Cozy Art Questions Continued

Progressing on any kind of creative skill, like drawing, can be really challenging, not just for the technical practice, but all the motivation surrounding it. My name’s Kanjon and I want to talk about a lot of that today as we go through some questions submitted by fantastic folks continuing on creative journeys. If any of this makes you interested in learning to draw, do take a look at some of my channel because I’ve got a lot of stuff on that. Let’s jump in.

Warhead

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Warhead sends in:

I feel like one of the reasons I haven’t gotten to art as much (besides my low-skill being a massive demotivator) is trying to fit it in my time, art needs time, sure I can play a video or a show in the background but if I find energy for studies I can’t really hop away and this makes art difficult to find time for. What do you think would be a good way to find time for art?

Something that immediately jumps out to me here is the video or show in the background. And I think that actually might be causing you more trouble than it helps. Art’s one of those things where it kind of has to be a foreground activity. There’s some things that you can do, like chores and whatnot, where you can have something on in the background that you maybe glance over at. But art is not really one of those. It’s a visual thing. You look away and you kind of reset what you were looking at, and it’s hard to get that back. Sometimes podcasts and audiobooks are fine. I’ll sometimes have those on. But what I think can actually help you find more time for art is to actually split it off separately from other things that you do.

Let yourself watch TV and stuff. Everyone does that. But find five or ten minutes where you can just do art. And if you feel like doing more after that time, cool, do a little bit more. But spend some time dedicated, a small amount of time, because that’s easier to approach. And I think that’ll take you really far. If you need to have reference photos up, try to download a few, save a few off a website or something, and then close everything else. Mute all your notifications, Discord, Telegram, whatever. Give your time to just do art. Five minutes is the sweet spot for this, where you get a little bit of a reward afterwards. To check your notifications or whatever. But sometimes you might even get really into a drawing and want to keep going. And as you keep doing this over time, you’ll slowly want to do more and more. But giving it that dedicated time is actually what can help save you time, as backwards as it might seem up front.

Anonymous

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Sent in anonymously:

Everything I draw looks like garbage and I can’t seem to make progress, so I struggle to start something new. My lines are too uneven even when I draw digitally with smoothing, I can’t seem to fix it.

There’s one big thing here that I want to make sure that you and everyone else are aware of, because a lot of folks miss this when they start to try to learn to draw. If you knew it already, apologies, but I’m going to try to re-emphasize some points. Drawing’s not just the skill of what’s in your head, there’s actually muscle movements that are part of that skill. I want you to grab just a piece of paper and a pencil and just draw a line left to right or right to left on that page, whatever feels better. Really – pause and go do that. Once you have… notice what parts of your arm just moved. Was it your wrist, your elbow, your shoulder, some combination? And then do it again and try to notice what it was again, what parts moved. And then what I want you to do is pretend like you’re some kind of robot where you can only really move your arm at your shoulder, like your elbow and your wrist are just kind of locked. And try drawing that line again like that, pulling it across the page with your shoulder in whatever direction feels correct to you.

That’s actually one of the big secrets to art here, at least in terms of mark making, and that’s that you’re going to do most of the movement with your shoulder, and maybe a little bit with the elbow, but almost nothing with the wrist. Your shoulder’s a muscle that can be very smooth and stable, your wrist isn’t. Your wrist is really good at precision, but when you’re doing smooth lines, you don’t want precision, you want stability. You might see a lot of artists hold their pencil upside down where their hand’s completely on top of the pencil and the pencil is basically flat down on the page. That’s not just some weird fancy way to hold a pencil, that’s actually a trick to kind of prevent you from moving your arm without just using your shoulder. If you’re holding a pencil like that and you try to move it with your wrist, it just kind of pokes you. Moving with just your elbow, you can kind of do it a little bit, but it’s easiest to move with your shoulder when you’re holding it like that. It’s kind of like holding a paintbrush if you’re painting a wall or something. You don’t always have to draw with that kind of posture, but I personally like to sketch like that when I’m doing gesture practice because it helps me keep things really smooth. Sometimes I’ll do that with digital art and sometimes I’ll hold it more with a claw grip that I usually use for writing, but I still try to focus on moving with my shoulder. That’s the biggest thing.

