I went through a terrible in-between phase where I first went from drawing cartoony people to trying to draw more realistic ones. Never had an art class or anything, pretty sure I have aphantasia too, so I was just raw dogging it until I learned how to use refs. I specifically remember constantly attaching the thumb at a weird angle and wondering why my characters looked like they had crab claws.

That or some niche porn because I started thinking too hard about how my interspecies characters would have sex. Most of my characters aren’t even attractive to me but that didn’t keep me from drawing them doing shit to each other’s junk.

Also My Little Pony crossover fan art but it was just characters facing left on a white background.

(🚫 No AI is used in my art. I upload progress pictures and more here)

Probably this drawing of a jelly angel tardigrade I did last year…

Compared to my other drawings, I’d say it looks pretty plain.

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The various stick figures I drew during school

Wouldn’t go so far as calling it a work of art, but I remember this one time in 9th or 10th grade when our Plastic Arts (technically a general overview of art history and practical exercises for techniques, practically it was just painting whatever, in various shapes and sizes) teacher had us paint religious iconography on slabs of wood. Saints, to be more specific.

I won’t touch upon how utterly pissed my mother was at having to hunt down an ~A4 sized plank within a week (this was before the prevalence of Hyperstores). The thing just came out looking… wrong… It was supposed to be St. George, I believe, and it came out looking like an emaciated and woefully distraught Gandalf the Grey with a spotlight shining in from behind.

I remember this one being extra-bad because, besides basically having had no real training in painting throughout grade school, the subject matter in itself spoke nothing to me. I wasn’t absolutely horrible, as I used to do a lot of sketching and developed a relatively neat hand by that time, but I was thoroughly within the “exorcise your trauma through drawing biomechanical mutilations” phase of my artistic development, let’s call it.

It was also the first time when being creative felt like a horrid chore.

Edit: there is no evidence of said work, because I threw it away the instant I got home. As an agnostic, I get the feeling both God and St. George would have agreed with me…

I made some video game themed Xmas ornaments out of air dry clay as a gift… they turned out fine, but I didn’t realize the paint I used on them didn’t do a good enough job sealing them up. They should have been resin-dipped. In places the paint cracked, moisture got in, and over a couple years expanded the paper-based clay through the cracks so they look super creepy now. Very disappointing.

Mistakes are a great way to learn, though.