Can You Escape the Artist Struggle?

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Hello there creatures of the arts! It’s time for another Q&A video and I think I’ve packed the most I’ve ever fit into one of these so far. We’ll talk about drawing, creativity, motivation, procrastination, identity… there were so many good questions sent in, and I think this stuff applies to beginners and experts equally. Hope you enjoy! Let’s start of with thoughts on technique.

Technique

Claire + Anonymous

These first two questions are actually quite connected. First, Claire sent in:

As an artist that is just starting out (early beginner) I am trying to start with gesture drawing, but its not going quite well, any tips to improve? Or maybe I should be doing something else?

And anonymously asked:

Hi Kanjon, I recently started Drawabox thanks to your recommendation. I was wondering how far did you get before you started learning figures/anatomy (+ anything else that isn’t fundamentals) or did you start learning that sort of stuff at the same time you were doing Drawabox?

So Drawabox and gesture drawing, what exactly is the connection? Let’s start off with gesture. Gesture drawing is one of the hardest aspects of learning art. And it can certainly teach you the most about it, like fluidity and motion. So if it’s of interest to you, absolutely keep doing it. I kind of consider it sort of required learning if you’re following some sort of curriculum, but don’t feel like you have to do it all now, and then you’ve understood it, and then you’re done and you move on. Because you’re never done with it. Gesture, if anything in art, is the one thing that you’ll keep practicing forever. You’ll keep finding new ways to express motion and fluidity in figures, and shapes, and even landscapes can have gesture. This is something that especially applies when you get to things like animation. It’s key to showing where movements are going and coming from and squash and stretch and all that sort of thing. That said, if it’s the first thing you’re learning, you’re probably gonna leave a bit confused and you’re not gonna know why you’re doing things the way you were told.

Which is where I would recommend doing something like Drawabox, which is not necessarily anti-gesture, but it fills in a lot of the rest of the core skills at the start. Where you are going to practice basic mark making, you are going to be doing a lot of perspective drills, you’re gonna break down things like plants into pieces see how they come together. Done as a pure study without trying to add lots of fluidity or motion yet, you’re trying to just draw things exactly how they are for practice. However, Drawabox can be a little bit dull if you are trying to do just the courses. I’m not saying it is a bad course; it’s fantastic, but it is very grueling if you are only doing that course. They have that 50% rule that says to spend half the time not doing Drawabox, but doing something else in art. Having fun with another kind of course, something totally different. I think gesture can be a good complement to that. But also make sure you leave room to do doodles that you want to do, even if you feel like they’re not great, or you’re not learning from them. Try scribbling out the random silly ideas in your head.

To come back to the second question when did I start learning figures or anatomy? I made the mistake of only doing Drawbox for a while, and then I got burnt out on it. But, I recovered and started to branch out, somewhere around the time of doing the box challenge and the plant stuff after it. That doesn’t mean that that’s the correct time to do it. That just when I happened to. I think you could actually start a lot earlier. When we start talking about figures and anatomy, figure drawing and gesture are often used interchangeably. They technically are different, but not really in a way that’s relevant here. Anatomy is kinda-sorta a specialization of figure drawing, because correct anatomy is one thing, but to have anatomy that also looks good, you usually want to know general figure drawing. Starting with the broad shapes before details, learning the shortcuts first and understanding what they represent. I think really the best time to start approaching figure or gesture drawing, if you’re already doing Drawbox, is whenever you are starting to feel curious about it. Worst case, you’re feeling a little overwhelmed by gesture drawing and you might come back to it just a little bit later. No one’s grading you on your progress unless you’re actually taking an art class I guess. Approach it at whatever time feels right.

J Del.

Next up, J Del. sends in:

Whenever I see art or writing that I appreciate, I love to notice the small details & decisions that make it uniquely theirs! I’m semi-confident in my drawing. I think about starting something with my art, like a character or story. However, I’m worried that although I’m mindful of those details, I’ll miss parts of the general creative process & that’ll make my work hard to connect with. Thoughts?