Another issue could be something like a hand tremor, but you don’t really mention that so I’m guessing that’s not really at play. And another thing that might help is if you try to make lines that have too many curves in one stroke, you might kind of go off the rails a little bit, even if you’re really using your shoulder. Try to do like one, maybe two turns in a curve at most. You might hear these called C curves, S curves, depending on the context, they might mean different kind of things, but think about like what’s a C look like? What’s an S look like? A C kind of just has one bend to it and S turns around once and then bends the other direction. Anything more than that and it’s going to start to get messy. You don’t have to draw lines all in one motion. That’s why I really like pencils. You can slowly kind of etch them in and as you build that confidence and have that nice arm motion, you can press down more and more. Keep going and let your arm kind of throw the motion into the stroke. It’s a skill that takes a while to practice. I feel like I’m still slowly improving at this stuff years in, but I think it’ll help you with the confidence, especially once you kind of realize that trick. Hopefully there’s something in this for you.

A.B. the Dragon

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A.B. the Dragon asks:

Back in late July I started this 31-piece project that I’m hoping to have done by November. I’ve made really great progress on it so far but recently progress has been stagnating. Some days I start on a piece and barely make any progress and other days I don’t even have the motivation to open my art program. Could it be burn out? I’m not sure.

Well, it’s hard to say what burnout is for any one person. I feel like in society we’ve kind of given burnout a stigma where if you admit that you’ve been burnt out on something that it’s seen as a big failure, but everyone does this. I’ve done it plenty. I mean, I’ve even kind of done it sort of recently, going a little bit too ham with all of my hobbies. And I’m like, okay, I need to have a hobby bankruptcy here and really figure out what I’m wanting to do. So if you feel like it’s a burnout, it could be a burnout.

The other thing I’ll say is that these month long challenges like Inktober and whatnot tend to be a massive mental drain that can cause burnout, even if you commit to just the smallest amount of work each day. I’ve seen that myself and in friends and others. And it’s really cool to be able to finish something like that, but also perfectly human to only get a little bit of the way through and be like, oh, wait, I don’t really want to do this anymore. Even if you’re drawing something different each day in your head, because you’re doing something as a part of that project, the same project every day, you’re getting a little too used to it and the excitement disappears really quickly. So if you feel like you’ve hit a wall and you want to put the whole thing on pause right now, hey, that’s what I would recommend. After pausing for a bit if you don’t even really want to come back to it, that’s totally okay. You might have even realized through that process of making it that you don’t like the idea you had anymore after getting into it. And that’s okay. You’ve built up some experience in figuring out what you do and don’t like. Or, it could “just” be burnout. If it is, acknowledge it for what it is. Make sure you take care of yourself. Give yourself room for rest and other activities too.

Anonymous

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Another anonymous submission:

I know creating for ourselves is what matters but it’s still demotivating when no one cares about the art I post and put my heart into. I’ll keep creating because I can’t imagine myself doing anything else but sometimes I feel like I don’t belong in the community or I’m not a real artist.

I feel like here it’s important to try to figure out what community is in this context and what that means to you. If it’s a place where it’s a huge social space like a social media platform and you’re not seeing a lot of traction there then relatively like you feel like the tiniest speck right in this big pool of people. And in today’s society we’ve almost been trained by these social media platforms to think that we’re a failure if we’re not making it there but very few people are actually popular on social media, very very few. If it’s a community like a discord server or a topic of interest that’s a little bit smaller, but there’s still a lot of stuff happening. If it’s a focused interest in smaller groups even better. You can kind of see where I’m going with this.

The smaller the group the better, generally, because relatively speaking you as a fraction of that group of that population have more opportunities to share what you make, to communicate with people, get feedback from others, and make friends. Social media even on some of these newer platforms are still fulfilling that popularity addiction that people chase and when you don’t get there it just feels extremely shitty. You can still post in these places and share your art and whatnot but I always recommend making your priority friends and small groups particularly if you can find other people doing the same kind of art that you do, same kind of creations. It might feel like such a small subset of folks depending on the niche but that just means you might well be a trailblazer and you’re gonna have more opportunity to communicate with others to improve and celebrate each other’s successes.

