What do you draw for your daily practise? Q & A.

Having survived the incredibly humbling experience that it was to start making art again in my 30s. Especially after quitting art for so long…it makes me want to share my story. I hope it helps other former artists, make their way back to creating art again.

I go on artist message boards across the internet and when I feel compelled to, I will share some of my experiences. Sometimes people relate, and they ask me for more details. I had some great feedback on my latest response, so I felt it's good to share here too.

The following is a Redditor's question posted to me, and my (very long) response.

Question; What do you draw for your daily practise? I want to draw again too but I never feel inspired and it feels forced?

My response; Honestly, whatever intrigues me. That's the key to getting started and to continuing on with art when life gets tough and you feel like quitting. It's your own personal interest/investment in your growth as an artist that will keep you practising.

An example, for a while I was obsessed with drawing hands. I felt I needed to make drawing hands easy, and the only way to do that is to draw so many hands it becomes second nature. So I spent many weeks, just drawing my left hand splayed out, and holding an egg. Drawing my fingers splayed out, helped me figure out the basics of my hand. Holding an egg gave me the spacial awareness of fingers grasping things. It's one of the harder things to convey, good 3d awareness within a setting.

But

If you personally aren't interested in drawing hands, this will just frustrate you.

So sit with yourself and write a list of things that you personally like/think is fascinating. Maybe it's buildings. Maybe it's insects. Maybe it's plants, or vehicles. On nice weather days, try to go to a local art museum, or check out the graffiti downtown a major city. Look in picture books of worldwide advertisements at the library. Inspiration comes from the most random places, you just have to find it first.

Colors intrigue me as well. I love impressionist painters, and I spent a long time (still do) observing their art, the colors they used, and finding ways to try it out myself with the art I do now.

So some days I'm not necessarily making anything completed with my art. It's a study of the colors I see in a photograph, or it's a crude sketch of my hand. I'm tackling buildings right now, fine architecture and finding my style in that.

The most important thing is that you personally are invested in what you want to start drawing. Everything else will feel like a chore, especially after a long day at work.

If for example, you like the idea of drawing birds wearing sweaters, but you think there's already too much art of birds wearing sweaters- you're just holding the world back from seeing YOUR personal take on birds in sweaters.

There's never enough art. Never enough personal takes of the same thing. It's all delicious, it'll have your personal print, and the world is better for it that you've put it out for us to see.

Because art made with passion is the very best there is. Put your heart into it, the people will find it.

I draw a lot of fanart of my favorite characters, like robots and Star Trek etc. This helps immensely, because I'm excited to practise drawing them, I network with other artists who draw for the same fandom, we challenge each other or do art trades, it fills in the days when I can't find the inspiration on my own. Sometimes generating your own ideas is stressful, so falling back on fanart can be relief.

Sorry for the over explanation, I had many art blocks when I would try to draw something that seemed like "the next step" as an artist, and not what I was personally wanting to do. I've cried a lot at night wondering if this was what I should be doing. There's so many YouTube tutorials, if you want to draw a worm's eye view of a city building, you can watch how they do it and just jump right in and try yourself. The fundamentals make sense when you're having fun with what you're drawing.

Heck, even painting along with Bob Ross videos gets you painting on a regular basis and by the time you're done with him, your work will have improved tonnes from the first painting to the last. And now you've mastered trees, landscapes, mountains and clouds. That's all in your art toolbox, time to add more to it! Onto the next tutorial session!

Hope this made some sense.!!!