I think what makes art really cool is that we each have our own little pieces like that. Our unique fine details that we think people can connect with. But there’s also the idea of having your art having a basis in what is real. I think that’s what a lot of people tend to connect with is when you start with something that people know, like animals, humans, landscapes, things that we can recognize and then put your own unique spin on it with those little details. If you’re making abstract works, yeah, that’s a trickier point. If you’re instead starting with something familiar, you’ve already started to make that connection, and now you’re seeing what you can do with it, with those additions. Remember, part of making those unique details is learning what you like and how to make your own kind of art. Let that happen because when you are really putting that passion into those small decisions, it becomes really clear that you like what you’re doing. It shows in your work and people start to appreciate that.

Try not to force it. Try to not make yourself do certain kinds of methods just because that’s what you see others do. Now if you feel like you’ve been doing perspective wrong or something, yeah, maybe try to fix that. But allow yourself to have those fun, unique little moments that happen, embrace them. That’s what makes your art yours, what helps develop your style long term. That combination of a basis in reality along with your own unique details is what forms that connection with art. Presenting a work that people can identify with, and augmenting it with your own flair. I think you’ve got the right general idea: try not to worry too much. The fact that you’re thinking about this at all, to me, says that you’re on the right track with your practice and thinking.

Maned_X

From Maned_X:

How do you get the motivation to go from physical mediums to digital mediums? I struggle to pick up the pen and draw digital art versus doing traditionals on paper. Sometimes it feels like the programs are just too much because I just don’t have enough experience, but other times I just feel left out only doing traditionals when I see others doing really cool digital effects!

Well, my main recommendation is to start traditional. There’s a lot of benefits to just doing traditional and keeping your work like that, taking photos of it has its own appeal. Still, I get that you might want to do digital as well, there’s fun stuff to that too. What I would recommend is following this workflow, which I showed in a recent video, about doing most of your work traditionally, taking a picture, and then seeing what you can do with it digitally. It’ll probably feel weird doing this for a little while, but just keep it simple. Don’t worry about doing too much with layers or effects or whatever. Just do 1 or 2 layers. Take a picture of your sketch, trace over it. Maybe add a layer for some colors.

There you go. Then on a different piece, maybe go a step farther and play around with some different brushes. Then maybe even try a new layer with some shading on it. At some point you’ll figure out more of that art app but you don’t have to know the whole digital process to make a cool digital piece. You can do a lot with very little and not need to learn a full program. That said, if you’re interested, I do have this course called Digital Dabbles that you can check out if you do want to go a little bit deeper with some digital stuff. I will put a link to that here; the playlist is also on my channel homepage.

Tusky

Tusky has this question to ponder:

Have you found yourself stuck to one phase of a piece/project much longer than you wanted that snowballs into blinders from the rest of the process? If so, did you figure out a technique to get around this habit? Really enjoy the videos you do, short or long form. It’s the voice and charisma that does it for me. You’ve definitely inspired me in the past, and I am grateful. Keep up the great work!

Ah! Thank you, I’m always glad to hear what folks enjoy from these. So hopefully I’m interpreting this question right in that you’re talking about focusing too much on one section of a project because you wanted to, and not that you’re feeling stuck with it or you’re procrastinating. If it is, I also get into that in the next question. Anyway, what I would recommend is forcing yourself to jump around a little bit more than you might be doing already. I know it can get really easy to get fixated on a single part of the process if you’re really in the zone. You shouldn’t necessarily fault yourself for that. That can be a good thing if you’re able to really get into a flow state and paint a whole part of your piece for hours. Something I like to do, though, to try to prevent myself from losing some stamina all on one part or forgetting that I need to do something else is scribble a to-do list on my canvas, on a fresh layer, if I’m working digitally. Traditional could be sticky note or writing in margins. I write some things I want to fix, but also a general list of things I want to do in the process as a reminder that I have more work to do.

There’s also some common art ideas here, like reminding yourself to flip the canvas, taking breaks; did a recent video on that stuff. Gives you a nice reset. You might notice something wrong with the part that you’re currently working on, another phase of your project, or get ideas to write down for later. On the note of breaks, if you’re familiar with the Pomodoro method: you set a 25 minute timer and then when the timer’s up, take a 5 minute break, repeat repeat repeat. That interruption isn’t enough to really ruin what you’re working on, but it makes you get up, stretch, go get some water, stop staring at your screen or your paper. Helps way more than you think it does when you remember to do it. Taking breaks overnight helps a ton too.

