Yikes, anon.
Ummmm.
I think that you probably have a preconceived notion of what “good” is supposed to look like. And it probably comes from watching a lot of movies or being exposed to a lot of media growing up where people try to tell you what “good” looks like—maybe good is supposed to look like Rembrandt or someone’s hyperrealistic painting or really cool comic book covers. Maybe good is supposed to look EASY, because “genius” is supposed to be magical and easy and handed down from the sky-gods, and if your drawings don’t look like that, or if drawing isn’t easy for you, then you’ve failed.
Okay, but none of that is true.
Have you ever played Zelda? You know how, in the beginning of the game, you don’t even have a sword yet? And it’s dark and raining, and you trudge out into the muddy street, and you have to pick up pots and throw them at bad guys, and even a rat can kill you? And mostly you do a lot of running and hiding to avoid getting hurt?
But by the end of the game, after you’ve been through seven dungeons and three palaces across two dimensions, and you’ve got the Golden Sword, and the Mirror Shield, and the Titan’s Mitt, and the Bombos Medallion. And it’s like NOTHING for you to cross the entire map in five minutes, jump through a portal, crawl down a dungeon you’ve already memorized, and kill a room full of Armos Knights?
Drawing is a lot like that. A LOT like that. Just by walking around and trying everything, you figure things out, and you pick up stuff, and you learn which way to go and what you need to do. And you bump into obstacles. And you have to use all the things you’ve picked up in order to overcome those obstacles in order to get more things.
Right? If you want the Master Sword, you have to beat the Desert Palace, but in order to even get inside the palace, you have to get the Book of Mudora, but it’s on top of a bloody high shelf, and you need the Pegasus Boots to run fast enough to knock it down, but you can only get the Pegasus Boots if you beat another palace first. And on and on and on. Every obstacle gets bigger, but they get bigger because you already climbed over the smaller obstacles. Every achievement builds on the one before it. It all adds up, you know?
That’s how art works. Any artist will tell you that (except probably not by overdoing it with the Zelda metaphors).
And as for crappy art. You know what I think about crappy art? Crappy art is made by awesome people. You know why they’re awesome? Because they know that being good at something means being bad at something at some point.
If you see some crappy art, it means that the person who made it is already getting better. Because they were brave enough to share it. They finished their ugly painting, and they said, “This is good enough to show someone.”
That’s badass.
Part of getting better is not being good at all. You should be totally proud of being awful at art. And you should be proud every time you decide to risk being awful again. And again. And again. Because every time you draw, that’s your best, and it’s nobody else’s best. It’s yours.