I’ve been drawing now with aplomb since the beginning of this year. I’ve always been pretty good at drawing, and I’ve done it on and off for my entire life, but I’ve never really sat down and focused on drawing, practiced at it every day, and spent time studying the process.
Wow what a difference! It’s hard to tell how much better my drawing is getting until I compare what I’m working on now with what I was doing only a few months ago.
A lot of what is helping me with this breakthrough is exercises involving repetitive drawing of the same object over and over again – for example faces or hands. I will sit down with a pencil and paper and draw dozens of faces or hands, or whatever I am working on. Inevitably the 10th rendering is better than the second. It’s an incredibly rewarding process.
I am simply in love with drawing, painting, and creating art. It fills my soul and gives me happiness. Every single time I sit down with a paper and pencil, pen, or paint brushes, I am learning something. Sometimes what I learn is what doesn’t work, but many times I am developing new techniques, and along with the new techniques come new conceptual ideas.
I used to feel like when we are creative, we are drawing from a fountain, that there is limited creativity to pull from.
I no longer believe that. The more you create, the more creative you become. I’ve lost all fear of creating bad art, not because I don’t do it, but because it doesn’t matter, and because getting through the bad stuff is what gets you to the good stuff.
I recall reading an article once that said a professional painter on average creates something like 80 pieces for every 1 piece that they consider worthy of representing their best work. I quoted that to someone and they expressed skepticism.
I am now really understanding how this works. When you’re consistently creating, you generate a lot of work, not all of it is frame-worthy, but all of it is valuable.