Strategies and techniques are a nice warm-up for this Q&A. By the way, if this is your first visit to my channel, welcome! Hope you’re enjoying things so far and will consider subscribing. Check out my channel homepage for a bunch of goodies on learning to draw and managing your own creative thoughts and motivation. Speaking of…

Motivation

Venkaris

First up on the subject of motivation and distractions is Venkaris, who asks:

Hi Kanjon! I’m working on a big illustration right now, I still like the idea, but the shading and rendering is starting to feel boring and tedious, and I keep getting distracted. I already set aside 2+ hours in the mornings for it and put on my favorite music, but it’s still hard to stay focused. How do you stay motivated and get through the boring parts of a project?

Yeah. Sometimes there’s stages of a project that just are inherently boring and you still have to do them, right? It’s still a pain and I get it, you can remove as many distractions as you want, but if it’s not exciting, your mind just starts to wander. There’s not necessarily an easy solution for this when you have a big part of a project that needs to be done all at once, like if you’re doing this traditionally, or you have to do things in a linear order. If you’re doing this digitally, what I would recommend is thinking about how you can break down the art that you’re working on into different kinds of parts. Like, instead of doing the whole piece in phases, say line/colors/shading, you break the scene down by character, background elements, and actions. For each of those you line then color then shade. But! Not with any planned pattern: maybe you line one character, line another, then color and render the first, then jump to the background to mess around. Having a big pool of things to choose from so you can jump between what feels right in the moment. Buuuut sometimes that’s not so easy to do, or you do all of the fun stuff first and are left with the boring bits once more. You can also do this at a larger level by cycling through different art pieces but that’s another layer of stuff to manage. Give it a solid thought though; see if there’s ways to jump around your work so it’s not so monotonous.

Anyway I’ve seen your socials and such, you might already know this and I’m just telling you something you’ve already been doing. (By the way, for everyone else watching, Venkaris does a lot of writing about art, as well as some really cool clean studies on their socials. I highly recommend checking that out!) Anywho, next thought on this: having an accountability buddy. Someone to work alongside you, whether that’s in person or on a voice call, where you both focus on what you need to. Or another spin on this: stream your work to a friend and explain what you’re doing as you work, as if you were teaching them. You could also instead record yourself doing this, or even just explain out loud with no one listening. Sounds silly, but it kind of works. Take something you’re confident in, practice “teaching” it as you go to fill the boredom. It’s also great communication practice. If you do record yourself, maybe even play it back later on and see what you say; what do you think about it? I’ve also had a friend recommend playing music while drawing, and trying to complete a task for each song. Probably works better for speed-painting or quick sketching, but maybe there’s something fun here too. Really there’s probably tons more I’m not even thinking about; you might stumble into something totally different that works to help you focus. Curious to know what that would be, if so!

Invis

So there’s motivation within a piece, but also motivation around our work too. Invis highlights the struggles artists often face:

I keep putting everything off. I keep telling myself I’ll “do it later”, but that “later” never arrives. I hardly ever make any progress on any of my projects, even though I do genuinely feel passionate about them. Paradoxically, the one I feel the most passionate about is also the one I’ve been putting off the most by far, and I can’t figure out why that is.

This one’s classic procrastination. You have things that you need to do, even really want to do, and you keep putting them off, and maybe you have a lot of those, and you keep pushing them back, and you don’t really have external deadlines, and so they just keep going on forever, and the guilt grows and makes you want to do it even less, right? I’ve suffered from that a lot in the past. For me… an ADHD diagnosis and medication has helped with that tremendously. Not saying that describes you, but it’s useful to look up ADHD strategies for managing your own tasks and goals, either way. Because there’s a lot of practices that can help, things like keeping to-do lists on paper, instead of on a digital device can be beneficial because you’re not near your distractions. Coming up with a loose schedule in the morning of things that you do, but not trying to stick to that schedule through the whole day can also help. Usually if you try to overplan like that, then it falls apart and you never attempt it again so just do a little bit. Also: giving yourself a specific time of the day to do anything you want, guilt free. So even if you haven’t met all of your goals for the day for drawing or chores or whatever, and it’s 5 PM. Now it’s your “anything” time for a little bit, and it’s time to be free and not try to complete things for an hour or two. It also gives you something to look forward throughout the day. If it turns out that during that chill time you feel like actually doing your art, that’s fine too, but it wasn’t the purpose of that free time. It’s just to have a break from needing to do things.

