The tricks of keeping habits, the troubles of motivation, the turbulent feelings of fitting in. We’ve got some hard problems to tackle today, but I’m ready for it. Welcome back to Art Block Q&A! My name’s Kanjon and I’m answering some questions about art motivation today. This can apply to a lot of creative hobbies and habits, so if you don’t practice art, give it a listen. And if you later decide you want to try art too, well, I’ve got a whoooole channel about it! For now, we’ve got a few great topics to get into, and… these were not easy to think through! But I love trying to solve them. Enough intro, let’s get into it!

alexbuchan4520

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alexbuchan4520 writes:

I’m a 21-year-old autistic person from Australia who loves drawing, but I keep forgetting about drawing stuff on my sketchbooks. Usually when I draw I tend to draw logos from shows and from Minecraft tournaments made by Minecraft YouTubers and Twitch streamers like Cube UHC and MC Championship. Nowadays I can still draw but forget sometimes month by month.

Learning to draw, art, and other creative hobbies can be enjoyable or frustrating sometimes. Even when we love those hobbies, it’s hard to remember to practice regularly. Like any other hobby, it takes time to build a consistent practice routine – this can apply if you’re new to the hobby or if you’ve taken a bit of a break. Applies here with drawing too. Eventually, you’ll find a time when you naturally gravitate towards art, and don’t need to remember to do it. Though it can take a bit of time to get there.

Forgetting things like this is natural. Try to not beat yourself up for it when you realize you forgot. If you feel guilty about forgetting, you’ll feel even worse. Everyone forgets, everyone worries about the things they didn’t do. Try to accept that for what it is.

Think about how you remember to do other things throughout the day. You mentioned autism, so consider that a lot of tips that people suggest might not work as well for you. And, something that really helps you remember habits might not work with a neurotypical mind. Personally I’ve been realizing that I’ve had to completely change my ways of remembering to do things since getting an ADHD diagnosis about a year ago. The medication for that has completely switched how I prioritize things, and everything I’ve known that worked for managing my tasks and habits has been reset. It’s been a journey figuring that out.

Anyway, point is, there’s something there to help you manage this, but you might have to experiment finding out what that is. How do you remember to do other things? Do you have friends remind you, set alarms on your phone, use sticky notes? If you’re not sure what works for you, you might have to try a few over time. If you see a psychiatrist or other mental health professional, ask them for some tips on how to remember the habits you want to keep. It might also be useful to find others with autism and compare their experiences with yours; on Reddit for example. You’ll find something out there to help.

Rickie

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Rickie says:

I feel like an impostor because I don’t crank out pieces as fast as the others I admire. I can’t sit down and stay focused working on a piece in a sitting, even if I wanna keep working at it that way–it happens a lot when I’m trying something new. It’s easy when I’m paid, but I’d like to work the same way for myself. There’s so much I want to do, but I can’t do it all, and that stresses me out.

So, you mentioned that this feels different when you’re paid: I think there’s a secret for you hiding in there. Is it because you feel like someone’s watching and you feel pressured to get it done? If that’s the case, are there things you could try to give yourself that kind of pressure to do your own art? I know many friends stream to make art. Some of them do it regularly when they need the focus, while others only draw on stream because they need other people watching. That might be something to try, even if it seems daunting. You don’t have to do a big stream on Twitch or YouTube; you could even just do it on a small Discord call.

Is it the reward of getting paid? Are there ways you can give yourself rewards for completing personal art; things like getting to play a video game if you finish a piece? It might sound silly to do that, but sometimes silly things like that work really well.

There are probably other things you can try here too. The area of focus and distraction is a huge topic, and I’ve been slowly unpacking that in my distraction series playlist. When you do notice you get distracted, think about what just distracted you and how you got there. Give yourself a moment to try to fix that. Sometimes, that means drawing in a new place or in a spot where you have nothing but the art in front of you. Sometimes, it means making a place cozier. Sometimes, it means not drawing right now. Try not to always pick that last one though, you can usually fight through it.

