“I’m Doing This for Myself” @freya_lemon

Dear Diary,

Hi, so my name is Freya or Franzi. I’m from Germany, and I live in a very small village, so I think I first got into art because I needed something to distract me — like an escape from the real world. I used to do a lot of traditional art, but I got really burnt out from that, so I started drawing digitally. Back then, I would use pose references from creators like mellon_soup on Patreon and Havanamation on Youtube. I'm still trying to figure out how it all works, but at least now I like to use my own references and I think I’m slowly getting the hang of it.

Credit: Freya (Instagram @freya_lemon)

I actually don’t think social media has really changed my art, but I do think it’s changed the way I look at my art (that probably sounds really cheesy.) Likes really do mess with me, because when I don’t get many likes, I tell myself that I should do better. Then I have to remind myself that I’m not doing this for the likes, I’m doing this for myself.

What has really sparked my creativity lately has been a WEBTOON called School Bus Graveyard. I just really like the creepy bits of it, so for the last week I’ve been drawing and drawing — and now I’m really burnt out.

So if my art had a message, it would probably be that the world isn’t always pretty and perfect, and life isn’t perfect sometimes. We shouldn’t close our eyes when something bad happens, because that is just life.

Until then,

Freya