Sometimes the reason that you don’t want to progress on a project is because you’re already past that point of a “reward” in your head, which can happen if you’ve shared some pieces with others really early on and talked about them with friends. You’ve already gotten your dopamine hit from it and your brain’s already goin’, all right, next thing, and suddenly you might not want to work on it that much anymore. I’ve got plenty of this goin’ on myself. It’s totally cool to share WIPs with others if it helps you, but if you find that it causes some procrastination later on, keep some projects a secret, no matter how hard it seems. The reward is even better when you’re done. Like the last question, find some a motivation buddy or a procrastination partner. Then you can both just work on things at the same time that might be different things, but you’re both spending the same time in the same call, the same room, whatever, working on them. Helps a ton. That light social pressure works wonders when applied right.

EryFluffy

EryFluffy continues this thought with their question:

I’m having some trouble doing art due to me often feeling exhausted after my shift! The current tasks I have to do often include physical labor and I often end up feeling my whole body being completely drained out of energy. Unfortunately this also makes it so I have barely any motivation and energy to do art. I would like to know if you’ve got any tips to help with this! thx for answering :3

Yeah, it can be tiring when you’ve spent most of your energy before you try to approach art. At a certain point, art’s the default chill out thing when you’re tired and in a weird way, it helps you regain your energy. But it takes a while to get there. Couple things come to mind. One is to see if you can make space for drawing, either at work during your lunch break or before work. I’m not talking large amounts of time, really, just like 5 minutes, something that can help you establish a pattern. It can also be useful for after work because if you’ve started a pattern earlier in the day for a few weeks, built up a little habit, you might continue that pattern in other places, like at home.

The other thing is being able to appreciate small drawings and small pieces of work instead of large pieces that continue onwards. You can still do those. You don’t have to write that off. But as an artist, you’ll progress more quickly by doing 5 of these 3 minute doodles a week instead of a single 20 minute drawing a week. I think that’s way more effective to build a habit. Versus trying to find time sporadically throughout the week and not really feeling it. You’ll get better at it. You’ll get faster at it, and you’ll have a little more motivation to practice more and more. Frequent small drawings instead of larger drawing sessions. I’ve done this same thing when I was starting to learn art. I mean, I still kind of do this. I do a lot of small drawings, it really helps a lot. You’ll get better and better at it. Paper is key to make it easy. If you’re wanting to draw digitally, It’s really easy to do the whole, “take a picture, draw on top of it”, approach to continue any doodles you do like.

Amew The Fox

There’s being short on energy, but what about time? Amew The Fox writes in:

Something I often feel I struggle with is trying to find the wherewithal to actually get my art program open when I have a relatively narrow band of time to actually draw. It might be from my process of showing stuff to my friend who is also mentoring me, but I just want to get it done in one cut, or some tortured metaphor like that. I’m not sure if there’s a neat trick to solve this.

It’s great that you have a friend mentoring you on this; that actually helps a lot with your overall art progress. By all means, feel free to share your drawings with them whenever you want, but also don’t feel like you have to do that every time. Keep space for you to draw for yourself too so you don’t have that pressure of needing to share it, even if it’s for someone really trusted. Don’t feel like you have to draw digitally each time either. Your aim is to build up a habit, sort of like the last question. Consistency, not completion. Instead of trying to open up your art program every time you want to draw, start with something smaller, easier. Keep a small little notebook by your desk, kitchen table, something that you walk by a lot, where you can just stop by and spend just a couple minutes. Do a little doodle.

If you want something a little more structured, I’ve got this storyboarding idea from a previous video, but you don’t even have to go that far with it. You just want to build up the habit first. Similar to the past question, It’s very easy to go traditional to digital. You take a picture of it and you draw on top of it. That part can happen later on a different day; you don’t have to do it all at once, and that sketch to digital transition is good break point. By using pencil on paper, you’re giving yourself the maximum amount of time to draw and spending the least amount of energy to do it. I think that gets you way farther than trying to deal with an art app and all of the mental load of getting rid of distractions, settings, do not disturb, all that sort of thing. Even if it doesn’t feel like that much effort to open up an art program, paper is still so much less. Try it out.

konpro

Essential to long-term motivation is keeping a consistent habit, and the next couple questions get into that, starting with konpro:

Hey, I’m a big fan! Art has become really important to me since I started drawing, but even if I’ve been drawing for years, I can’t help but be inconsistent, or not draw at all for big periods of time, even though I want to. What would you recommend to artists like me that have trouble staying consistent, or having the inability to draw even if they want to?

