It's finally come.  I have reached that point in my artistic pursuits.  That piece of advice that every aspiring artist is given since day one makes more sense than ever before (You know, that one where you're told to stop drawing anime) : I regret anime, I regret it all.

I'm not sure when it started.  Anime stopped being as appealing as it was before.  I started wanting to experiment more with my art.  It was really at that point that I thought : "anime really is a whole lot of artistic inbreeding isn't it?"  You can keep on drawing and practicing a lot and you improve for sure, but there will be a certain point you'll get to when practise won't get you further, you'll be as good as you're ever going to be drawing in "that style" you created for yourself.  You'll never exceed yourself because anime is inherently limited to character art.  You will be unable to draw anything else or add any additional skills to your arsenal because you'll just be churning out one bishoujo/bishounen after another like an assembly line for really boring/perverted artwork.

I regret anime not because I can't draw anything else, but because its made me a shitty artist.  My muscle memory for drawing is basically how to draw a face with large eyes.  My sense of aesthetics does not approve of anything else.  It makes semi-realism that much harder because my own style up to this point does not permit it.

What is style?  Style isn't usually something you decide on, if you decided on a style then you're an even worse artist than I am and your artistic career will be even shorter and crappier than mine.  Style is something that grows overtime as you learn how to draw, allow other artists to influence you and allow your own art process to develop and evolve.  Style is therefore a byproduct of drawing habits that you pick up overtime, subject to the influences of other artists.  Nothing more.  Style changes so long as you are open to influence.  Having a style that doesn't change is the worst thing that can probably happen to an artist.  You've stopped taking in the things around you and you've stopped learning.  You are unadventurous and uninspiring and worst of all you're probably incapable of drawing anything else.

To be fair to anime, anime is kind of like that gateway drug into art.  You wanna draw it because it's cute, well received, and simple enough for most people to draw relatively well with minimal practice/investment.  It's also something I can draw pretty brainlessly after a long day/week of being subjugated by my corporate overlords (complete with identity stripping, brain scrambling and spirit crushing, the full course)

So after typing that last paragraph out, I guess I don't regret anime THAT much, it has it's uses.  I still regret it a lot though.