own art work. I have a hard doing this light study because I was getting frustrated about not knowing. This is the pit that I have unknowingly fell into. As I was getting high off my ability to recreate an image, my skill in bringing my imagination to life is suffering.

This is when I think comfort zones become detrimental. When we get so used to doing something that we ignore everything else and refused to learn more. When we get so used to a style that we do not want to try anything else. Comfort zones are good but they also pose a threat to our growth.

My advice for everyone, not just artists and writers, is to never stop learning new things. Even if you are already sure a thing works for you, allow yourself to explore more. If it turns out that it does not suit your style then that is okay, the important thing is that you never let yourself stay in the same places doing the same kind of thing over and over without improving.

Do not let yourself get caught in the pit that I fell into. I shared this experience exactly for that purpose. I wanted to warn you because no one warned me until it is too late. It is okay, I just want to make sure that I can help even just one person to not commit this same mistake.