#well preserved and so easily analyzed kinda activated something in my brain. i think it got me past a lot of the 'im just not talented'

[skrunksthatwunk]

went back to the sketchbooks around when i was going through yyh for the first time in 2019 and found a pile of near-yearly sticky note updates about my relationship with the series next to my first yyh doodles, a page full of kuwabaras. thought it'd be fun to share

+ more thoughts and old yyh art below

(it's crazy i didn't find any kurama-centric pages for months bc i think he's the one i doodled in the margins of class notes and stuff the most. his hair's pwetty and he gives me the least trouble outta any of the main 4)

something i noticed while skimming the two sketchbooks i took these from was how mean i was to myself at the time about my art. i guess it hit me more because i don't really spend hours going through my old sketchbooks over and over to track my progress and growth like i used to quite often. i guess it was only a little after when my self esteem was lowest (8th grade, tale as old as time), but... idk. i knew back then that i'd grown a lot in the few years since i started drawing more seriously (that's why i looked through my art so much), but like... i guess that never translated into being nice to myself about it. i ended up going back through about ten more sketchbooks to find more yyh art, and in the coming years i'm glad to say that negativity in the margins went away. hell yeah

but even so, my love for yyh was a constant and effusive thing, as it is now. it's probably the oldest of my current media interests. i watched myself get into rgg and develop my ocs and watched others fade in and out, watched my style loop back on itself and go all over the place, passed by pages of writing about crushes and album releases and gender discoveries and my grandparents dying, all surrounded by little drawings of the characters i love. including kuwabara in a maid dress right next to my dead grandma grief rambling that one time (no i'm not kidding. my grandma died in like late 2020 and the page where i poured my heart out after finding out she was gone just trying to process everything had one with catboy maid dress kuwabara directly opposite it, who i'd drawn like the evening before she died in her sleep. he killed my grandma from like 100 miles away he was that powerful. that wasn't even the last time i drew him like that and i don't even care about catboys or maid dresses much. i think it was just a bigger meme and he was the guy i most associated with cats. i put that man in a situation and he fucking got her because the book couldn't contain him. some victor frankenstein shit. anyway)

i took about 150 pictures, most with multiple sketches. i decided not to add any more though bc 1) i posted some of them on old accounts but i don't remember which ones, and tbh i value my anonymity a little too much 2) All Of The Pictures Turned Out Bad in ways i don't feel like getting into but just trust me it's like 6 layers of fucked up illegible image bullshit 3) i found it hard to narrow it down to things i felt were indicative of the development or interesting or anything like that. idk. i figured it was an interesting exercise for me and it probably wouldn't really mean anything to anyone else. and that's ok :) it was nice anyway. i mostly mention it to be like Oh My God i've drawn these guys a lot and i STILL don't know what i'm doing... :| it's fun

however i did transcribe the notes i left:

7/9/19: yo it's been less than a week & i'm on ep. 80 wtf i love this show

8/14/20: 1/2way thru my 3rd watch (first dub, first [with older sibling]) & honestly still love it & kuwabara being the first one i drew makes me happy

7/28/21: i'm watching it w/ [younger sibling] now! 4th(ish) watch, 2nd time through the dub, which is so much better than the sub really elevates the text. we're at the semifinals of the DT, which means this is technically my 5th time through yyh up until that point but eh semantics anyway i still love & obsess over yyh! <3

1/14/24 (present day): hey, i'm rewatching yyh for the.. idk 5th or 6th time. still love it & never stopped. now i'm writing fic & drawing & posting about it. i have friends i talk to about it. [both siblings] have seen it. so much has changed, and so little, but it made me sad seeing how much i insulted my own art. i love you 2019 me. god knows you needed it

[+ this drawing]:

anyway. forever fornever. if you even care

#that's all. just kind of a personal post i thought was neat. skrunklore #skrunkart #yyh #yu yu hakusho #you can really feel the 14 y/o in a lot of the little notes and stuff but that too is part of the growth and change im trying to celebrate. #ripping my fingernails off about it but it needs to be done #also the hearts are because they love each other. and also me in like a cheering you on kinda way #ok more lore but around jr year i started feeling like my art was getting worse or at least stagnating and i kind of wished i could go back #to the era where a lot of that art is from bc there were little things i was better at and also bc i was much more prolific and adventurous #and while i'm sympathetic to it looking back after another couple of years it's like nah. no i was still growing i was just too close to se #like i'll be like oughh i haven't grown at all in years >:(( and then i'll look at the art i made over the course of 2023 and go oh nvm lol #some of it was more 'getting back into the swing of things' + traditional and tech issues being resolved but there was also growth #there is also stuff to be proud of and there always is and there always will be. that goes for you too reader #no matter what your art does or does not look like. i guess that's part of why im posting this too #part of what got me into visual art was seeing how people's art changed (sketchbook tours). it's cool and seeing that learning process so #well preserved and so easily analyzed kinda activated something in my brain. i think it got me past a lot of the 'im just not talented' #stuff a lotta ppl have that keeps them from drawing or sharing it or whatever. anyway art's cool i love art. gonna go draw now probably :D #ALSO really funny watching the way i drew myself change. all in ways that make sense but still funny to me. long hair glasses girl you'd #probably keel over if you saw what we look like now. hell yeah