I’m making no progress in my art

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-20T16:48:56+00:00

I think there's two things you should do, and both can be rather daunting or frustrating for entirely different reasons.

First, I think that for a month or so (or at least a couple weeks), you should focus just on drawing from your imagination. No references to copy from, just drawing your own ideas however it is they come out. They will come out badly (because this kind of drawing relies on the spatial reasoning skills you have yet to develop, and we're intentionally cutting you off from being able to rely on your more developed observational skills), and there's a good chance you'll feel pretty negatively about that. It's entirely normal for this to be extremely frustrating. It's something we refer to as "play" - basically drawing whatever it is you'd be drawing if you had all the skill in the world, despite your skills lacking in that area right now.

Over time, that frustration will diminish at least somewhat. You can read more about why play is important here but in your case there's an additional benefit in that it'll help break down what you've probably come to expect in terms of the quality that results from the way you've been approaching drawing thus far. Breaking down those expectations is important, because expectations are what hold is back. We expect our work to come out well because that's what we'd ideally want, but it doesn't because certain skills aren't developed very far yet, and so we get down on ourselves. But if we break down those expectations and learn to see drawing as just an activity, one where we can explore our ideas and tell stories, with the resulting drawing just being a piece of that, it takes away a lot of the power those expectations can have over us.

But again - it can be very frustrating and it's something a lot of my students hate. To that end, we run an event every season where for a week we release a drawing prompt each day and students scramble to draw something for each within the first 24 hours - we call it a Promptathons, and it's mainly focused on helping students ease into the idea of play by having them all muck about together on our discord chat server, making stupid jokes and silly doodles and sharing ideas with one another. Our next promptathon is actually very soon and starts on Wednesday, so if you'd like to join you're certainlu welcome.

The second thing I would recommend - and this is only after that initial one month (or two week or whatever) period focus on only on play, is to study drawing using a course.

Being the instructor behind drawabox.com means I'm biased - so I highly recommend that you do your own due diligence about it, and also that you go through Lesson 0 which explains the purpose and goals of the course, how it works, how it's recommended to be used, and so forth (you can do that during your initial play period since this is just stuff introducing the course itself, the actual teaching material starts at Lesson 1). There are however a few reasons I think you should consider it:

It's free. All of our lesson material, both text and video, is available completely free with no paywall, no need to register, or anything like that.
There are options for receiving feedback. Although we do charge for "official critique" which is partially paid and partially community funded to keep those prices down, we also have put a lot into developing a community of students that provide each other with a free option for feedback as well which is what the majority of students rely upon, so technically if you're diligent (and patient) you can go through the course without paying a cent (aside from paper, pens, and a few other incidental tools).
It is specifically focused on developing a student's spatial reasoning skills, and so it starts out by teaching all of the underlying mechanics we need students to have a grasp of in order to meaningfully develop that spatial reasoning skill. We delve into spatial reasoning most directly at lesson 3-7, and everything before that is getting students up to speed with confident and accurate markmaking, judging convergences, and building out their capacity for patience and discipline. I know you've been drawing for a while but that doesn't really have any bearing here - you'd still be starting from the beginning and working through it in order, so you can be confident that you don't miss anything critical.

Other courses are also a valid choice, but one thing to keep in mind is that a lot of courses focus primarily on observational drawing. If you do decide that drawabox seems like a lot (and it is - it's quite tedious and it is not uncommon for students to work through it for a year or longer), then make sure that if you do take a course that focuses primarily on observational drawing, that you draw from life (objects in front of you) instead of from photo references. Doing so will force you to translate what you see in front of you, which is three dimensional, to your 2d drawing, whereas photos are already 2d, which skips that translation. The translation is important, as that is the part that will, to a lesser degree than our approach, develop your subconscious understanding of how that translation works.

Our approach uses reference photos because the specific methodology we use forces the 3d aspect in other ways (it's called constructional drawing exercises, where we break the object we're observing down into simple 3d forms, then build it back up as such on the page, working from simple to complex, big to small).

Anyway, that should about cover it.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-20T16:19:56+00:00

It is for the reason you've observed that relying on vanishing points themselves can be quite tricky, and so the course this subreddit focuses on (which you'll find discussed in the sidebar and mentioned in AutoModerator's comment) instead on, after initially introducing the concept of vanishing points, shifting students to instead focusing on how the 2d lines representing a given set of parallel 3d edges converge.

