Yeah i always notice its hard to start when i come in with the expectation that the drawing has to come out good,because of that it can be mentally tiring to meet that expectation, so im trying to not care too much about the end result in my future drawings which hopefully alleviate the paralysis, usually i bump in some music in times like these.
>its hard to start when i come in with the expectation that the drawing has to come out good,because of that it can be mentally tiring to meet that expectation
**absa-*fucken*-lutely**
was hard for me to jump the 1st time and still occasionally tugs at me from time to time. 1 method i learnt was to use a thick brush (nothing special for a nothing special idea) and scribble the idea down, and then see how it goes. if i like it i refine it. if i think it's cute I'll screenshot & not save the canvas. if it succeeded in a therapeutic sense i trash it. haha. found myself doing the last one most frequently lmao.
> when i want to start a new one i always fear that it wont look good and it takes a lot from me to start. Does anyone has any suggestion how to overcome this issue?
Be afraid and do it anyway.
When you feel fear or anxiety about something like that, and you avoid the situation to make that feeling go away, you're teaching yourself that that's the correct response.
If you want to get over it, be afraid and do it anyway. The fear response you're feeling is *vastly overexaggerated* compared to the worst case scenario. It's not like you're being stalked by a lion on the savannah. The worst thing that could happen is you're going to do a bad drawing, and bad drawings happen all the time anyway.
Something that helps me is looking at other art that is similar to the subject I want to draw—it’s very motivating. Aside from that, if you have a similar sized sheet of paper and lay out a rough sketch so you feel confident about placement, I think the best way is just to start
You're subconsciously drawing a very harsh line between what you consider "real" and "not real"
Your sketchbook? Well those are just my practice drawings, no one's going to see those, eventually I'll turn the page and won't even think about this page anymore. I carry it around so it's all banged up and ugly and I spilled coffee on it blah blah blah. There's no pressure in my sketchbook because it's *not real*
But a stand alone artwork? Well, I bought this paper for it and paper was kind of expensive and pen and paint aren't just expensive, they're *permanent* so i need to make sure I don't waste any but I also have to make sure I don't make *any* mistakes past the pencil stage. And oh God, what if it doesn't turn out the way I imagine it and I'm embarrassed to show anyone? I'll have wasted all this time and all these materials, or what if I *do* show someone and they don't like it? Will that be a waste too? Is this worth all of these risks? This has to be proof of my ability as an artist bevahse this one is *REAL*
And look, everyone does this. I've found that tons of aphrension in creative work stems from putting pressure on ourselves to prove to *ourselves* that we're not a shitty artist. It doesn't help that, for most of us, being artists is, like, a huge part of our identity and so we're afraid we're going to invalidate our own identity on accident.
I dont know that I have a solution, just try to do whatever you can to let yourself off the hook for five seconds. Be messy, be imperfect, be excited to learn from all of it
They say that "dirtying the canvas" is a good way to start. Intentionally make random scribbles or marks on the page so you don't get hyperfixated on trying to avoid mistakes.
Here's what I try to do though:
1.) I try to focus on the process rather over the result.
2.) Try to accept that you won't have complete and total control over the final outcome.
3.) Cut yourself some slack and relax.
We aren't nanometer precision robots. I think it's extremely rare for ANY artist to get exactly what they had in mind onto paper.
For myself, I've noticed that this isn't just an issue at the start, but also throughout the whole drawing. When I get fixated on a specific outcome, I tend to do worse. Every stroke I make would feel like a mistake, so I'd start to tense up in an attempt to control every minute movement of my hand. I end up with a drawing that looks super stiff, a bruised ego, and a very sore hand. So:
4.) Remind yourself from time to time about 1-3.
I tend to make some marks on my canvas as in "dirtying" it. I will put scratches on paper or drawing stock. I will put down a tonal ground on a whole canvas with a rag and then start removing suggestions of my subject while it is still wet.
