I haven't really posted in a while; mostly due to... everything.

I find myself unable to draw properly using my tablet and drawing programs. Every time I open a new document and try to draw something, I am constantly drawing and erasing, drawing and erasing, and I never get anything done. The empty space of the page makes me misjudge proportions; I will start out with a beautiful face and draw a body attached to it that is too big, then I will erase the face and adjust it to the body and then it will look bad, and I keep doing it. When I sketch the whole outline first, it helps, but when I start working on the details I end up erasing my base lines and will begin messing up the proportions again. I can't seem to get out of this vicious cycle. I've never felt so hopeless with my drawings before. It's like I suddenly can't do it anymore, like I'm just no good. And it's not the best time for this to happen, when I need to harness my talents in order to do well at school, and eventually college. Luckily it is mostly my anime characters I am struggling with and not realistic portraits; I am pretty secure in those. I just can't understand why I can't draw cartoons anymore.

All my characters are stiff and disjointed. They lack personality - I feel like I can't express who they are through their poses and actions. I've tried to fit my drawings to panels; I draw inside them, but my drawings are always too big for the panels. I can't create realistic backgrounds, and now with this proportion problem... I'm finding little reason to even bother anymore. I miss being proud of the work I did. Art is supposed to be the thing I'm good at, the thing that makes me worth anything to the real world, and if I can't even do it anymore... I don't know what I am supposed to do.

I don't have any motivation to even try and draw things, because I can never finish anything or even start anything decent. Coloring is a very difficult concept for me to wrap my head around, so I end up giving up halfway through because it doesn't look right. None of my drawings look right, and I look at other works for references - at least to understand what I am doing wrong - but I don't know what it is. I'm crying just thinking about these frustrations; I just don't know what to do.

Can anyone give me advice? I thought if I was commissioned, I would be able to get to work (and I did start working on those drawings, Erica, I just wasn't in the right frame of mind to continue and now this whole coloring/proportions thing has made it nearly impossible to do anything), but only one person did and I wasn't even able to do that. I feel like I've lost the little talent that was beginning to blossom, almost as if I wasn't meant to get any better, like I am physically incapable of improving anymore. I had stories to tell, stories I wanted to tell through pictures, and it's like they are all wasted and going down the drain and my future's going along with it.

So please... if anyone could just maybe tell me what I can do, give me advice, reassure me... I just... I don't know anymore. I'm really hurting because of this, and I know there has to be something I can do to get started again. I have hit roadblocks before and managed to overcome them, but now I am just thrown for a loop.

thanks, if you've at least read this, and I would appreciate any feedback, ideas, critcisms, advice - anything. I don't want to stop now; I don't want this to be the end. Not yet.