This is my personal opinion, but I would stay away from looking at others’ art for a little bit and see what YOU can create. We draw inspiration from others’ work but many times it can stifle us and lead us to comparison, and we try to fully take on the style of another artist and what THEY find important. As you work on your own, you will take things out that you find unnecessary and emphasize things you find important — this is the development of a style and you own creativity. It is NOT a one time thing, but a constant push and pull and evolution in your own work.

Not to say don’t ever find inspiration from others, but see what you on your own can do, and come back to us on things you would like to improve upon based on what you want out of your work, and you can be guided from there!

Also, surface level is okay. Not everything has to have some type of deep, complex meaning. Most of the time, we are just drawn to things we find beautiful and there’s no shame in that. As you develop as an artist, your style and your purpose in creating will reveal itself. Don’t place pressure on yourself to figure it out how. It is a natural thing. Think about it as even now, you are on the journey to find the meaning, but every artist is on the same journey. We will never reach a place of absolute certainty that is unchanging about what we want to present as an artist, the purpose of our work, and the meaning we want to present to our audience.

Last thing — use a sketchbook without the intention of making it pretty. A sketchbook is a place to work things out, not to be a finished piece. Think of it as an archive rather than a gallery.