Artist Quotas, Messy Sketches, Skill Sprints: Art Block 2

Welcome to another art & motivation Q&A session! I’ve received a lot of great questions this round, and we’ll get to them all over a few videos: there’s a lot to talk about.

Hello! You’ve tuned in to the Art Block, a small Q&A advice segment I run. If this video makes you curious about art, I encourage you to check out the rest of my channel! Anyone can learn to draw and it’s such a fulfilling skill to learn. I’m also running a series on how to learn digital art! It’s called Digital Dabbles, and you can find the playlist on my channel.

KingJulien28

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Let’s get right to it! KingJulien28 writes:

I wanted to ask what if I, instead, want to make multiple types of art. For example, I would want to continue drawing, as well as to write descriptive short stories. Does that not make me an artist anymore or something else?

First, the direct point: of course that’s still art! Literary arts are still art, just not necessarily visual. But there’s also no mystery “quota” of how much drawing you have to do to consider yourself an artist. A less-active artist is still an artist, a just-starting artist is still an artist. As long as you seek to create and practice with your skills, I’d say that makes you an artist.

Just because my channel focuses on visual arts, the “learn to draw” type, doesn’t mean that other forms of art are not art. I often find people in the comments (hi there!) that tell me how they find similarities in other creative fields, whether it’s about focus, creative expression, or anything else. It can be music, 3D modeling, mechanical engineering, story writing; anything that gets your creativity started. No need to hit any sort of minimum or category. You can keep drawing, you can write stories, you can do both a little here and there – still an artist if you want that label.

Rickie

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Rickie asks:

I don’t feel like anything stops me, but I don’t feel like I get enough done. I’m not sure if the goals I set for myself are within reach over the course of a day. I like to make sure things look right and take my time with them, but I always feel like I need things to be hammered out faster, and sometimes I’m not completely happy with them. Is there a middle ground? Or am I overthinking it?

Sounds like you wanna practice speed! Good – it’s fine to draw at any pace, but speed gets you more practice since you’re attempting the whole process more often. You will learn faster! And when you want to spend more time to make a quality drawing, you totally can – no need to stick with any pace in particular. Feeling like you want to be faster and better is natural, but of course you’re not going to have both until you’ve gotten a lot of practice. So if we’re going to focus on speed, let’s try to throw out the need for quality and perfection.

Your perception of your own quality is going to be skewed. Some times it will feel nice, sometimes it will feel messy. So let’s try some art where all you can do is messy. Try drawing in a space that’s uncomfortably small, like a sticky note. Or divide a page up into a grid and only draw in one box. You can try again in another, and again, but only one box at a time. This is called thumbnailing; I’ve got a video on that here. Try setting time limits for extra urgency. If you look up “gesture drawing” or sites like line-of-action, they have you start out with short intervals like this to prevent you from focusing in too early.

Another option: try sketching with something like a brush pen. Something both difficult to use, and you can’t erase with it. Maybe even draw in a more difficult location, like being on the bus, your sketchbook bouncing all around! Something so absurd that all you can expect is something messy. And as you do it, you’ll notice that there’s some cool shapes that come out of the chaos.

Make a mistake? That’s part of your drawing now. “Happy accidents” aren’t just a Bob Ross saying: they change the direction of your art. Use them and re-imagine what’s happening. All of this stuff helps train you into getting more comfortable with things that feel like a mess, and can help you work past that need for perfection so you can make art sooner.

Thalos Radiantscale

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Thalos Radiantscale (cool name!) says:

I feel like I should be way better in art, since I’m pretty old already. But I kept dropping art for other stuff because either I got frustrated with art or I felt like it was a waste of time, since I never shared the results before. Since I started posting my art I have fun with art again, but now I feel pressured to not only improve faster now, but also to keep a regular uploading schedule.

Right. Age often means that you feel like you need to learn faster to catch up, since “everyone else” started early, right? It also tends to make you feel like you should be better at this stuff, since at this point you’ve probably gotten good at other skills. But that’s just it: they’re skills. They need time and effort to practice, and starting later doesn’t mean you need to catch up to everyone else, you just need to put in the time to build up your skill. Putting that another way: instead of imagining art skill on a timeline of how old you versus others are, think of it like a timeline where you’re at the starting line and others are years into it. The time spent is what counts, not your age; it’s relative to the amount of skill you put in and when you did it. Sure, you had some false starts, but I guarantee everyone else had their breaks too.

Everyone starts from somewhere; I didn’t begin until I was 30. Still have tons of my life left to practice though! I’ve found that art becomes a popular hobby as people age. When visiting folks over the holidays, I was surprised to find old friends that started to get into art too. And those that were artists since childhood, well, I guarantee you they’re going to find new skills later in life and be absolute beginners at those too. Just a matter of perspective.

Social media makes this tough. Seeing so much art posted does make it feel like you’re being left out if you’re not there. But don’t forget that the math is against your perception: it’s against everyone! Most people are posting rarely but the sheer volume of people online makes it feel like a crazy active space. Try not to lose sight of your own enjoyment just because you feel like you have to share on a schedule. It’s good to set goals, but adjust them over time as you find out what keeps you happy. It can help to find smaller groups of friends and similarly-skilled artists to share with, too, so you can also have a slower-paced area to share with. This is one of the toughest motivational aspects of art, you’re not alone.

Wrapping Up

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We’ll stop here for now. Won’t be long for the rest: I’ve got most of it ready to go, and you’ll see that here very soon. I am actually getting to all of the questions this time; just give me a few videos. Thanks for watching, and I hope you have a nice time drawing today!