A lot of the stuff from the past couple questions apply too, but really, give yourself space. To have these easy drawing days, so you’re not building up that guilt of not drawing and doing big pieces because that just makes you not want to do it even more. Have a way to draw wherever you are. Little scribbles, intentionally bad scribbles even, just to get yourself back into that habit of putting that pencil to paper. I wish it was easier to take this with you for the day, like… you tend to grab your wallet, keys, phone, whatever. What if a sketchbook was in that pile of stuff? Then when you’re on the bus or waiting in an office or something, you reach into your pocket and out comes a sketchbook instead of a phone.

That’s a hard problem to solve. I use my phone a ton too. Still though… I’m actually looking at Amazon right now and I do see some really small sketchbooks in there. There’s a 3 by 4 inch one. It’s a little small to really practice drawing on, but that might be a good on-the-go doodle thing. I might actually try this myself. Really, just for the idea of making a habit stick. No matter what you’ve done in the past or what you’ve learned, you can pick that up real easily over time, but you need to build the habit first. You build that habit by doing it with easy drawings in a way that has the least friction possible. You make drawing accessible to you wherever you are.

Kaito_Frost

Kaito_Frost has another spin on consistency that I want to highlight:

I think I’m a seasonal artist — I draw randomly, sometimes with months or even a year between sessions. I used to draw consistently, but now my style feels inconsistent and I often hit art block. Still, I get sudden peak moments, like on a random Monday at midnight, where I make something that doesn’t feel like “my art,” but in a good way. I’m not sure if this is imposter syndrome or something else.

Off the cuff, what you’re describing doesn’t really feel like imposter syndrome. The idea really is do you feel like an imposter among others? If you do feel like that, that’s fine. I’m not gonna be like, “no, it’s not”, I won’t tell you how to feel. If you just feel like it’s different than art that you’ve been making, well you’re not an imposter to yourself, your style’s just changing a little bit. You’re finding something that’s different. You’re finding different things that you like to draw. And maybe it’s changing a lot. That could mean that you’re seeking out new things to keep you excited.

That could mean that you just don’t really have a defined style yet, and that’s totally okay. I feel like I don’t necessarily have a defined style because I’m constantly switching mediums and trying different brushes and everything in between. Because I like to do that. I guess I do have a particular sketch style at this point, hard for me to recognize but others have pointed it out. I feel like everyone looks at their own style and they’re like, nah, there’s no style there, but there usually is. Still, it’s always changing, always evolving. When you make something that’s different, it might not feel like “you”, but it is. It’s just where you are at this point in time and what you’re interested in. Honestly, what I’m saying with all this is keep it up. Keep doing things that are different. Keep doing things that don’t feel like your art. That helps you branch out. That helps you establish what you like to draw.

Troubles with motivation, distractions, and finding the head-space for art are a core part of my channel, and unsurprisingly what I get a lot of questions about. No complaints here, I like to talk about it. If you don’t think of yourself as an artist but this has made you curious, I invite you to check out the new section I’ve added, as well as my “getting started” section on my website. This has my favorite resources and art supply recommendations — and buying through those links really does help support my work!

Anyway: once you wrangle motivation, it’s easy to get lost in other nuances of creativity. There’s even more to talk about when we get into our identity as artists: finding our own style and joy in the process. Let’s take a look.

Joy

It’s natural to seek out an art style: it’s something that makes you feel unique, that forms your identity as an artist, and that can bring some fulfillment to your work. I’ve actually got two questions about this.

Drakasan + Anonymous

First, from Drakasan:

The question I couldn’t answer myself anywhere: How to form my own art style? I always feel bad when copying somebody’s art (I’m a complete beginner), or even when I’m drawing on my own and I accidentally draw like that artist.

And also asked anonymously:

Art style has always been my worst enemy and it teaming up with my inconsistency in drawing makes it really hard to find [a style] that’s right for me. How should I approach this?

