Porn Destroys The Artist (my story/rant)

Back in 2009, I stumbled onto my first porn site: Rule 34 Paheal. For those who do not know, it is a website featuring erotic fanart of all different calibers. This was my first experience with pornography and for years after that, I masturbated to erotic artwork usually once a day but sometimes as much as five times. I also had a liking for real pornography but my heart lied with digital erotic art (and of course hentai).

Fast forward to 2018 and I think to myself: “Hmm...I’d like to make my own art to fap to.” So, I bought myself a Samsung Galaxy Tab S3, took it home, pulled down my pants, and started drawing breasts and buttockses with my left hand and fapping with my right.

I continued to draw nothing but boobs, butts, and female genitalia for an entire year. Eventually, I progressed to a level where I could draw full nude women, and by full nude women I mean deformed, hieroglyphic-looking, well-endowed, mooseknuckle-bearing Flat Stanleys with absolutely no structure whatsoever. But I didn’t realize that my work was so terrible; the sexual gratification I got from it was all I cared about.

It was at this point that I started distributing my terrible artwork on various pornographic websites. And the people there enjoyed it. I thought pretty highly of myself based on all the positive feedback I was receiving; these people were getting off to my work so I figured that made me a good artist.

Fast forward to early 2020 and I seek out constructive feedback for my work. I figured I came pretty far so it wouldn’t hurt to ask for criticism to improve even further.

Now, it would be too painful to recount exactly what professional artists said about my work but the final verdict was that it was even worse than the work of an absolute beginner. I might as well have been dubbed the worst artist of all time, with my work lacking structure, flow, and passion. It was awful, and to anyone crazy enough to seek it out, be warned that when I say awful, I mean awful.

Now, for those who are unaware, art learning progression should go like this: you start off with drawing lines, then 2D shapes, then 3D shapes, then complex forms, then basic human anatomy, then more complicated muscles/bones/etc, and then finally you can draw hentai or whatever. Out of impatience brought on by my horniness, I bypassed all the necessary beginner steps and went straight to the final step, and my work suffered as a result. During those two years of drawing to sexually please myself, I implanted false anatomical information in my head that I am still trying to remove. A glass jar of terrible art habits managed to shatter inside of me and there are still some shards lurking around in there.

When I was told that my horny self had basically wasted two years drawing stuff I did not know how to draw properly, it was the biggest punch in the gut I have ever experienced. But as painful as it was to be told all of this, it made me realize something. You see, I went back to all the hentai and rule 34 websites that I frequented and carefully inspected the art that was uploaded there. There was some really good art, and a whole bunch of really bad art on the same level as my own. I could easily tell who was a genuinely skilled and passionate artist and who was a braindead masturbator seeking self-gratification through drawing their fantasies; the former type created art that was clean, well-structured, and beautiful, while the latter type created crude, structureless garbage.

Even in the hentai group I was a member of - the place where I received the criticism - I could tell that there were a few genuinely good artists but also a whole bunch of extremely bad ones whose heads were - sometimes literally - shoved several lightyears up their ass. Like I stated before, the former type were people who had been drawing their whole life and casually picked up hentai as a way to make money, while the latter type were people who, like me, got horny and bought a tablet to draw boobs with.

During this escapade, I was exposed to the truth; porn addiction damages the artist’s brain and tarnishes their craft, especially when said artist is a novice.

After a few months of attempting to deny this reality, I have finally decided that I cannot let pornography control my life. I do not want my passions to be overthrown by pixels on a screen. Since I am far enough into my pursuit of art to just give up, I refuse to let it ruin that either.

The reason I am writing this is because I received an email about an hour ago. It was from one of the people who paid me to draw porn for them earlier this year. They asked me to draw a certain character performing an act that I cannot describe here. I responded by asking them the following:

“Why did you like my low-quality artwork so much?”

Their response:

“You seem talented.”

Anyone here who has ever engaged in any artistic medium knows for a fact that “talent” is a meaningless word that dismisses an individual’s skill as some inherent ability that they did not have to work for. It belittles any and all effort that said individual has put into their craft.

Here, a braindead porn addict has recounted my terrible “art” from half a year ago and, due to their own pollusive horniness, wants me to waste my time by making more of it. They aren’t looking for any actual good artwork nor do they care if I stagnate in the fap gutter by producing coomer shit for them; they want some cheap porn to jerk off to and they chose me because they think I’m “talented.”

I told him to fuck off and get laid.

I am finally deciding that I must do NoFap, with the immediate incentive being that having a clear mind will improve my artwork over time. This may not seem like much but I have abstained from pornography as a masturbatory aid for the past three weeks, and have only masturbated about four times during that period. I am currently on a five-day streak and am trying to go at least a month this time (my previous record is 18 days). And believe it or not, I'm already making progress: during this time period, my mind has been open to new art techniques that I never even considered before and my work already looks somewhat better as a result. Masturbation is gonna be hard to kick, and of course being an artist I have to sometimes stare at nude references for several hours at a time, but my brain is slowly rewiring itself to view the human body as less of a sex object and more of a living, breathing creature whose intricacies must be studied in-depth. My brain is simply deciding that nudity =/= pornography. This means that figure drawing no longer gets cut short by me whipping it out and going to town.

I refuse to let pornography tarnish my creative potential. From now on, I draw to please the eye, not the cock.

EDIT: I should also mention that since I've ditched porn, I have barely played any video games because I have been busy studying + drawing. I just feel more productive. So, added bonus I guess!