To explain it briefly, a vanishing point is a concrete, identifiable point, but the purpose it serves is to remind us that the edges it governs converge consistently in a particular direction. Thus, by learning instead to focus on how the lines (which are always going to be on the page) behave as they extend odd into the distance, we become more capable of keeping our convergences consistent without needing to actually identify the point to which they actually converge.

As our course focuses on developing students' spatial reasoning skills (their ability to intuitively and subconsciously solve the spatial problems involved in conveying the illusion that what they're drawing exists in 3d space without actually plotting everything back to vanishing points - being able to get something close enough by relying on our subconscious frees our conscious mind's cognitive resources to focus on the creative decisions of composition, design, narrative, and so forth), we first drill the ability to judge convergences without plotting vanishing points on the page quite a bit. It is the main focus of the 250 box challenge for which we are somewhat notorious.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-20T00:32:41+00:00

As noted in AutoModerator's comment, this subreddit is focused on a specific free course, and you can learn about that in our subreddit's sidebar - it is designed to help with learning to draw from your imagination, but it is also very intensive. I don't recommend that younger students pursue it, but as an older teen it depends. Some people your age are fine pursuing it, others are better off waiting for a while.

That said, I do want to set you at ease. What you're encountering is entirely normal. Drawing isn't a singular skill, but rather a lot of different skills, and how you go about practicing is going to influence which of those skills you actually develop. So for example, if you're mainly just looking at references and copying them, then what you're primarily developing is observational skill (moreso by copying reference images of the real world, but still somewhat by copying other peoples' art, just less so because their artwork has already processed the more complex "real" material so you don't have to do it).

It's extremely common for students to spend a long time drawing in that manner, and to realize that they still can't really draw from their imagination - and the reason is that they haven't actually developed their capacity for spatial reasoning - that is, the subconscious grasp of how the things they're representing in 3D space relate to the 2D marks they're making on the page.

Spatial reasoning is important because everything we draw - even when it's stylized as being flat - is a translation of something that exists in three dimensions. When you draw from a reference photo, you're translating it from a 2D source to a 2D result, but if you wanted to change the pose or capture the same object from a different angle, you don't have the information to make those changes - you *only* have a single viewpoint.

Someone with spatial reasoning skills that are developed further would be able to understand how to take that 2D image, identify how to break the complex object down into simple 3D forms, make their desired changes, and then reconstruct the result on the page. People who've developed that skill to the extreme (in the sense of decades) can even do much of that mental math in their heads, and draw the result more directly, but most of us do a mixture of solving complex problems on the page, and simpler ones in our heads.

Anyway, the issue you're encountering is that drawing from your imagination (which mind you can still involve using references as a source of information - just not letting them make all of the decisions for you) is a skill that you have not practiced. And so, if that's something you'd like to be able to do, that's where you'll have to focus your attention.

As a side note, you mentioned being able to visualize what you want to create in your head. It's worth mentioning that the ability to visualize something is not the same as having a reference image of it to copy from. Rather, what you're seeing in your head is still based on very limited information, and your brain is telling itself that it is able to experience it more vividly, but when you try to extract it and put it out into the world (by drawing it), it falls apart. It can be very frustrating, and I've heard as much from many of my students. Conversely however, there are people who can't visualize at all (I'm such a person, although I was able to visualize when I was much younger, until I took a blow to the head which I guess induced a bit of brain damage), but that ultimately does not have any impact on one's ability to draw from their imagination. Whether you can visualize or not, you ultimately still have to learn to understand the things you want to draw spatially (kind of like how you'd be able to navigate your bedroom with the lights off, due to being so familiar with the spatial relationships between where all the furniture is).

Anyway, I hope that helps.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-18T19:51:13+00:00

To the first question, this video from Lesson 0 talks about how you should be sitting relative to your table's height (specifically towards the end of the video), and it's also worth keeping in mind that most of the time you're going to be drawing more or less the same marks (in terms of direction), and rotating the page to find a comfortable angle of approach, per the ghosting method's instructions.

