Top 10 Reasons Your Art ISN'T Improving! || SPEEDPAINT + COMMENTARY 

This was so helpful to my mentality around doing studies, using references, and not needing to post everything. I’ve always been stressed about a piece not being perfect when I post it and lately I’ve been trying to make certain pieces that I don’t post and it’s made me appreciate them more

Thanks for bringing up the "never finishing art" thing. Everybody talks about "Always finishing pieces" but I feel like I'm the only one who spends all of my time sketching and practicing with no plan to finish anything and I finish something, like, maybe once a month if that lol

Honestly, it's amazing how changing from: "I want this to be perfect" to "I want this to be excellent" can make your art feel better to work on, too. Thank you for sharing that; as someone overcoming perfectionism myself, it's nice to hear.

I am an artist who focuses mainly on warrior cats characters! Today I tried out drawing a human and it actually turned out pretty nice!

this is unrelated to the vid topic, but that moment at 9:57 of you redrawing the same line 21 times was such a mood

24:58 A trick I’ve learned if you’re too use references with this issue is to map it out on your own face. Say you’re drawing a woman with her hand facing forward with her fingers just below her eyes. What I would do is put the palm of my hand to my chin and find where my fingers land. That’s the baseline. From here you can either draw the full hand and then move it down (digitally) or move your real hand to the appropriate position and reference from there.

Honestly the main thing that helped me improve my art was approaching myself with a “how would a teacher make me study this” attitude. Which lead to me being the kind of artist to download books, use academic illustrations as reference (for humans, animals, objects/weapons and botanicals) take physical notes on what I wanted to learn or things I garnered, and horde a vast library of reference photos through Pinterest (which I’ve meticulously sorted into sections so I can find everything easily)

I can 100% vouch for the references one!! I was always scared to use references because I have a cartoony style. I improved RAPIDLY once I started using references and even if I'm not using a reference, my anatomy is still so much better overall. My art from 2 months ago does not look like my art today and I can still see myself improving every time I use references

For the longest time I was so afraid of deviating from my established art style that I’ve had for years. But once I started drawing more realistic with more stylized shading my art has improved tremendously. You don’t need to be afraid of loosing a brand with an art style if it is holding you back from being the best you can be

When I was younger I made the mistake of only creating finished pieces and I thought that just drawing more (without focus) was all I needed to do. I use to get frustrated a lot and didn't think I was capable of improving at art. Now I have rough sketchbooks where I make studies. I approach things with more curiosity, breaking subjects down, focusing on the parts I struggle with the most and drawing the same things a few times until I feel comfortable with it. It's a lot more fun this way and easier to make time to draw when you're not putting as much pressure on yourself to create something amazing each time.

Something that really helped me is watching speed paints and really really sketchy and messy sketches

Piggybacking onto #8: Your art, not matter how skilled you are, ALWAYS goes through an ugly phase. There's this phase (for me, it's when I start coloring) when everything looks wrong and I hate it. But I keep going, and then it starts looking good. Give it time. And if it still doesn't look good, you can use the piece to learn.

how many videos on a more specific subject do you want to do in the near future? celestia: yes and im looking forward to every one of those

omg so many of these are so relatable! I personally wanna add that your mentality has a lot to do with some of these. I personally had a stint when I was younger where I didn't give myself permission to *want* more for myself as an artist, so it became a self fulfilling prophecy. Sometimes, the idea of failure or not being good enough, or other people not taking your passion seriously, can cause one to put subconscious limiters on if that makes sense? Another piece of advice I wanna say is super important is to understand what the core of your artistic vision is. do you have something specific you want to make or communicate or evoke? if so, that is something that you should really keep in mind so that you can use the fundamentals as tools to reach your goal. people call the fundamentals "rules" which i think might be a scary and stifling term for some people. I prefer to refer to them as tools that you can learn to use and implement at your digression to more effectively make whatever it is you have in mind. That being said, once you're aware of what exactly you're reaching towards, it's much easier to know what critique is valuable to you and what isn't. Ideally, advice and criticism from others should serve the purpose of giving you a new perspective that will better help you gauge whether or not your intentions as an artist are being conveyed effectively, and or where you might be falling a little short. You need to learn how to spot the difference between advice that helps you make what you want to make more effectively vs advice just telling you to do something else entirely. That's just what I think though!

