Whenever I spend more than a few hours on an artwork, something happens to me which I'm sure a lot of others suffer from as well. Let me know if this sounds familiar. It goes something like this: over the course of a project, your eye starts to become estranged from your work. It begins as a lack of excitement for what you're doing. "This feels a lot like the not-so-fun kind of hard work." Then it progresses into not seeing anything that you're doing right, only the mistakes. It's kind of like an allergy that increases in severity with exposure. You push through and make the thing, somehow, but the whole time you have a growing, nagging thought. "This sucks." And you step back and you gag. It's true! All you see are problems. Crappolla! A steaming waste of precious expensive materials. The prevailing sentiment is failure, disappointment, and self-rejection. And no amount of consoling or praise makes it better, either. In fact, the more people insist that it's good, the more you feel actively repulsed. "They're just saying that to make me feel better." Or, "They don't know good from bad anyway." The very idea of looking at your art after this period of seeking reassurance makes you ill. It's like a poison that blocks all your objectivity. It makes you wonder why you try at all. This is something that I've heard Mark Carder dub as "the artist's curse." Sometimes I get it worse than other times, but boy did I get it with this illustration. I look at the finish of this and go "bleck," but I don't need a pat on the back or anyone consoling me. It's okay not to like what you've made. Just don't let it rule you. Don't let it make you immune to compliments. I just have to accept that my dumb brain is activating its inferiority complex, and I will eventually move on and realize it's not all that bad. There's always an opportunity to do better next time, anyway. Or do the cycle over again, at least haha. What do you guys think? You ever get this? It's like, you know it's probably pretty good, but you also think it's objectively awful. Weird feeling.