Ah! There’s that “consistency” again. Lots of connections in this Q&A round — I hope that helps illustrate that you’re not alone, these are shared struggles. I touched on style briefly in the previous question. I want to hone in on it here, in that your art style is a form of your identity, and you don’t necessarily define what your identity is, as an artist anyway. Sure you pick a name and all that stuff, but, what you draw and how you draw it is just the progression of how you’ve learned to draw and the things that you’ve studied and what you’re interested in and what you’ve tried. On the note of studies, a “study” is copying what you see to try to draw it yourself. There’s nothing wrong with studying someone’s art, though be careful about how you treat it. It’s for you to learn, not necessarily to share — studying and sharing your own Picasso won’t raise any eyebrows, but if you re-draw the work of an active artist, they might not be okay with that. I don’t often share studies for this reason, but there’s no shame in doing them: these “copies” are the way you learn to draw. With lots of practice, you will develop a particular style. Over time, slowly, and it will keep changing. It’ll change less and less as time goes on unless you intentionally give yourself a kick and try something totally fresh. Otherwise, it builds up naturally.

Eventually, yeah, you’ll burn that in because you notice it and then wan to practice it. It’s not something that you have to find and that you have to force out. You don’t have to differentiate and make yourself be unique. Just keep drawing things in the way that you want to draw, without trying to think about developing a style. The more you practice, the more this will become evident. It’s always easy to look at other artists and go, “oh, what a cool style. I wish I had a style”, but you do have a style. It’s just that you’re so used to it that you don’t recognize it. Inconsistency in your own art style will settle over time, but I think it’s something to celebrate because it shows that you’re thinking about things differently. You’re trying new things, you’re flexible. That can be really fun in the art that you make.

Anonymous

Anonymously asked:

I have the skills and creativity for my personal projects, but I always struggled with being creative on demand. Without any strict guidance, it’s really hard to come up with something that I’m happy with turning in. Common example were art college assignments with artistic freedom. What are some good methods to push your creativity while under pressure?

Hmmm… in terms of what can inspire and motivate you to be creative, it’s a little different for everyone. Sometimes you can force creativity out, provided that you have enough stuff to use as a baseline. If you’re constantly creating things day after day, you are gonna run out of fuel. Sometimes you gotta reverse it and go watch TV, read a book, browse other piece of art, flip through some classic art books. Maybe be a little silly. Look at things around you… I’m looking around my kitchen right now, there’s this wooden frog that makes noise when you hit it with a stick it carries, and… I’m thinking, what if it was balancing on top of that stick? What if it was in a sword fight with another wooden frog? I don’t know, feel free to draw that. That’s taking things that are around me and being like, what if it did this thing? It does sound forced and it does sometimes feel forced, but in the process of doing this for a few minutes, you start to think of other ideas and it kicks your creativity into gear. You can usually get something out of that.

Another thing that helps me get creative is studies. Whenever I am warming up for the day or just wanting to practice, I might be doing figure drawing from a photo pack I’ve got. And I’ll sometimes think, if this wasn’t staged, what would they be doing? Or what if this person was some other kind of character; who would they be interacting with? What would happen if they were in a different location… if they were underwater, on a mountaintop, in space? That kind of thing. Sometimes it’s something totally unrelated that’ll pop into my head while I’m doing a study because I’m not focused on trying to be creative. I’m just focused on practicing. Studies are boring. Makes my mind wander, and soon other thoughts will come up. I’ve had some success with that. I’ve also had some success with this whole storyboarding warmup. Check that out if you haven’t, that might also be a strategy for you.

Bippity

Next up, Bippity asks:

I feel like I’m missing that spark to create art, it just doesn’t have that personality to it you know? I feel like I’ve lost the title of artist because I’m not getting that feeling of joy from just creating, and it sucks. How would you recommend to work on it, or just to get a different view on things?

Nah, you’ve not lost the title. Every artist has a lot of trouble with this. If anything, this means you have earned the title of artist, to know that struggle, to have moments when you’re not feeling joy from creating things. Something that helps me is to split apart the creating activity from the things I struggle with. Usually when I’m struggling, it’s because I’m trying to learn something new, even if it’s by accident. As mentioned earlier, I try to start my day by doing these kinds of “struggle” drawings up front in the form of studies. Photos, poses, paintings. Looking at a reference, not trying to interpret it in my own way, but just draw what I see. Remove the creativity and make it plain, a pure practice session.