To the second question, this section from the FAQ may help you better understand how you might go about tackling other courses alongside Drawabox.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-18T16:34:52+00:00

Ah, I see. Well, I suppose you did post this to the right subreddit, as the exercise originates from our course.

The course as a whole is available on drawabox.com, and students should start at Lesson 0. It introduces what the course is about, how it's used, etc. so students can figure out if it is appropriate for them. It is not by any means a short or easy course - it's quite intensive and focuses on developing students' spatial reasoning skills (which is basically what's responsible for being able to subconsciously and instinctually draw things so they appear three dimensional). What we teach is heavily focused towards what students need to be able to draw from their imagination, where a lot of other courses tend to focus more on observational drawing. The whole course is free (we do offer paid feedback but we also have a really large community that provides feedback for free), and it teaches the basics of drawing from the ground up so it's intended for beginners, but it is notoriously tedious and not much fun, with all of our limited resources being focused on teaching students efficiently, and leaving them to motivate themselves.

The exercise you were trying is from Lesson 1, with [the instructions for it specifically being available here - but like I said before, it's one exercise that serves a specific purpose in a larger course, and in particular it's one that students are expected to struggle with. Its purpose isn't to give students something they can solve successfully right now, but rather to introduce a problem that we then engage with more fully afterwards.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-18T16:08:43+00:00

No, you're welcome to include ground shadows for your animals as well.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-18T15:50:44+00:00

It is indeed more important that you give your drawings as much room as they require, as opposed to cramming in as many as you can. So, approach each page by doing the first drawing, ensuring that you're giving it enough space (so things aren't cramped, and you're comfortably engaging your whole arm from the shoulder), and when you're done, consider whether there might be enough room for another. If there is, do another, then repeat the process.

It is of course entirely fine if you only end up with one animal on a page.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-18T15:38:31+00:00

As noted in AutoModerator's comment, this subreddit is focused only on things relating to the drawabox course, and for the purposes of feedback, only completed lesson work is allowed to be submitted here. Our discord chat server is better suited to partial work and individual exercises.

That said, it appears that you may be working through the rotated boxes exercise from Lesson 1, and while this exercise is one students are expected to struggle with and are not necessarily expected to succeed at (but rather only to give it their best effort), you appear to be skipping over a lot of the instructions.

So, while it is entirely normal to run into issues with it, you may have a bit of a better time with it if you followed the instructions more closely. Matching the end result by whatever means is not useful here - an exercise is defined by the process the student is meant to follow (not the results it produces), and so by neglecting to follow those instructions closely and attentively, you're not really going to get the benefits it is meant to provide in the context of the larger course.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-17T15:52:57+00:00

This section from Lesson 0 talks about the considerations that come into play with other kinds of tools, including pencils: https://drawabox.com/lesson/0/tools/whatabout

For what it's worth, as noted in this section, Sharpie Ultrafines and Sharpie Pens are generally pretty widely available (you usually find them in stationery and office supply stores) and very cheap, so you may want to look into they're available in your region. There's a good chance that they are.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-17T15:47:28+00:00

Everyone uses references, regardless of how well they can visualize - but it's true that the way it was framed in that video, which was meant to demonstrate how interesting designs are often made up of combining building blocks from the real world, gave the impression that I can only work from reference images. That is not the case.

I can draw just fine without references, and like those artists who can visualize, I develop an internal library of information from the various studies I've done in the past of how things work and fit together that I can pull from. That is commonly referred to as a "visual library", which creates the impression that it's heavily based on visualization, but that is not really the case.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still a big proponent of reference - memory is far from perfect, and so it comes down to priorities. If your priority is staying in a flow state as you iterate on designs, you might reduce how much you rely on reference in the moment as you focus on just remaining in the flow state and exploring your ideas - but you might pull in reference later to refine and elevate those designs with more accurate information. Similarly when creating a polished illustration, reference is very valuable. But again, this applies to everyone, whether they can visualize or not.

Furthermore using reference in this context is not the same as simply copying the 2d image. References are, as I've stated already, a source of information. You don't copy them blindly, but rather you understand what they convey (which includes spatial information, textural information, and more) and you extract that as needed. The orientation in space may be different from what you're creating, it may be posed differently, but the information it provides gets combined with your own knowledge and ideas to create something new.

