You’ll never get the talent if you never draw, so even if you think it’ll be shit draw it anyway. Ignore skill level and stop treating it as a barrier instead of a challenge. That’s how I improved, when I stopped caring about whether I thought I could pull off a picture. Now I just attempt to draw it and if I fail to achieve the effect I want I try again and see what I can do differently the next time. Caring too much about whether I was skilled enough or whether the outcome would be good every time held me back because I became too reluctant and scared to start any projects.
There’s also something so satisfying about looking at a finished picture that you made by yourself. Like I’ll be thinking the whole time how I really screwed this one up and it turned out nothing like what I wanted, but I’ll keep scratching away until it’s “done.” And it feels… Really really good.
And then a week later I’ll open my notepad and see what I drew and be like “whoa this is pretty cool actually!” There’s usually at least one part about a drawing I like (like a bit if shading that looks cool, even by accident), that I can take with me as something to focus on attempting.
Just keep doing that and eventually people will just say about you “oh man so-and-so is a really good drawer you should see their stuff” and you know you’re still learning, always learning, but still you’ll believe them. You’ve become a good drawer. An artist.
A thing to bear in mind is that you will never feel satisfied with your art, not even when you’re skilled enough to be able to capture the ideas in your head right now. That’s because as you execute your current ideas, you will cultivate newer and greater ideas that require you to keep pushing yourself.
It hurts sometimes, but it’s ultimately positive. It’s important to keep perspective of progress
I mean YMMV. When I put in an effort to refuse the urge to think or say negative things about my art and tried to come up with general ideas rather than a specific image I had in my mind that the real project would never be able to replicate, I found I became a lot more satisfied with my own work because I was no longer comparing the results to an impossible to achieve version of it that I had in my head nor was I constantly hyperfocusing on the flaws. I instead just targeted aspects I wanted to improve at the most.
Also don’t be afraid of being very specific about your medium. I did get into drawing somewhat but once I realised just how much work acquiring certain skills would’ve been, in particular around shading, I tossed all of that and focussed on sculpting where I don’t have to do work a GPU can do for me. I can bloody program the GPU to do projection and physically-accurate shading, could do that for a good decade back then, I’m not going to do it in my head.
So start up blender and give it a whirl. Only thing you need is a PC that’s not entirely ancient (though a beefy one is certainly nice) and a graphics tablet. (Don’t sculpt with a mouse. I mean you can give it a spin to get a conceptual impression but the results will never be good due to lack of control and your index finger is going to die – if you don’t want to buy a tablet right now try hard- and subsurface modelling).
Youtube is your friend, start here if you never used blender (and enable right-click select, last video, to instantly be a pro) because blender on first startup indeed looks like this, then do the obligatory owl and by that time youtube should know what you’re doing and recommend stuff.
Everyone who is really amazing at art started out pretty sucky, people just don’t see the starting work of the amazing artists they see online. I totally agree with your points and this applies to writing, working out, anything needing sustained effort for improvement.
Work on it, OP! You will be surprised at how quickly you improve after doing something consistently for a year.
You’ll never get the talent if you never draw, so even if you think it’ll be shit draw it anyway. Ignore skill level and stop treating it as a barrier instead of a challenge. That’s how I improved, when I stopped caring about whether I thought I could pull off a picture. Now I just attempt to draw it and if I fail to achieve the effect I want I try again and see what I can do differently the next time. Caring too much about whether I was skilled enough or whether the outcome would be good every time held me back because I became too reluctant and scared to start any projects.
okay this is actually really motivating
Great!
There’s also something so satisfying about looking at a finished picture that you made by yourself. Like I’ll be thinking the whole time how I really screwed this one up and it turned out nothing like what I wanted, but I’ll keep scratching away until it’s “done.” And it feels… Really really good.
And then a week later I’ll open my notepad and see what I drew and be like “whoa this is pretty cool actually!” There’s usually at least one part about a drawing I like (like a bit if shading that looks cool, even by accident), that I can take with me as something to focus on attempting.
Just keep doing that and eventually people will just say about you “oh man so-and-so is a really good drawer you should see their stuff” and you know you’re still learning, always learning, but still you’ll believe them. You’ve become a good drawer. An artist.
A thing to bear in mind is that you will never feel satisfied with your art, not even when you’re skilled enough to be able to capture the ideas in your head right now. That’s because as you execute your current ideas, you will cultivate newer and greater ideas that require you to keep pushing yourself.
It hurts sometimes, but it’s ultimately positive. It’s important to keep perspective of progress
I mean YMMV. When I put in an effort to refuse the urge to think or say negative things about my art and tried to come up with general ideas rather than a specific image I had in my mind that the real project would never be able to replicate, I found I became a lot more satisfied with my own work because I was no longer comparing the results to an impossible to achieve version of it that I had in my head nor was I constantly hyperfocusing on the flaws. I instead just targeted aspects I wanted to improve at the most.
Also don’t be afraid of being very specific about your medium. I did get into drawing somewhat but once I realised just how much work acquiring certain skills would’ve been, in particular around shading, I tossed all of that and focussed on sculpting where I don’t have to do work a GPU can do for me. I can bloody program the GPU to do projection and physically-accurate shading, could do that for a good decade back then, I’m not going to do it in my head.
So start up blender and give it a whirl. Only thing you need is a PC that’s not entirely ancient (though a beefy one is certainly nice) and a graphics tablet. (Don’t sculpt with a mouse. I mean you can give it a spin to get a conceptual impression but the results will never be good due to lack of control and your index finger is going to die – if you don’t want to buy a tablet right now try hard- and subsurface modelling).
Youtube is your friend, start here if you never used blender (and enable right-click select, last video, to instantly be a pro) because blender on first startup indeed looks like this, then do the obligatory owl and by that time youtube should know what you’re doing and recommend stuff.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
start here
obligatory owl
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Funny you mention blender, I’ve been working with it for a couple years, and just started on maya a year ago.
Fallen to the dark side, you have. Train your mind to resist, you must.
Everyone who is really amazing at art started out pretty sucky, people just don’t see the starting work of the amazing artists they see online. I totally agree with your points and this applies to writing, working out, anything needing sustained effort for improvement.
Work on it, OP! You will be surprised at how quickly you improve after doing something consistently for a year.