I can totally relate to knowing there is something wrong with your art, but just ignoring it. I used to do this so much, and I only became better at art when I sat down and said, “My shading sucks. Let’s change that.” This made ALL the difference for me and my art.

Here is a simple one: Not using blending modes even if they don't work for you personally at least try them out. They're neat!

Happy new to you DC

Happy New Year!!! Also in 11:10, itis so relatable to me! Whenever I make new characters I rush through with the design of the characters, give them accessories, and call it a day. Then when I look back at my work I think to myself, “Huh… I somehow hate this piece” to the point I edit the entire thing and improve on the coloring of the clothes, the width and length of the body parts (legs, arms, torso, etc), and I somehow like the design but also hate it. Is that normal????? 😅😅😅

I usually use 2 references: the pose I want and the pose from the screenshot or from anime. I am so lazy in practicing my drawing skills that I feel like I'm not improving but when I try to redraw most of my old works, I notice the difference! I was afraid to use references before because I could get called out for it. But then I noticed that because I wasn't directly tracing the references but copying the pose that I can manage to kick that thought out.

The one thing that helped me a lot and finally made me relax is embracing the mistakes and making it an intentional part of the piece if that makes sense (I am a traditional artist so it's a lot harder to undo mistakes lol)

something that helped me improve was learning more about my chosen medium. for digital art for example, learning more about clipping masks and symmetry rulers resulted in a big difference in end results! then there was the moment my brain clicked into place and realised I can just line something on a new layer then connect and merge with the one below it instead of erasing over a line i didn't want erased, I used to HATE lining before that, then I felt stupid for not figuring it out so so SO much sooner omg

i almost shed tears cause you described how i am to a tea- thank you for making this video, i learned a lot from it and i'll be sure to look back at it to help me improve

Perfectionism is something ive strived to get rid of, but is really damn hard to. Just wanting my drawings to be decent dissapoints me in my subconcious and its very frustrating. Great video though! Very informative!

I haven’t done any studies in so long, but I really wanna start doing some more art studies now that I’m making a comic, I feel like this is probably the best time for me to start doing more studies since I have so many new kids of characters, backgrounds, and ideas to be adding to it, thank you for all these tips 💖💖💖

Happy new year! Thank you for posting

Happy New Year Duchess Celestia!

Happy new year! And this video was super helpful, thank you!

When I was younger I used to just draw portraits of ppl (still now-) so when I would try to draw a body it was flimsy and so Iv been trying to draw bodies more

Great advice as always, Celestia. Always love your videos.

love your art style

The past four months ive been making one drawing per month (and one was a watercolour of Christmas ornaments so barely counts) and yet my art has vastly improved so i can say that it really matters to use references and look at your weaknesses, as my art leaped in quality the second i realized my anatomy was slightly off and fixed it and i can kinda draw hands now that i look at pictures of hands (although i had been drawing a lot more before and i will hopefully draw more in the future)

This was very helpful video. I’m an amateur artist and I found many of your points to be insightful, especially those concerning references that I don’t use enough. Thanks a lot

Starting 2022, I've ve had much less time to do art than I used to. Lately I've been trying to get back into drawing more than once a month, and it's been hard because I don't improve at the same rate, I'm not as productive, sometimes it's just HARDER yo draw even if the subject feels like it should be easy. This video helped me gain some fire to improve again. It's nothing I haven't heard before /somewhere/, but since I trust you Celestia to be honest and authentic, hearing it here and all together made it go down a lot easier, haha. I'll be continuing watching a series I started a couple years back on learning environmental art. Thanks and have a great one!

One thing that held me back was a refusal to slow down and get it right the first time. I discovered that if I just slowed down, I could draw a perfect circle instead of drawing quickly, erasing and reworking an oval into a circle.

