Use Your Old Sketchbooks To Take A Trip Down Memory Lane - And Discover How You Are Kinder To Yourself After That
I draw better today but enjoy looking at my first feeble steps on this path. Looking at your older work allows you to be kinder to yourself. Sure, there are mistakes in your work, but look how far you have come!
What Are The Pros And Cons For Showing Your Artistic Work Early?
You get rewarded with a dopamine hit immediately. You are less likely to continue because you already got that rewarding dopamine hit you usually only get after you finish things.
The Met Open Access Has Amazing Images!
You can find a small selection of them on the website nowSo that's the problem with social media: occasionally, very occasionally, there is a true gem hidden in all that content, and that gem makes it all worth your while again. Do away with social media, and unfortunately, lose exposure to these as well.
A Decluttered Workspace Makes You Far More Productive As An Artist
Consider it a part of your drawing routine; do it when you need a break, and your workspace has become too cluttered.
The Curious Case Of The Creative Challenge
People were discussing challenges on the Discord server the other day, and that got me thinking about challenges. Why do artists crave them?
Join Our FREE Lynda Barry Making Comics Read-Along Workgroup!
Join our free workgroup!Let’s learn to enjoy drawing like a child again! We’ve started a Discord group to read through and tackle the exercises in Lynda Barry’s fantastic book, Making Comics, and we’d love for you to join us.
If You Want To Do Something, Just Start, And Figure Out Along The Way How To Do It
If you plan to go on some journey, start. Create, look back at it later, and see how it went and how you feel about it. Figure out what you want to change. You find out what works for you by doing.
An Improved Art Critique Server
The philosophy behind this server is that if students can become each other’s critique-givers, it could theoretically handle any number of students because the number of critique-givers would grow equally fast.
The Pleasure Of Finding Out How To Draw Things Is All It Has To Be
Many artists started like that at a young age. “Woah, Spiderman looks cool! I wonder if I can draw that!” And then being able to draw it from memory later is satisfying.
How To Figure Out What To Draw Or Paint
If you don’t know what to draw, develop other activities, and see if you can draw for that. Working out? You could develop illustrations for that. Setting up a shop? You could do drawings on the shop window. Creating a website? Collecting favorite recipes? Keeping a diary? See if you can combine these with drawing!
Ponderings On Being A PRO Or Amateur, And An Attractive Alternative
Long ago, an acquaintance applied for a job in oceanic research that involved scuba diving. What I found particularly interesting about that back then was that she had to
pay to do that job! She wasn’t paid, she wasn’t even doing it for free. No, she had to pay to be allowed to do the job. Imagine people lining up for the cool job of scuba diving for scientific research.
Is This What The Human Side Of The Web Will Be In The Near future?
What Advice Would YOU Give YOURSELF?
Is it what they will tell me? I don’t know for sure, but the advice I imagine they give me almost always works!
Purple Swans
With drawing, it doesn't work that way! What is “true”? What is “a fact” when drawing? I can draw a hyper-realistic portrait, which is one representation of a person. I can also draw their caricature, one that deviates significantly from their true appearance, but that instead conveys their character, their personality. Which one of these two is more “truthful”?
A New Way To Do Value Studies!
I shared the new surround-view images of the statues I posted about last week and was thinking about the mistake I made of photographing at a too-fast shutter speed, resulting in unnecessarily noisy images, and fell into the rabbit hole of looking for solutions.
New Statues On The Website
I have been doing my memory-drawing exercises with a twist: I try to draw things rotated from imagination. This also forces me to understand the underlying simplified 3D forms and to come up with the details you only see from other angles.
The Art Of Noticing (Five Things)
And how it will make you and others better artists.What to do instead of doom-scrolling on your phone? Well, put your phone away, lock in to something near you, and start studying it, noticing five things about it. It will make you a better artist!
An Intervention!!!
And I am still in denial.A few extremely kind souls on the Discord banded together and took a lot of time to convince me to slow down, take a step back, stop coding on the website, and think of the bigger picture for the website.
Is There Such A Thing As Being Original?
Something extraordinary is happening lately: after one of my newsletters goes out, a larger YouTube account happens to release a video on the same topic!
Two Opposing Views On Art Block
One of my mother’s best friends, Jill, an artist, just started a podcast, and the first episode is fantastic! It is delightful to listen to while drawing.
Many Cool Updates To The Website
I haven’t been reporting on all the cool new features added to the website recently. That is because I was too busy creating these cool things! Someone is helping me go over the website, actually using it, and reporting on where it can be improved, which has sped up the process considerably.
The 20/80 Rule For Drawing Practice
Many people on our Discord want to “practice the fundamentals first” before they are “ready” to do the thing they want to do. Draw boxes, learn perspective, anatomy, and so on, before starting to make comics.
On The Nature Of Habits
It would be helpful to read within the context of Practice Drawing This, because one common struggle is that we find it hard to find time to draw, but have no problem procrastinating by wasting hours on social media.
The Easy Way To Become The Best In The World At Something
You will only find out whether it is also a good idea after you try.
