Yeah, I'm aiming this at everyone who happens to have me on their watchlist, even those people who I never really comment on their stuff and they never really comment on mine It's okay lol, it happens, this journal's not a dig at that, it's far from.
I just know if you're like me, you still read and look at everything even if you don't feel like you can comment. And I'm just really curious about something

Do people have certain things that they must have or must do before or during creating a picture?


Honestly, it's one of those little things I actually wonder about a lot, cuz I know I have numerous things of my own.

One, is that I have to be sat in a certain way with my tablet on my lap in a certain way. I can adapt to other "positions" if I happen to be drawing on a laptop somewhere different, but I'll always try to mimick my typical position in some way. In general I'm just happiest in my room on my chair on my pc.
I've also been doing digital for so long, that I actually dislike traditional now for a lot of things :S I smudge the pencil, it won't erase properly, it just creased the paper OMG WTF etc etc. I've also fallen culprit to the tools of photoshop - if one eye's higher than the other, something doesn't look right, I just draw a marquee around it and MOVE it to where it looks right, rather than erase and redraw the whole thing. Problem solved. Can't do that on paper. >.< It's bad, I know... die-hard traditionalists will wanna smack me over the head with something, but hey, it's the 21st century, technology to make things easier is the way of the future.

Second, is coke. Not crack cocaine, the drink. I think it's just something that I've had as a help to "concentration" for so long now, it's a subconscious psycological thing. I doubt the caffeine really has that big an effect on my concentration anymore, but my mind thinks it does, so all's good.
Regardless, before I start anything where I'll be sat doing it for a length of time, I get a glass of coke. It always makes it seem more manageable. I even got a glass of coke before writing this journal, bloody hell. But that may've been more that I'd just woken up and really DID need the caffeine this time.

Third, is music. Once upon a time, I used to get very inspired by music and such, and I'd draw things to songs I was listening to. This doesn't happen anymore. I draw my inspiration from things I see in real life, things I do, things/conversations I hear, which is why my creativity is very personal to me and I can often get embarrassed about it. I STILL feel awkward about the fact that I have a character based off of myself physically and personality-trait wise, I suppose it's a large emotional experiment for myself. Not many people in my real life actually see/read what I do, when I disappear in my room for a length of time and it's NOT for video games.
Anyways this is going off the subject. I just need music on, a song, any song, so long as I like it, to help my concentration and keep me focused. I'm honestly starting to believe that I do have some kind of ADD, and that's it's got worse as I've progressed through my teens. If something just catches my attention, I'm off, and I WON'T go back to what I was doing. It was a nightmare in school, it makes things difficult in college. It means that most the time I won't finish things I'm working on if I come away halfway through. People who've had me on their watchlist for a while, have probably seen my constant sayings of "I'm gonna do this and this", and it NEVER shows up. Fact is, I did do it, I started it at least, I just didn't finish. So I didn't upload.
I am constantly needing new music to keep me focused on things. I think I came away from this journal about 5 times, and I mean came away for a short period, like 10 minutes at a time, then went OH SHIT I WAS WRITING SOMETHING and came back to it. That's how bad I am.

Fourth, and most importantly, I MUST BE ALONE. I cannot get into the right mood, I cannot draw with people watching me, looking over my shoulder. Especially when I'm at a certain point of a picture where I'm fleshing out the anatomy, things are gonna look wrong and weird and not right as I fuss about with it a lot, and I cannot STAND to have someone watching me going "do this, I think you should change that, you should do it like that... oh no no why did you just erase that?!" I'm very self-conscious at this point of my pictures, lol. By the time I'm drawing clothes and etc, I don't care anymore. Just so long as I've got the face, pose and anatomy done first. I'm weird, I know. But clothes have no personality. A character's face does.
I also think, that I'm the kind of person who subconsciously pulls the faces of the expressions I'm drawing. Not a good trait to have if/when drawing in public.
The only exception to this MUST-BE-ALONE thing is my bf, he can be in the same room. But even then if I know he's directly watching me I get weird about it.



Lol wow... seriously, I was only intending this to only be a few lines for each, but it's turned out into some huge heart-felt rant about it all. As is my life.
If you've read to this part then thanks If you do just as large a rant about your little traits in reply, I promise I'll read it all through. And respond, if I can.
I know that people are probably gonna say a lot of the same things, and that mine are not all that spectacularly absurd or original, but that's why I'm curious to see what other people need to have or do, to see if there are any weird little things out there that I wouldn't have ever thought of.