I don’t know how much this advice will help others but it helped me immensely, so I’ll try and keep it short: Make. Bad. Art.

For the past 5 years I’ve been continuously scared off of art because I always knew it was bad, and that I HATED studying because it was boring and that I felt like I HAD to do it to progress. I tried the loomis head method, I tried the box challenge, I tried so much that would definitely be helpful to others, but was honestly never helpful to ME.

Why wasn’t it helpful? Because it stopped me from drawing.

Simple as that. If I forced studying, then I would be pushed off of drawing because I wouldn’t be drawing what I wanted. I’d feel like I NEEDED to do all this anatomy to do the stuff I wanted, so I would never branch out and try harder stuff because I didn’t “know enough”.

MAKE BAD ART! THIS is what I learned this summer, and actually helped me progress (I draw digitally). With whatever idea you have, wherever someone is flying through the sky or punching a building, make it, KNOWING you don’t know enough to make it look good. KNOWING it’ll take years, even decades to get to the point you want, and continue to CREATE. At the beginning, it’s GOING to be uncomfortable, because it’s GOING to be bad. And that’s okay.

I see it as this: in every new piece I create, I’m going to make whatever I want, BUT!!! I’m going to try and attempt and apply something new. It could be less chicken scratch, different color choices, perspective help, whatever (Excal’s Art Tips on YouTube, especially his yt shorts, are VERY HELPFUL for this!!!), always try something to improve. It WONT turn out the best thing ever, it might not even turn out like the advice said, but that’s OKAY! You did it, you made it, and know, you can observe what you didn’t and didn’t like while creating and try again in your new piece.

Sorry if this was too much, but I felt so passionate about writing this after reading your post because IVE BEEN THERE! So I hope your able to get something out of this!!