Art looks great love ur style and vids

The rushing one is definitely how I feel lately with all the new twitter things... thank u... a lot of my pieces are detailed and take a lot of time to line and color. So thank u 💕

for years i've been imagining poses and what not because i don't want to copy from someone else (not completely identical to other's drawing but use the picture as a reference). but your saying on use references is better than doing imagination on what you think the poses and what not made me rethink on it. i really do want to improve drawing so bad but i always thought it was a bad thing on using references on poses on your work. really great advice you are giving and your video really made me rethink on me wanting to improve drawing. since i am not teaching myself on using references or learning shading from other's drawings etc, i am not taking it seriously... but i want to.. thank you for this video!! :3

Yup, things like not practicing certain fundamentals enough, feeling like my art has to be super top-tier to be good enough to even make a living out of it, perfectionism, not practicing drawing other stuff like perspective, and proportions, as far as I can think of now. Feeling like I my art was not good enough to be a professional artist definitely held me back, especially when I didn't use references when I was a teenager unless I was trying to draw an anime or manga character aa close to how the artist drew their characters and their poses as possible. I wish I learned about what you spoke about sooner, ideally before or during my college days! But it's never too late to get better, so that's what I'm going to strive to do and apply at least some of what we can do about it!

I do number 8, I still do. I have so many issues just trying to finish one gosh dang piece! I am working on improving though with stepping out of my comfort zone. It never occurred to me that not finishing 90% of my pieces was a problem, for me at least. Really good job on the video, for me it was really helpful. Thanks a lot and you keep doing awesome things!

Idk how it's for others but every piece I intend to be a fully rendered piece I finish, and I see a LOT of improvement when looking at my art last year and this year. Like I try to do something different each time. I try to avoid simple poses, do extreme lighting, not simplify designs try drawing with lineart or without, always draw effects an backgrounds etc. But still I can see the improvement each time and never get into artblock. I think it's more of what your finishe piece is then that you are constantly finishing them. Because if you study the same thing you would study in well a study?? In your finished piece and take it to the end you'll getbthe same if not more improvement if that makes sense

When I do illustrations, even if I didn't finish a piece at this day I'll come back to it probably a few months later and see what I should change but not totally and fully redraw. I still do the "unfinished" WIPs but it usually just me not deleting the idea I have in when I drew that and implement it on a new drawing and improve that idea. CSP's contest events have me drawing a lot of ideas (and somehow improving) but not fully finishing them nor just finish them due to time constraints and burning out on my other things to draw which is a shame ;; I'll definitely come back to some of those artworks and just post it someday. Also to challege myself on improving I dwelved in comic creating and I must say, it really had me struggle for the past 2 years but I do get excited whenever I color the lineart

Honestly I havent seen any of your videos in a long time (I took a entire, burn it all! i wont touch, talk about or look at art, break from december to a few days ago), and the BIGGEST growth I've ever had in my art was during this break. I was stuck in my style. I couldnt break out of it, even though I wasnt happy with it. And since getting back (And starting using references), my horses, my main drawings, are WAY more anatomically correct, and they bring me much more joy than the weird MLPish style I couldnt break out of. Its not perfect, but the change finally happened just because of a break

I can attest to not drawing frequently.. I’ve always had steady improvement, but after falling into a rut I barely draw from Nov. 2021 to Feb. 2022 and my art really stagnated. When I got inspired again in March I improved drastically all the way to June!

Honestly goals are so important. They help give a more clear vision on what you should work on.