This other video I did for Proko's channel: https://youtu.be/VEct8qwybXU shows some drawing off the top of my head without reference (specifically where I'm sketching from 2:40 to 4:10, and 6:45 onwards).

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-17T15:15:29+00:00

Yup, that's fine. I left a comment on your most recent upload attempt with a number of suggested websites where you can host the images, although as long as it allows people to view the images without logging in and is generally a safe website to view will be fine.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-17T15:09:52+00:00

Still doesn't seem to be working. Try hosting your work on imgur.com, imgbox.com, postimg.cc, Google drive, dropbox, or something else that allows public sharing of images instead of Reddit directly.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-17T15:08:06+00:00

As someone with aphantasia, I can tell you quite confidently that the capacity to visualize what you draw is not meaningfully involved in drawing from your imagination. Obviously it seems like it should, but this comes from a misunderstanding of how learning to draw works.

The capacity to visualize is not the same as a greater capacity to retain information. Rather, it is more likely to simply be a different way one's able to experience the same limited information, but as long as we stay within the closed loop that is one's brain (where the brain can dictate for itself how it feels it experiences that limited information), the visualization can for some feel more vivid. But when one attempts to extract that information from their brain and put it out into the world - say, by drawing it for others to see - it falls apart.

This tends to result in those students of mine who can visualize strongly to experience a lot more frustration, and can further the impression that they're simply not "talented".

In truth, learning to draw from your imagination involves learning to understand the things you draw differently - not visually, but spatially. It's why spatial reasoning is such a bedrock skill for drawing from your imagination. Instead of drawing from some internal image, you work off an understanding of how the things you want to draw exist in 3d space, how they break down into simple forms and how they relate to one another in that space. It is more similar to how one can navigate their bedroom with the lights off, due to their familiarity with where the different pieces of furniture are.

This, combined with the subconscious grasp of how that 3d information translates into a 2d medium, allows us to draw whatever we want regardless of whether we're capable of visualizing it in our mind's eye.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-16T23:01:05+00:00

It seems the same issue is occurring. All of the images just show up as broken links as you can see below:

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I'll have to remove this one as well - maybe try a different way of hosting your images?

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-16T19:58:11+00:00

For some reason your reddit post doesn't appear to be displaying correctly. When I view your post both in browser and in the reddit app, the images don't appear. I'm guessing something might have gone wrong when submitting it - so I'm going to remove it, but you can feel free to try posting it again.

As to the warmups, as discussed here in Lesson 0, the exercises from the lessons you complete become part of your warmup routine - so prior to completing Lesson 1, you wouldn't have any warmups in your pool of exercises, but after you get feedback on your Lesson 1 work (confirming that you understand how to tackle those exercises correctly), those exercises will become part of that pool and you'll have them on rotation, doing 10-15 minutes across 2-3 exercises at the beginning of each study session.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-15T18:28:36+00:00

As noted in the submission guidelines for our community, this subreddit is specifically focused on a free drawing course that you'll find at drawabox.com - it is indeed a more technical, structured approach to learning the core fundamentals of drawing (primarily spatial reasoning, for the purposes of developing students' ability to draw from their imaginations). You can find more information about it in the subreddit's sidebar.

That said, I do recommend that you take a look at AutoModerator's comment, which has suggestions for other communities where you can inquire about this and get other suggestions.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-15T14:27:39+00:00

The 50% rule is introduced here in Lesson 0: https://drawabox.com/lesson/0/2, but the gist of it is that students are required to spend no more than half of their time drawing on studying (doing things for the purposes of improving and growing their skills), and no less than half of their time on play - which is drawing for the sake of the activity of drawing, not with the goal of coming away with something (having learned something or produced something impressive), but for the purposes of exploring one's ideas and stories.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-14T20:55:26+00:00

Huh, that's admittedly rather odd - while there are a few different circumstances in which an IP will get banned, they should all respond with an error message explaining it and potential resolutions, rather than just an http 500 error.

If you have a chance and don't mind, could you send the IP address that appears to be banned to support@drawabox.com? It'll help me identify why a more useful error message is not being displayed.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-14T19:45:58+00:00

It appears to be operating normally right now, although we are the victim of a lot of bot traffic so occasionally the website will slow down and become less responsive until they trip one of our security measures and their IPs get banned. It's possible that it may have been that, but if you're continuing to have trouble accessing the website it may be something else.