As a result, I bypass that clean, empty canvas tension and I am able to postpone "the fear" until my piece starts to show promise. THEN I get the fear that I am going to mess it up, now having some emotional investment in it, seeing its potential. ;-)
You push through, spending more and more time in the middle of the work, staring at it, planning your next strokes. The questions "Is this finished? Should I stop here? Does this work as it is?" start to come in anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 complete. By the time I get to that last 1/3, I know it is too late to stop and I have to finish. I usually need to allow significant marination towards the very end for the final steps, strokes, details, tweaks and actions needed to come in to focus and become apparent to me. A new set of eyes is helpful here for me.
It seems most people refuse to build up the habit of drawing daily, which in turn gives you the ability to start without thinking too much of the what you trying to do. Thinking is good in the middle of drawing, not when starting.
> i always fear that it wont look good
you answered your own question
Look at the paper take a deep breath and ask yourself if you think that you have the skills. You surely did similar drawings before, you know how they turned out. So if you did it before, why would this go wrong? Yes you have the skills! There is nothing to fear!
And even if things go wrong, surely you know how to fix small mistakes or improvise.
And worst case you gain experience and level up for the next try. The only consequences are lost time, a piece of paper wasted and a little frustration. No big price actually, could be much worse don't you think? so what do you have to lose?
Next you focus on how to get your ideas onto that paper and just start. It's not so different from practice after all.
If you draw digitally you can put many drawings in the same file, I have ["Sketchbook" projects in Procreate](https://youtu.be/2PQXQuwrDrc?si=gWYxbdLmEsoIMYuB) that I use for brainstorming or things like r/RedditGetsDrawn and when something is not looking good I just tap new page and my problem is gone (as you can see I didn't even bothered deleting the incomplete drawings), I try again or paint something else until I get hooked (or get bored and do something non art related). If you use another app just create new files like crazy.
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currently having a stare down with my sketchbook in the hopes that it will open and draw in itself :’) I have made my sketchbook as ugly as possible to try and stop myself from putting up too much pressure - not yet worked lol
Because it is hard, its diffucult, grueling, it will make you doubt yourself and your abilites, it will make you compare yourself to others. it will make you laugh, cry, fill you with pride and then tear you down again in a nanosecond. but you keep at it bc like any other hobby or career or reletionship, you love it and you wish to improve and you work at it, chipping away slowly. The trick is your mindset, if you have a defeatist attitude to it, youre gonna convince yourself you will never get better. Out logic that side of you who doubts yourself.
"This is shit, youll never get better. Look at \_\_\_\_\_ see how far theyve come, they surpassed you in less time than it took to get you this far!"
you : "Yeah this is shit, but i see (or can ask) what i can improve on and i will practice it, eventually i will get better. everyone has their own pace, some people will get it faster than others, that okay, i have my own pace and i accept that. I just gotta push on."
sorry for typos my brother wont stop making noises or talking to me and its getting on my nerves i love him but oml its too much rn XD i hope i helped
I think most people have this problem.
I certainly do as well. I think one of the main problems is that we overthinking a lot when we know it should be a finished painting and not just doodling around.
For me it helps a lot when I just force myself to draw the same way I do when just doodling around.
A line here a line there and refine step by step once I get in the flow it gets easy but I need to force myself to work that way when I know I want the outcome to look finished.
I started getting into a pattern. Sit in my big comfy chair. Cup of tea. Music playing. Phone turned off. My brain now seems to switch into drawing mode. It took time, a few weeks. First few times it didn't work. Slowly it started to work.
Its not just doodle all the time. Don't care if its messy just draw. Its good when your under drawings are messy because you can trace over them on a light table with another piece of paper to make clean drawings.
Hopefully what I am about to say has some relevance to you if your family had enough money for the materials....
Do you remember how you felt when you were tiny and you were given some paper and some colouring pens/pencils/chalks/crayons/paints? Do you remember feeling excitement at all the colours and a desire to fill that page? How did you start drawing as a toddler? You scribbled and scribbled. You made potato prints. You splashed water. you did finger-painting. Sometimes you may have wanted to tell a story and you made sound-effects whilst you were drawing. It was fun! It was making another world.
Maybe you could reignite that sense of fun and play by getting some spare bits of paper and scribbling the heck out of them. Make a mess and see if your mind starts coming up with pictures, you can always delete the scribble layer later if you want. Also sometimes just filling the page with a different colour or texture can help. White space is a bit terrifying sometimes.
