#im very artblocked & been drawing non people stuff for work a lot lately

[hamsrkgk]

tilda/lis sketch

[finalset]

hi, i just found your art and i love it! may i ask a stupid question? did you go to art school or did you teach yourself?? if self taught, do you have any advice? im a self taught artist and i want to get better lmao. i just love how beautiful your work is, very inspiring!

Thank you!! and it’s not stupid! I didn’t go to art school or anything (I did take the elective art classes late in middle school and in early hs too but I’d been drawing since before then and I took those as a requirement to be able to take painting, which I never ended up doing though) so I’d consider myself self taught.

Ok this ended up being long so hopefully it’s not super overwhelming but I hope it helps!

so what has helped me a lot has been thinking about my subject in a 3D sense, I usually try to understand why whatever I’m drawing is structured the way it is. So usually w my portraits I’ll think about the skull underneath or I’ll think about parts you can’t see (like an ear or a nostril if they’re turned slightly etc) on the reference image and it helps me make sense of what I’m seeing.

also drawing parts in relation to another helps a Lot, so I’d line up like the edge of an eye to the corner of the mouth and draw a bunch of lines connecting parts like that to make sure everything is properly distanced and that helps a lot with keeping proper proportions! (you can still do this with non portraits though, looking at negative space is a game changer)

starting sketches w vague shapes and then slowly going more into detail also helps and it’s less daunting than thinking your first few marks need to already be accurate and defined.

for the mental part of it I think understanding every time you draw it doesn’t have to be a Piece will help put the pressure off and it allows u to not be worried about mistakes. (It also makes room for experimentation) Also I used to be very caught up in being upset how my art style isn’t as good as other people’s but realizing no one’s art will ever look like anyone else’s (even if they’re copying) helped me value my work and see it as it’s own entity that doesn’t need to be critically compared to anyone else’s, that’s also just not how it works anyway. that also allowed me to grow quicker when I was able to push mental barriers like that away and work on what I enjoy about making art.

Also artblock is a thing that happens to everyone, I either accept I’m gonna make stuff I don’t like for a while or if I straight up have no inspiration then I need to distract myself in the meantime. Getting into a new or revisiting an old medium does help let you think differently about your art and could help you get out of artblock too though. also drawing a lot of whatever you like does so much for improvement bc then it’s just lots of practice so don’t feel weird ab being obsessed w something or like going through a phase bc it all helps you improve anyway plus you’re spending time on stuff you enjoy too.

Ok ik this ended up being a lot lol but these are some things i feel like have been very important to me as an artist, a lot of these are things I actively use or have to remind myself of still. I also didn’t wanna just be vague like ‘keep going, practice a lot! Don’t compare urself!’ etc. so I hope this was useful & feel free to ask more if you have any questions later too!