You really got me in almost all of these points

omg this is the exact line of thinking i have like with all the negative and bad stuff

Yeah! I completely agree. I hate perspective with a passion, but I want to make my own animated series so obviously.... I have to draw backgrounds. However I've found the more I force myself to draw perspective backgrounds, the easier it gets and in turn, the more fun I have :)

Great video that even kinda reminded me of some of my own bad habits lol (mainly the references and ESPECIALLY the perfectionism) And though this is definitely another example of something getting in the way of improvement that doesn’t have an overnight fix and might kinda be connected to the point about perfectionism But I’d also like to note that poor mental health or going through a stressful event can also affect someone’s willingness or even straight up ability to be able to improve well…depending on the person. I hope I’m not getting too personal when I say this but I know my art heavily stagnated when I was going through a rough patch in my life and when things started to get slightly better was when I started seen big leaps in improvement again. Again this is FAR FROM a overnight fix cause mental health be a bitch and Sadly I don’t really have good advice to actually fix this cause well…though I lived through it I’m not a therapist. And I hope this doesn’t come off as me treating or telling others to treat mental health like an excuse to never get better. But I think it’s an interesting thing to note that for some people, those very personal struggles can lead to some form of stagnation.

I love racing sims, so a lot of the knowledge and lessons I learned can actually be passed down to art. "slow is smooth and smooth is fast." While this saying has been attributed to the Navy SEALs, this shows that the fastest way to complete an objective satisfactorily, or in my case, have the best 'line' in a race. Is go through the corner the most smooth possible. For art, this stems from the thought process, all the way down to the mechanical action of drawing the line. Too slow, it's wobbly, too fast, the line may be straight, but it could be at an angle you didn't want. In racing, going the 'fastest' around the corner isn't actually good. You'll 'overdrive' the car, slinging it around a corner and instead come out with a jagged and bad racing line. instead, with 'slow-in-fast-out' you end up with an approach that maximizes an optimum time and the earliest point you can put throttle down and develop speed. Same thing with drawing. Rushing will lead to an unsatisfactory process. A lot of this comes with decent visualization skills of the racing line, and knowing how to take the corner before hand. Always thinking ahead. There was a late 60's formula 1 driver. Jim Clark. The best formula 1 racer in history, hands down. (Anyone who says Lewis Hamilton. You're flat out wrong and you should feel bad.) who said "Those who win races are those who think the hardest" The more thought you place into your drawing the better it will become. Just remember not to get ahead of yourself. It's easy to think about line placement of the first two or three lines to make while drawing, but then you get ahead of yourself and speed up, not thinking about the lines you're doing and just "drawing to feel"

I can't tell you how many arguments I've gotten into for number 6. It made me hate the word "subjective" because people would hide behind it and it being"their style"

I’ve scraped so many pieces…I’m also a big perfectionist…this video was really helpful

All begginer or clout chasing artsist know that the secret to being percieved as good and improving at the same time is making yourself sound humble, cause it'll convince your ego that you're both good at art and a good person and it'll inspire you to keep chasing after that approval (as chronically online as that may sound), so instead of posting art and saying "this is my art, and I know it's good, now praise me" you gotta make it sound humble like "I worked on this fully rendered piece for hour, is that a lot? Anyways, I hope you like it, I've been battling with art block for the past few days and this is all I could come up with, I know it might be ugly, sorry, I'll link the speedpaint."

Been drawing humans all my life. But now that I'm an art major at school, I was sorta forced to draw other things. Turns out it's so, so fun to draw bugs and birds, something I've never drawn before. Now, I combine drawing stuff like backgrounds and objects with bugs and birds. Try new stuff and trick your brain in the process, my friends

I relate hard on your Perfectionism reason. I think I'm have really high standards. It makes my art taking too long time to finish. I piece character art without background takes one week even months to finish. I even didn't made a background because it ruins the character and I felt I can't do background. After finish my art I often thinks my art doesn't good and always look my mistakes, a small mistake like the shading strokes does not match to what I want, the brush doesn't blend like I want and others. It make even worse because I have OCD. Recently I exercised separate thing like only sketch and background only and it really helps me. Also think your art only 80% perfect. I hope you make the Perfectionism video on the future.

30:00 It was me yesterday. I was redrawing the same hand in an awkward angle over and over again, losing the sense of time. At the end, it was about right so I moved on. I feel improvement a bit. But it wasn't as good as my favorite artist that I'm trying to reach. Never have imagined that looking at the works of my favorite artist can give me depression angry and envy like that.