And when you mention being fast: I’ve talked about speed a bit in the past; from what I can tell most folks are not as fast as you think. Some people prioritize speed in their work, some prioritize quality. They’re different ways of working. Speedy artists might be really good at their sketching and a particular style of painting, but would probably need time to really refine details. But they’re probably good at knowing which details most people don’t notice, and have learned to skip them. You can see this in certain pieces of art that look super clean, but if you really study closely, you can tell that they didn’t clean up every brush stroke and line. They just kept their momentum and pace, and it all flows together in the bigger picture.

Obstriker

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Obstriker writes:

Hey Kanjon! I struggle with a pattern of lulls in motivation. I had a whole drawing routine going in January and had fallen out of it by the end of February after one too many “bad-art bloopers”. In these lulls I’ll get a lot of thoughts comparing how much I was drawing when productive to how little now which only decrease my motivation further. Any tips on keeping motivation consistent?

I also received this similar message anonymously:

I mostly struggle with having motivation to draw, I always look back at my other drawings and think that they are ugly, and that no matter what I do, the drawing will be the same quality.

Some common things between these two: struggling with motivation over time, and the fear of bad art. Very natural problems. It feels like it comes and goes: you have the times when you’re drawing a lot, and times when you’re drawing very little. I am currently in a “not drawing a ton” valley but am starting to come back to it more, myself. For me, the cause of that is a very busy time in my life. Sometimes it can be an energy level thing too; being creative is a ton of mental energy long-term, and sometimes you have those ups and downs. As I mentioned a bit earlier, do your best to not guilt yourself about the lapse in drawing. It’s natural, it’s human, everyone does it. If you want to get the habit going again, grab a pencil, empty out your head, and start sketching.

But that’s not all of it. For both questions, it sounds like there could also be some kind of feeling attached to this lack of motivation, and it’s worth inspecting that. If you feel like you’re stuck in a bad-art rut, or think past drawings are ugly, you’ve probably encountered the cross-over point where your art-seeing skill has passed your drawing skill. Totally natural, but never the most fun thing, and we all need reminders of that often.

If your art starts to look bad, your observational skills have grown. That’s part of your art skill, and it’s always going to happen that it will fall out of sync with your drawing skills. Take a look at some bad art you’ve made recently and try to figure out what’s wrong with it; really look closely. Are you making more mistakes, or are you just noticing more that you could get better in general?

The most straightforward way to catch your drawing skill up to your seeing skill is studies. See thing, draw thing. If you feel like your proportions of characters are off, gesture studies of the human figure helps a lot. If your perspective feels wrong, perspective drills are the key. If your expressions look drab, try a bunch of studies of different exaggerated expressions. But for all of this, don’t draw it to share. Draw it for you. Give yourself time limits on each one of just a couple minutes, so you don’t feel stuck. Do as many as you can. Try it on a different kind of paper or with a different drawing tool. Try it with a tiny canvas. Giving yourself other restrictions prevents you from spending too much time on detail, forcing you to see the bigger process.

Obstriker, for you specifically from last Q&A, I know I mentioned drawing from imagination, and it sounds like you did a bit of that – nice! Don’t be afraid to keep changing back and forth between that and studies. I don’t think there’s ever a “sweet spot” here; what we want to do is always changing and sometimes that’s a lot of studies, and sometimes it’s being imaginative.

You’ll be surprised how much you can pick up in just a small amount of time with studies. I have to remind myself to do this often, and there’s always a certain point where I feel more confident and can move back to my own drawings. You’ve probably been doing these here and there, but here’s your reminder to do more. You got this.

Jarggy Roo

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Jarggy Roo says:

Being in the professional art field for two years, I still experience “imposter syndrome”. I frankly still question my own upbringing as an artist wondering If I even deserved to have come this far at all. What makes me struggle to make art is the thought of what I’m doing is all for naught knowing there are more talented artists in the industry. What can I do to overcome this feeling?