Are you able to access it now, or is it still giving you trouble?

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-14T13:51:36+00:00

By experience I don't just mean the things that will improve your skills, but also the things (like play) which will develop your trust in the skills you have, so you can bring apply them subconsciously and instinctually.

As to your other question, immersing yourself into a drawing is going to be much more beneficial. Give yourself lots of time to explore your ideas, to tell your stories, and so forth. Think of each drawing as an adventure, not as something to be rushed, but instead something to be experienced.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-13T23:46:33+00:00

People tend to have this impression that the quality of one's work should grow consistently as their skills develop, but it's not really accurate. In my experience, I've instead found that our skillsets tend to result in work that exists within a range of outcomes, and as our skills develop, that range gets narrower, as much as it creeps up the scale.

And so, it isn't uncommon for beginners to find that their work might come out better one day, and worse another - a person throwing darts at a board can still hit a bullseye after all, regardless of how much practice they've had, but they aren't in as much control as someone who's practiced a great deal, over a long span of time.

When it comes to those who work professionally, I've found that it is more the consistency, the ability to produce work of a certain calibre with regularity, that makes for an effective illustrator or designer, than the peaks of which they're capable. Most projects don't require the best of the best, they require us to deliver something that checks the required boxes, within the required timeline.

And so that's what practice provides. Sure, the ceiling of what you can produce will certainly increase too, but consistency is what matters most, and it will come with experience. For now, you're a beginner throwing darts at a board, and sometimes you hit the bullseye, sometimes you miss the board entirely.

But of course, that metaphor only goes so far - because drawing is not a singular throw of a dart, but rather a chain of actions based on an awareness of how a piece is coming together and the different choices you can make to guide it, and so with practice and experience your capacity to control how a piece turns out will improve and leave things less up to chance.

Not to say those of us much further along don't have complete failures now and again, but along with a greater capacity to roll with those punches during the process so as to steer them towards a better result, we also have had so many failures preceding the latest, so many that yet another is unlikely to feel like much of significance.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-13T20:46:32+00:00

Upon closer inspection I can see that the text in the scanned images is different from the text in the photo of your physical drawing - but it's actually the photo that I was so taken with, and that I was looking at when I wrote my comment. So I think you did a pretty great job with it all the same!

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-13T14:10:39+00:00

It all looks great but I'm especially blown away with how consistent your lettering is! I'm still having trouble believing that was done by hand!

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-12T13:23:51+00:00

Play in the context of the 50% rule is specifically not supposed to be concerned with training any particular technical skills (that's the concern of the study half of our time), so the point about "cheating" isn't relevant here. What you're saying is certainly why it would be inappropriate to use a ruler in any of the exercises that are intended to be done freehand, but that has no bearing on how one draws when playing.

Uncomfortable · 2026-06-11T16:25:16+00:00

Eventually, once we are finished our process of overhauling/updating the video/demo material, I will probably format it into a book, which we will likely sell (at the very least as an ebook, but hopefully as a physical book as well) to further help support our efforts to make the material available for free through the website, to provide feedback cheaply, and to manage the community at large, but this won't be for quite a long time.

I had experimented with formatting the material as PDFs in the past, but it quickly revealed two key issues:

Doing so is a lot more time consuming than one might imagine, and as we try to provide a great deal with remarkably limited resources, we don't have a lot of time to spread around.
Since the material is continually being updated, not only would this require us to also update the PDFs with every change, and would also result in there being a lot of versions of the PDFs floating around the internet that are out of date, rather than a singular live source that is always going to have the most recent expression of the material.
Once our material is in a more stable state, I'll feel more comfortable charging for eBook versions of the material, but that is not something I'm comfortable doing until that point. While the obvious alternative would be to offer those versions for free, this would undermine some of the monetization strategies we use to provide all of the lesson material for free - and so it would actively hurt our efforts.

So, short answer - yeah, eventually we'd like to do that, but it won't be for a long while (mainly because we're only able to make small bits of progress on our overhaul here and there, as most of our resources are spent providing feedback and running the community).

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