Under which circumstances should you give up trying to improve? The art community seems to be talking about nothing but improvement so I hardly ever thought about not improving

I would love to tell my story, but uh, so I want to an art high school for 4 yrs (I graduated this yr) and I have improved my art throughout those years but it has genuienly DRAINED my motivation, passion, and just overall like inspiration and creativity to the core, and I keep looking for videos to help this burnout cause I need to do something I WANT to improve and my friends tell me I need a break and im like I cant theres so much art I consume thats amazing I wanna just be goood as that and i keep forcing myself, I rarely draw like once every couple weeks, because it feels like a chore to me I just wanna be happy drawing again :( and easing into it is hard

This was really helpful for me because I think that just because I want to stop posting on social media, it means that I should stop drawing entirely or even strive for improvement but that is far from the truth! I can still work towards improving in my art, except I'm not sure how to tell if I'm actually improving if I don't post it on social media? Regardless, I really enjoyed this video, it was really well done :)

One thing I learned, at least for me personally, is that using strict guidelines or even using guidelines at all when drawing really holds back the quality of my art. I’m not sure if this applies to everyone because I haven’t seen many people who don’t use guidelines when sketching, but it works for me!

Oh man I feel so called out with a lot of these!😂

funny enough i've dealt with most of these and fixed it on my own, i still struggle with rushing as i'm a fast drawer with ADHD.. but ik what i need to improve on and am trying to do those things so i think i'm on the right track (i've also been improving a lot lately from stopping doing some of these)

I love ur art

I’m constantly burnt out and barely have the energy to draw and when I do get energy I’m only able to do a little doodle. I’m also struggling with perfectionism and I don’t know how to get out of it cause it’s making it hard to draw and actually finish a piece.

Early to a video?!? I better think of a funny one liner quick!

I've been trying to learn how to Art more recently still a complete newbie. The perfectionist thing sounds like the big brother/sister to what I've heard other artists say to avoid is spending to much time on one particular part of a piece. IE making this one little part better and better rather than going "Okay that's good enough cause 90% of everyone won't notice anyway."

Great video. All you said are very valuable advices. But since you asked I personally find finishing all my art to not ruin my improvment. I don't see enjoyment in doodling, I like looking at finished piece, so I very rerely leave my art unfinished, usually it's only when I try some concept and I don't like it entirly at the sketch stage, but that doesn't happen too often, I will usually push to the end even if I don't like the sketch, because mayby I can polish it and make it look better, and sometimes I do. I generally try my best everytime I draw but I try to not think that it has to be perfect every time so I do try a lot of new things, and in my experiance getting them finished helps me improve more, because I can improve it on more then just one stage. But I'm not saying it won't be beneficial to other people to just doodle some stuff and leave stuff unfinished

To be honest, the one about staying in the comfort zone hits home for me, I always keep saying "I wanna do more of This or get better at drawing That" and then I never do because I don't let myself be bad at things. I'm slowly getting better at this though.

27:53 god this is so true for me, im trying to improve it but god is it hard

For quality content like yours, the length of the video is not that important. Every minute here was valuable. 👍

Thank you sm, I really needed this, I love art but I thought abt quitting it because its been years and my art still looks so bad