But on the note of personality, a couple thoughts come to mind: one, you looking at your own art will always feel less exciting than looking at others’ art. You’re familiar with your style, your ways of drawing, and because of that you’re not going to see it as something exciting. When you look at others’ art, it will usually feel more interesting because it’s something different from what you’re used to making. Use that to inspire you to try new things, sure, but try not to let that get you down. Second, our brains try to “fix” our drawings when we make them sometimes, namely with poses and characters in figure drawing, and they end up looking a little stiff. I think that when many people feel that their drawings are missing personality, it can be useful to over-correct in the other direction and wildly exaggerate a pose. Make arms bend more, the torso lean more, squash and stretch to proportions that feel too far. Practicing in this direction can make your average drawing more animated and bring some life in a way that’s yours, even if you’re aiming for a more realistic look.

DUNKEDONE

DUNKEDONE (sorry, it was all caps, I had to) asks:

Hi Kanjon, I have been feeling stuck with my art for quite some time now and I do not know why, every time I pick up drawing and try to make art it always makes me feel as if I haven’t made progress at all, and that feeling sucks. How do I feel better about drawing? I know I’ve been improving but I always manage to feel bad about my art.

There’s a natural progression in art where you feel like you haven’t been making progress. That’s because you haven’t made progress in an area that you were expecting, which is your technical skill, your drawing skill. That’s what most people think about when they think about skills and art. Sometimes you pick up the pencil after a day and you draw some stuff and it looks terrible… and sometimes that just happens. You’re maybe having a bad day or you need to warm up more or something like that. The feeling sucks. Big part of this as an artist is that you have two main skills that you’re developing. One is the one that you’re trying to develop, and that’s your drawing skill. That involves your mark making, your perspective, shading, all that stuff. The visual output of it, the one that most people tend to think of. But there’s a skill that you’re automatically developing in your head. That’s your skill at seeing and appreciating art. Sometimes when you’re having days or even weeks where you feel like you’re not progressing in drawing, you might still be a little bit, but what’s progressing even more quickly is your skill at observing and seeing art, appreciating it for what it is, and noticing things that are wrong in addition to what’s right.

Every time you notice something that is wrong and you can think to yourself, “why does that look bad?” Or even just acknowledging that it does look bad. You’re working on that skill at seeing art. That passively trains you into reaching even higher with your own work. When that skill at seeing art surpasses your skill at making art, yeah, it feels quite bad. But it can flip over too! Then you might even get a little overconfident with your art for a while, but then it flips back again and you have this crash, and it feels really bad once more and you feel things plateau. When this happens, it’s not like an accident or something you can avoid. These skills flip over all the time. Acknowledging it is key, makes it feel a little less worse. Still, don’t feel bad for doing some “easier” drawings on a day where you really feel stuck. Tending to your motivation is just as important as growing your skills.

Matheus

Feeling bad about our art is common. Matheus asks about this as well:

How can I learn to enjoy drawing and not actually enjoying drawing well? This simple thing prevents me from drawing, liking the final result, enjoying the process, and it makes me unable to even begin studying anything in art, no matter how simple and easy it may be.

I think I see what you mean. You’re a little focused on the enjoyment of good art, but you also want to try to enjoy art when it’s not great, to instead enjoy the process. It’s hard to do that, and it’s not even something that you have to do as an artist. You don’t have to appreciate the whole process. Some parts of the art process just suck. You’re not gonna have bad art days and still be happy about them and you’re not an imposter for not appreciating those. I think all of us in art, we hate those days. We don’t want them, but they are how we learn. At least acknowledging that and saying, hey, today, you are a bad art day, we’re not friends, but we’re not enemies. Because during those bad art days, you’re recognizing what’s going on and you’re realizing, okay, I need to practice.