Hi Jarggy! These feelings are tough, so this might take a bit to get into. Full disclosure for others: I know Jarggy quite well and know that they make some absolutely fantastic art, both professionally and personally. Seriously, look at this. LOOK. AT. THIS. Go check out their work. I’m just gonna gush for a moment and say that THIS is the stuff that makes me feel daunted; it’s what I’d expect to see in a concept art book for a Disney film, and Jarggy’s got it right here.

OK. There will always be someone more skilled, for every artist out there; even for older artists that have been doing this for decades. Experts are going to have others that they feel like they can’t compare to in different kinds of artwork, because they’re not an expert in every style and medium; that’s impossible to accomplish. It’s so easy to get lost in this because there’s so many styles out there, and you might have a lot of styles that you like. Some of them you might be an expert at, some you might have no experience. Other artists will see your own style and feel that same envy. When you look at your own art, though, it’s hard to see those qualities because you’re too used to it. Your own art often doesn’t look like it has a style, because it’s just “you” and what you’re used to. But it absolutely is there.

Other artists might be more skilled, yes, but that doesn’t mean they have some innate talent. They’ve been at it even longer and probably have worked through the same fears and doubts you’ve got. With the flood of social media it’s easy to miss this: so much good art is shared online because it’s so easy to do so now. It constantly makes you feel like you can’t keep up, and that quickly turns into negative feelings towards yourself, like you don’t fit in.

These worries can hit especially hard if it involves your professional work. Heck this isn’t unique to art: if you’re in any kind of field that requires a lot of your creativity or problem solving, if that doesn’t work out on an effort, project, or even job level, that stings a ton. It can feel like a direct attack on your own skills and opinions. But the reality with this being a professional space is that sometimes you get unlucky: you could have a client that doesn’t know what they want, or doesn’t understand the process involved in the work. You might encounter bad timing where things seem to go smoothly, but suddenly priorities have changed six hops away and they cancel the work. You might find someone who is just all-around frustrating to work with and you want out. All of this is stuff that just kinda sucks, and none of it relates to what you actually want to do: art. Unfortunately, in any specialized field, dealing with clients that don’t understand that field will have you encountering frustrations, and it can absolutely be demotivating and have you feeling like an imposter.

I don’t even want to get into the noise of AI-generated images here, because that’s something everyone feels rather doomy about. Thankfully, it seems that most places have realized that you really do need that human expression, and that artists are essential to any kind of creativity… and, well… I don’t think you’d want to work with someone who would choose AI “art” over people. That’s the kind of personality who would ditch any artist real fast for any reason – even before AI stuff existed.

I say all of that not to make you feel frustrated or hopeless for the industry, but to try to provide some foundation for you to bounce back from and fight that sense of being an imposter. So let’s get into something actionable. I’m willing to bet that you can chip away at a significant portion of this by getting back at it, which I know you’ve been doing. Keep a steady pace of making art. Take commissions if you feel comfortable, and don’t try to shoot for your absolute best every time. Keep up some cozy drawings, and let yourself make some “easy” ones here and there. Draw with friends or have friends watch you draw; you can even try to teach how you draw: the act of explaining how you do things is a secret to building confidence and feeling more at home. Heck you can even explain things out loud to no one but yourself. It still helps you establish, to you, that you know what you’re doing and that you can lead.

Once you’ve gotten a bit of that going, start looking upwards again. Try some more challenging pieces and see how that feels. You’ll keep accelerating and this will seem a lot easier by the time you reach this point; won’t be long at all. I’m excited to see you get back to it. You genuinely have some really good art; it shows that you’ve really taken those skills that you’ve learned in your education and professionally and really applied it with your own charm. Go get ’em.

That’s it for now. Thank you watching; I love putting these together. And for those of you who let me know that you like the current format when I was considering changing it, a special thanks: I genuinely appreciate honest opinions like that. It shows that the people watching aren’t here to just say “yes”, and care about the subject. That makes it a lot more meaningful for me. For more Q&A, if you missed this round, keep an eye on future videos for the question form for the next one – I do these regularly. Hope you all got something useful to think about here, and I hope you chase that passion as you learn and accomplish your goals in art. I’ll see you next time.