Okay, here we go... *1. Not drawing enough* Yup. I am 100% guilty of that, and I am not ashamed or unwilling to admit it. Out of everything on this list, I think this is _by far_ the single, biggest thing that’s impacting me right now. I have been working this year to start tackling this issue, and I need to be better about it. So far, though, I have gone from “years without touching art” to “drawing some days”, so that is definitive progress. Despite what you said about this, I personally would like to actually draw every single day; I enjoy art enough that I find that idea appealing. Obviously I’m not gonna go full-on 6+ hour sessions, but at the very least I’d like to sit down and draw for maybe an hour each day. *2. Not drawing consciously / critically* I’d say that this is also a big issue that I had for most of my life as an artist, and one that I really only came to learn about in the past year. I feel that this is a result of a problem with society as a whole pushing the narrative of art as being a “talent”, and treating artists like they have this gift of being able to naturally draw well. (This is the contributing factor to why I’ve personally given up and have been unhappy with my art for so long.) I never viewed art as what it actually is: a skill that is _taught_ and _developed_ over time, and that’s because I was fooled by this whole bull concept of making people think they can “just do it”. Needless to say, I’ve finally begun the important process that I was missing for all those years: actually _learning_ about how to do art. *3. Unaware of weaknesses* This point I think can sort of fall under the same umbrella as the prior one, ie that I wasn’t aware of it until now. As far as this topic goes, I think the big lesson I’ve learned so far is that the idea of “practice makes perfect” is nonsense, because in order to stop making mistakes you must first be aware of the fact that you _are_ making mistakes in the first place, and knowing how to properly identify what they are to be able to correct them. It’s something that I think I will likely struggle with, going forward, but what matters is that I am able to recognize the importance of doing this. *4. Staying in comfort zone* I don’t think I necessarily have an issue here anymore. I absolutely want to be able to draw things that I’m not currently capable of, and have made an effort to do so. The problem that I came to in the past, which I won’t be repeating from this point on, is that when I wasn’t able to draw something that was foreign to me, my response was to quit art all together. Since then, I’ve come to learn about certain aspects of human psychology, including the principle of associating an act with a negative emotion - as in, if you give up in frustration on art and stop doing it, you come to associate the _act of drawing_ with the feelings of frustration, which in turn makes you not want to do art in the first place. The lesson there is to control that impulsive habit to give up and drop the hobby, and instead manage that emotion and rewire your brain to make a positive (or at least neutral, at the start) association. *5. Not using references* _Ho-boy,_ was this one an eye-opener for me. Again, going back to Points 2 and 3, this is something that I never learned to do until today, and it has made art feel less challenging than before (when I tried to just make it all up in my head, like we all started out doing). I have been properly educated on the importance of multiple references, so no worries there. I think my actual issue is merely the act of not physically _looking_ at the reference photos as often as I should be. I get tunnel-visioned onto that sheet of paper or canvas so easily. *6. Using style as an excuse* I don’t have a style, thanks to my incredible lack of consistent practice and time investment, so I don’t think I even _can_ make this mistake, currently. I’m basically still feeling my way around in the dark, as far as artstyle goes. *7. Rushing* Pfft. *Pfft!* I am the World’s Slowest Literally-Everything. If there is any problems that I am going to suffer with the speed of my art, “going too fast” is definitely not on my end of the spectrum. *8. Never finishing art* Of the two, this is probably my bigger problem. The last time I think I drew a finished piece of art was back in high school, which at the time of writing this, I graduated ten years ago, come this Summer. I think if you’ve seen what I’ve talked about before, in regards to my history with art, and with giving up on art, it’s probably easy to guess as to why that’s the case. *9. Always finishing art* So, in contrast to this contents of this section, I will say that this is the one I want to focus on the most. I’d like to reach a point where I am regularly finishing pieces, because I think it will vastly improve not only my skills, but also help to revitalize my love of art when I actually look at a full, complete piece for the first time in so long. But I do also understand the importance of having “throw-away” sketches that exist purely for practice’s sake, so I won’t be neglecting to do those, too. *10. Perfectionism* Frankly, this is a problem that I suffer with in _all_ aspects of my life, and is probably the source (at least partially) of my very slow progress at art. My dilemma with fixing perfectionism is that because it is so deeply ingrained into my mind, and I worry about things not being perfect so often, it makes it difficult for me to understand where the line is drawn between when I am fixing something because it’s _actually wrong,_ and when I’m simply obsessing over perfectionism. I feel like that may sound like a weird thing to some people, but for me it’s definitely something I have trouble understanding. Out of everything on this list, I feel like this could end up being the most challenging one to overcome, at least in my case.

Nearly all of these reasons applied to me. I feel like a bit of an outsider when it comes to making art, since I only started a couple years back, and know literally zero fundamentals. I wish I knew how to effectively learn art stuff while still having fun with it, but I always just default to drawing what I enjoy, which has caused it to stagnate for about a year now.