I know that at a surface level this can seem kind of shallow when there’s a lot of complexities to posting and sharing art and making it and it feels like you put in a lot of time into something it should be met with a lot of reward but I still always recommend trying to think about this a little bit. Have that space for you to share and create with others in small spaces. Post to the bigger places too. You can be excited when something does pop off but don’t let it be a part of you or why you make art and I think you know that already; you basically wrote that in your question. On that note there’s also the idea of ratio the effort that you put in versus the reward. Let yourself do some lower effort stuff on occasion. Let yourself do some silly fun goofy things too. Don’t try to make every piece your best because you won’t always be able to do that. Letting yourself relax a little bit and make something a little shitty can be really rewarding too. There’s a reason that people make shit posts and have fun with those in addition to improving. It’s not what we plan for long term as artists but they’re a good break, a good change of pace. It’s fun, can help make you feel a little more included.

NickAc

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NickAc asks:

I struggle with getting started on drawing. I mainly do digital art, sometimes (very rarely) I try to do some scribbles on the paper, but it seems like no matter what I do, I end up complaining about my own art for the lack of skill. I guess I need to change my workflow to make it more fun?

Yes, do involve fun in your workflow. Include that as part of your assigned practice. You need to study to improve your art, but you also need to have fun to make sure that you like to do the thing that you’re doing. Something that I remember seeing was on draw a box. There was a 50% rule of doing at least half of your time as art for fun. Not even following any rules, just whatever the heck you want to do. Because if you only focus on the improvement then… you’re going to get really fixated on how your art looks and just trying to get better each time and it gets super frustrating really fast. Now if you on the flip side only do art for fun, then you might feel like you’re kind of stalling out and draining your creativity pool. Both are things that you can do a little bit too much of. So alternate, do a little bit of both.

You can alternate within the same day, you can flip between days, just make sure you’re actually giving yourself space to do fun doodles and making yourself do it even. Not every day will be a day for improvement. Some days are just silly things, let it happen. My other common tip is to use throwaway paper for sketches and doodles if you feel like you can’t get started. You tell yourself this is something that’s throwaway and once you’re done drawing it you never have to look at it again. And if you accidentally make something you really like and you want to share it, hey cool. But the point of it is to just improve. It’s just experience. There’s no one that’s gonna look at it. It’s just to learn.

Elegy the Bobcat

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Elegy the Bobcat says:

I’ve lost confidence in myself to make progress due to prolonged procrastination, and this loss of confidence has caused even more procrastination, and that combined with distractions and work has made my situation so severe that it feels like I’m being physically restrained from making progress. My procrastination makes me feel like I’m not disciplined to let myself improve.

Okay, so I can relate to a lot of this. Procrastination. A lot of things in life can have this sort of effect where you feel guilty about procrastinating so much that you avoid it even more, especially if you are of the ADHD type. This just kind of becomes a common day-to-day thing where you’re procrastinating from one thing to the next until you finally complete something you feel the most guilty about, and then you don’t even feel like you accomplished anything by the time it was done. If you feel like ADHD describes you, and you’re able to go for a diagnosis if you haven’t, I do recommend talking with a doc. Medication can actually help a lot, but there’s still a behavioral side of it. I still have moments where I procrastinate and feel that guilt. With art, the thing that really is beneficial is that procrastination doesn’t really hurt it functionally.

It’s easy to feel guilty about not practicing art and avoiding doing it because you feel like you’re falling farther and farther behind, but really you’re not. Art is something that you can learn at any age, so it doesn’t really matter when you start or when you continue. It’s something that you can pick back up even after a long time. You’ll be surprised how easily you can. And there’s really no rush because no one’s watching you. No one’s looking at your art progress and judging you for it. It is your space to feel cozy, and that’s how you want it to be, to make it that space where it’s your go-to that you even do art to procrastinate doing other things. Some of it is just telling yourself these mental tricks like, I’m going to start fresh. When I avoided doing art before, procrastinated, doesn’t matter. I’m just going to start again, do some art, and maybe it’ll be like what I was learning. Maybe it’ll be something totally different.

The other side is giving yourself some variety. So I’ve mentioned a couple times in this video now doing stuff to improve, but also for fun. There’s also doing some small sketches on sticky notes so that it feels like less to commit to, almost like you’re sneaking in little bits of drawing throughout the day. If you’ve got any other artist friends, see if they’re interested in being a partner with this, or maybe you hang out in person or on a Discord call and just make silly little doodles. You don’t have to stream them or share them with each other. Can if you want, but just sit on a call and doodle. Lots of little tricks like this to help make it your cozy space instead of the bucket of guilt that it can be.