Similar to the last question, maybe your visual skills are building up a little bit and just noticing that fact goes quite far. I know it doesn’t actually help you make art on a day when you’re wanting to be creative and it’s just not working out. But, it does help with your your long-term motivation. Because during those bad art days, you can do something that’s a little less creative and you can work on smaller time constraint drawings, studies typically. Things that are “homeworky”, that, if you want to direct your frustration at something, you direct it at the homework of art, the assignment of doing studies. You can also spend time working on some easier things; maybe some comfort doodles, basically something that you’ve drawn plenty before but feels nice to you, something that you like to doodle. This is a nice fallback. Keeps you in that practice and keeps your motivation up.

That’s the core of it. I wanted to wrap this up with one more question, a little less specific to art, but something I’ve been wrangling myself with my own hobbies that I think’s worth sharing.

Obstriker

Obstriker sent this one in:

Hey Kanjon! I was hoping you have advice on managing a lot of hobbies. I keep busy with creative things like learning to draw and drumming but I also like to stay active; running, bouldering and going to the gym. Add into that hanging with friends and even just keeping up with mutuals on Bluesky and Telegram and I get stressed about not staying on top of it all. This is all on top of full time work. I feel guilty/lazy when I drop something for a while too but it’s stressful trying to manage my own self-imposed schedule. You mentioned facing a similar sounding situation recently; do you have any advice? Loving your videos, keep it up!

Thank yoooou :3 For those that don’t have this context, I’ve done a couple videos in the past few months on channel updates and things I’ve been doing, and one of the things was me acknowledging that I was keeping myself way too busy. I was always doing something, not really giving myself time to rest. And I managed to get that in check. A lot of that was not necessarily getting rid of the things that kept me too busy or took the most amount of time, like these videos. I love doing these. Long term I’d love to make this my full-time thing! They’re actually a way that I can relax. So that’s not something that I was gonna cut. Some of the things that I actually did get off my plate were things that I wasn’t really spending a lot of time on at all throughout the year. Yet they were a large amount of mental headspace and guilt.

I spent a lot of time thinking about those; the ones that made me feel the most guilty. This was stuff like volunteer work that I was doing, the ways I was approaching my goals, and to some extent, the art calendar. (By the way, if those of you watching don’t know what the calendar is, watch to the credits section for a little freebie, it’s pretty fun.) I was able to reuse things this year and be honest with people that it’s last year’s calendar but shuffled. I’m not gonna spend time making new prompts because I don’t have the space to do that right now. Maybe I’ll do that in the future, or make that a community effort. I feel like at some point I should start crowdsourcing things, collaborating with folks that wanna help on stuff more. Discord, Patreon, maybe in the future. Hmmm.. anyway.

On the volunteering work, I wasn’t necessarily doing a ton with that organization throughout the year, really just during peak time, and that was fine. They were happy to have me there, I kinda acted as an advisor and event support, but I was still like, all right, I got to put a pause on this because I need the headspace to free up. That guilt, that unresolved activity in my head, occupied a lot of space. Dropping that helped a lot, and I still keep in touch with folks there even. One more thing that helped was giving myself fewer deadlines. It’s good to have a self-imposed schedule and give yourself goals to strive for so that you’re not just punting things off forever, but there is a balance. You wanna make progress, but it’s good to also let yourself relax a little bit. I thought about things and I was like, okay. Is it actually useful for me to force myself to make a video every couple weeks or something?

No, it just made me stressed about a deadline that only I cared about. Once I stopped doing that and I just said, okay, I’m going to make a video, then I’ll take a short break, then start the next, and it’ll be done when it’s done… well, that helped me a lot. Freed up a lot of space because I’m stressed about it less, and I spent less time thinking about it. So, yes, goals are useful, but if it’s a creative goal and you realize that it’s not helping you, then I feel like it’s a time saver in your day to day to get rid of certain deadlines. Be careful with that, though. Don’t get rid of every deadline just because Kanjon did it. I’m in a very specific situation that works for me. Evaluate what you’re doing and how you’re going about it and how you’re thinking about it. Think about what makes you feel guilty or makes you procrastinate throughout the day and how you can resolve that.

That’s our Q&A! If you submitted a question and it’s not here, if you want, you’re welcome to re-submit those for the next. And for those of you with the goofy questions, they’re not in this video, but you’ll find a short released shortly (heh) after this video goes up with those too. Whether you submitted a question, are listening with curiosity, or just wanna watch a talking animal bounce around, thanks for watching. Share along with a friend, find some chill time for your own creative practice, and chase that passion. See ya!