You know, I used to draw a lot as a kid, but kinda' fell out of it towards my late teens. I've picked up other hobbies since, most artistic in nature, but I wonder why I've lost the drive to draw specifically. Now, I can easily identify why I started in the first place... I was bored out of my mind in a miserable school with boring textbooks that lacked any interesting illustrations and I needed to fix that! The teachers weren't happy about my work, but I maintain that I was providing a valuable service!

I've went from drawing with like, 40 brush thickness to a constant 10, and it's only cuz of wanting to draw book covers or fanart n stuff- I've also discovered my style, which is cewl

Me as a non-artist listening this video: Interesting But seriously, these advices are good for literally anything involving creativity

I haven’t been this early go one of your videos before

Awesome video but my doubt I'm having is now that, when using reference, does it tend to be the persons reference of how they use it, for example, I want to do a specific hand, I look at this reference and try my best to do it, but is this a wrong way of how to use references orrr

'Sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something' - Jake the Dog

Celestia, i really need a second pair of eyes on this but is it okay to use other peoples art as a reference? because that's what i have been doing for a while, even when i was 8. Lately it came to me that what if this is classified as art teft or falls into some other category .

I think some of these overlap with writing as well

Using other artist not as inspiration but as benchmarks of how good my art was relative to their's.

What about what you practice drawing?

I had the problem of being so arrogant about my art that I thought I was too naturally good to learn the basics. I am paying for it greatly in my 20s.

I started to not use my ipad due to perfectionism because I could not finish any of my art on it since its really old and the touchscreen doesnt make my art as what I want it to be

I have arrived!

Firstly: great video and I think it’s gonna be helpful to me even if I swear I knew half of this I think I needed the reminder. Secondly let me say to anyone reading this, listen to the point about references and style for the love of god. My dumbass spent all of middle and half of high school bulshiting my way through art without references and calling it a style. If the style was bad screencaps from a 2005 shoujo anime then I guess I did that. Point being: references, or risk being 90s bl manga or smth equally terrifying

14:12 Rewatching this video and forgot how nice it feels to be called a god out of nowhere.

oh man. i do this cycle too.I draw intensely for a few months and then just play games for a year or sometimes even eh many- and lost eeeeeeeevvvvvvvvvvvveryyy skill. my selfhate and or lack of selfworth tho makes me rarely if ever draw my ocs (or god forbid finally start a webtoon) I like fanarts. cuz i can reach out to other fans. yeh. well thats bad aint it

knowing the fundamentals allows you to mess with them because you then know how/where they should be

Sadly I believe that I am under most if not all of these points, 8 and 10 especially since I've kinda just given up on my younger self's dream of creating a webcomic and drawing as a whole..

I will say, references are amazing and defiantly worth the time to look one up, however since the majority of the time I draw im only drawing bc im motivated to do so, taking 30 minutes to find the references that I should idealy be getting, causes me to become frustrated and annoyed and I no longer feel like drawing. And yes, ik that this situation can be helped by learning how to get better references quicker, but its still an incredibly annoying thing to look up.

I don’t post my art online except in discord servers in critiquing channels. I make art because I personally enjoy making it and that’s it. To be fair, I’ve never cared about what other ppl think of me

Does anyone have any tips about drawing dinosaurs, sharks or birds?

Ironically, When I go months without drawing; For some reason my art seems to improve a little bit more. Things I was once struggling with I no longer have a problem with. I don't know maybe I'm just weird.

I Like to draw something big Atleast once a month! It’s fun to challenge myself with one new big project each month! Right now… it’s painting 😂😭

I feel so called out. 😂

I tend to never use references 😅 And I have my comfort zones, although once in a while I try out different things.

I'm listening to this video as I'm drawing a pokemon fusion XD (I usually draw more humanoid characters)

Drawing for other ppl (social media and irl ppl approval) was def detrimental. Like i love drawing gay ships but i know its p looked down upon irl so i didnt and drawing felt like a chore. Now i draw whatever and am a lot happier

I do a little bit of all of these 💀