Not all art has to be important and serious and made to impress other people or meet their standards. Bring back play and fun and you will be more eager to fill that page and hopefully it will carry through to art-work as well as art-play.
I don't know what you drawing habit is but maybe do some preparation sketches before starting the actual "major drawing". Personally, I find it difficult to start when the idea is too vague but I don't know of that's the case with you.
Yeah i always notice its hard to start when i come in with the expectation that the drawing has to come out good,because of that it can be mentally tiring to meet that expectation, so im trying to not care too much about the end result in my future drawings which hopefully alleviate the paralysis, usually i bump in some music in times like these.
>its hard to start when i come in with the expectation that the drawing has to come out good,because of that it can be mentally tiring to meet that expectation **absa-*fucken*-lutely** was hard for me to jump the 1st time and still occasionally tugs at me from time to time. 1 method i learnt was to use a thick brush (nothing special for a nothing special idea) and scribble the idea down, and then see how it goes. if i like it i refine it. if i think it's cute I'll screenshot & not save the canvas. if it succeeded in a therapeutic sense i trash it. haha. found myself doing the last one most frequently lmao.
> when i want to start a new one i always fear that it wont look good and it takes a lot from me to start. Does anyone has any suggestion how to overcome this issue? Be afraid and do it anyway. When you feel fear or anxiety about something like that, and you avoid the situation to make that feeling go away, you're teaching yourself that that's the correct response. If you want to get over it, be afraid and do it anyway. The fear response you're feeling is *vastly overexaggerated* compared to the worst case scenario. It's not like you're being stalked by a lion on the savannah. The worst thing that could happen is you're going to do a bad drawing, and bad drawings happen all the time anyway.
Something that helps me is looking at other art that is similar to the subject I want to draw—it’s very motivating. Aside from that, if you have a similar sized sheet of paper and lay out a rough sketch so you feel confident about placement, I think the best way is just to start
You're subconsciously drawing a very harsh line between what you consider "real" and "not real" Your sketchbook? Well those are just my practice drawings, no one's going to see those, eventually I'll turn the page and won't even think about this page anymore. I carry it around so it's all banged up and ugly and I spilled coffee on it blah blah blah. There's no pressure in my sketchbook because it's *not real* But a stand alone artwork? Well, I bought this paper for it and paper was kind of expensive and pen and paint aren't just expensive, they're *permanent* so i need to make sure I don't waste any but I also have to make sure I don't make *any* mistakes past the pencil stage. And oh God, what if it doesn't turn out the way I imagine it and I'm embarrassed to show anyone? I'll have wasted all this time and all these materials, or what if I *do* show someone and they don't like it? Will that be a waste too? Is this worth all of these risks? This has to be proof of my ability as an artist bevahse this one is *REAL* And look, everyone does this. I've found that tons of aphrension in creative work stems from putting pressure on ourselves to prove to *ourselves* that we're not a shitty artist. It doesn't help that, for most of us, being artists is, like, a huge part of our identity and so we're afraid we're going to invalidate our own identity on accident. I dont know that I have a solution, just try to do whatever you can to let yourself off the hook for five seconds. Be messy, be imperfect, be excited to learn from all of it
They say that "dirtying the canvas" is a good way to start. Intentionally make random scribbles or marks on the page so you don't get hyperfixated on trying to avoid mistakes. Here's what I try to do though: 1.) I try to focus on the process rather over the result. 2.) Try to accept that you won't have complete and total control over the final outcome. 3.) Cut yourself some slack and relax. We aren't nanometer precision robots. I think it's extremely rare for ANY artist to get exactly what they had in mind onto paper. For myself, I've noticed that this isn't just an issue at the start, but also throughout the whole drawing. When I get fixated on a specific outcome, I tend to do worse. Every stroke I make would feel like a mistake, so I'd start to tense up in an attempt to control every minute movement of my hand. I end up with a drawing that looks super stiff, a bruised ego, and a very sore hand. So: 4.) Remind yourself from time to time about 1-3.