Eclipse

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Sent in by Eclipse:

I just haven’t been able to find the drive to draw, instead using bases. The last time I had the drive to draw anything was because someone compared what I was doing with bases as being as bad as generating images using AI, and this was about 2 years ago. I keep studying what I’m working with on the bases but can’t find the drive to apply what I have learned.

So the comparison of bases being the same as AI, I hope you know that’s absolutely not true. You’re still doing your own work on something. It’s just part of the work has been started for you by another artist. And if they’ve made it as a base, it’s an artist that made it for that purpose. They’re giving you permission to do that. So it’s kind of like a collab in a sense. And if that’s the way that you find some cozy comforts, that’s totally fine. There’s nothing wrong with that ethically or otherwise.

Now in terms of improving your skill, starting with a base and coloring that in can help you a little bit with your ideas and concepts of colors and shading if you’ve started to approach that. But it won’t really get you too far on your sketching skills, and those are the things that are the tough ones of drawing, but the ones that will really push all your other skills even farther if you practice them. So it’s worth spending some time where you don’t let yourself use bases. And then letting yourself use bases some other times. This whole learning versus fun thing I’ve been talking about a few times in this video, your fun time can be with the bases. Your learning time, try to avoid using them. But also don’t try to draw the same kinds of things because you’ll probably get really frustrated really fast because you’ll be like, oh gosh, there’s this really cool character here that I’m coloring on that base, can I draw it? And then you might not be able to because your skills aren’t there yet. That’s fine. Draw something different, totally different. Try drawing plants, try drawing still life near you, try drawing something simple. Try some art courses if there’s any that you’ve been looking at. Those are great to do because there’s just one thing that you’re going to follow along with. You’re going to have bad art no matter what as you go through this process. You have to find all those pieces of bad art to be able to make the good art. That’s just how learning art goes. And then once you’ve done a little bit of learning, you can go back to doing some bases. That’s your reward for your practice, totally fine. It’s that mixture of both that’s going to keep you motivated.

Blaze

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Blaze writes:

I keep getting distracted and have been trying to get motivated to draw for days. I’ve only finished 3 character drawings and 1 other drawing the past few days when I was aiming to do a lot more, and had set aside so much time to draw that I could have drawn at least 14 character drawings.

Three character drawings and one other drawing, over the past few days, that sounds like a good bit to me. Doing 14, even if you’ve done that sort of thing before… that much? That’s a ton. You might have done it once or twice in little bursts and that made you feel like you can always do that, but that’s really rare. You’ll get those on occasion where you want to just draw a ton and you will, but keeping up with that consistently is super draining. Even if you draw something that only takes you maybe an hour to do, then maybe you’re thinking, alright, I’ve got 16 hours today, surely I could do 10 of those with some lunch and all that. And no, not really, unless you’re super, super excited on any given day, each one’s going to take a lot of your mental capacity, a lot of those spoons, to use an analogy, and that’s all you’re going to get to. And that’s okay.

Sometimes you look at your drawings and you might be like, well, that one didn’t really turn out how I wanted it to and that’s a little bit of mini demotivation there and that takes away some of that mental energy. Sometimes you might be drawing something and that might give you the idea to practice something a bit more and that’s going to use even more mental energy. And everything’s going to vary day to day, so don’t feel like doing only four drawings over a few days is too little, that’s perfectly acceptable, pretty great even. Keeping a consistent practice is a lot better than trying to do a ton. See what your common pace is, it’s probably somewhere in there. Don’t force yourself to stick with such a high pace, because that will lead to burnout. You want to make sure that you’re drawing at a sustainable rate and keeping yourself interested and healthy because that’s how you keep at this long term and not quickly burn out.

That’s it for this round of Art Block. Thank you all for these fantastic questions. Again, apologies I wasn’t able to get to everyone, so much good stuff here. If you missed this round or you do want to try resubmitting your question, you’re absolutely welcome to do that for the next in a couple months. You can even mention in the question and I’ll try to prioritize it. I hope you all stay healthy. Take care of your mental health. Find your own cozy spaces to draw and chase that passion. See ya.