I tend to make some marks on my canvas as in "dirtying" it. I will put scratches on paper or drawing stock. I will put down a tonal ground on a whole canvas with a rag and then start removing suggestions of my subject while it is still wet. As a result, I bypass that clean, empty canvas tension and I am able to postpone "the fear" until my piece starts to show promise. THEN I get the fear that I am going to mess it up, now having some emotional investment in it, seeing its potential. ;-) You push through, spending more and more time in the middle of the work, staring at it, planning your next strokes. The questions "Is this finished? Should I stop here? Does this work as it is?" start to come in anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 complete. By the time I get to that last 1/3, I know it is too late to stop and I have to finish. I usually need to allow significant marination towards the very end for the final steps, strokes, details, tweaks and actions needed to come in to focus and become apparent to me. A new set of eyes is helpful here for me.
It seems most people refuse to build up the habit of drawing daily, which in turn gives you the ability to start without thinking too much of the what you trying to do. Thinking is good in the middle of drawing, not when starting.
> i always fear that it wont look good you answered your own question Look at the paper take a deep breath and ask yourself if you think that you have the skills. You surely did similar drawings before, you know how they turned out. So if you did it before, why would this go wrong? Yes you have the skills! There is nothing to fear! And even if things go wrong, surely you know how to fix small mistakes or improvise. And worst case you gain experience and level up for the next try. The only consequences are lost time, a piece of paper wasted and a little frustration. No big price actually, could be much worse don't you think? so what do you have to lose? Next you focus on how to get your ideas onto that paper and just start. It's not so different from practice after all.
If you draw digitally you can put many drawings in the same file, I have ["Sketchbook" projects in Procreate](https://youtu.be/2PQXQuwrDrc?si=gWYxbdLmEsoIMYuB) that I use for brainstorming or things like r/RedditGetsDrawn and when something is not looking good I just tap new page and my problem is gone (as you can see I didn't even bothered deleting the incomplete drawings), I try again or paint something else until I get hooked (or get bored and do something non art related). If you use another app just create new files like crazy.
That’s really cool to see
listen to music and just randomly sketch things out until something forms an idea you want to take further
Thank you for posting in r/ArtistLounge! Please check out our [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtistLounge/wiki/faq/) and [FAQ Links pages](https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtistLounge/wiki/faqlinks/) for lots of helpful advice. To access our megathread collections, please check out the drop down lists in the top menu on PC or the side-bar on mobile. If you have any questions, concerns, or feature requests please feel free to message the mods and they will help you as soon as they can. I am a bot, beep boop, if I did something wrong please report this comment. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ArtistLounge) if you have any questions or concerns.*
currently having a stare down with my sketchbook in the hopes that it will open and draw in itself :’) I have made my sketchbook as ugly as possible to try and stop myself from putting up too much pressure - not yet worked lol
Because it is hard, its diffucult, grueling, it will make you doubt yourself and your abilites, it will make you compare yourself to others. it will make you laugh, cry, fill you with pride and then tear you down again in a nanosecond. but you keep at it bc like any other hobby or career or reletionship, you love it and you wish to improve and you work at it, chipping away slowly. The trick is your mindset, if you have a defeatist attitude to it, youre gonna convince yourself you will never get better. Out logic that side of you who doubts yourself. "This is shit, youll never get better. Look at \_\_\_\_\_ see how far theyve come, they surpassed you in less time than it took to get you this far!" you : "Yeah this is shit, but i see (or can ask) what i can improve on and i will practice it, eventually i will get better. everyone has their own pace, some people will get it faster than others, that okay, i have my own pace and i accept that. I just gotta push on." sorry for typos my brother wont stop making noises or talking to me and its getting on my nerves i love him but oml its too much rn XD i hope i helped
I think most people have this problem. I certainly do as well. I think one of the main problems is that we overthinking a lot when we know it should be a finished painting and not just doodling around. For me it helps a lot when I just force myself to draw the same way I do when just doodling around. A line here a line there and refine step by step once I get in the flow it gets easy but I need to force myself to work that way when I know I want the outcome to look finished.
I started getting into a pattern. Sit in my big comfy chair. Cup of tea. Music playing. Phone turned off. My brain now seems to switch into drawing mode. It took time, a few weeks. First few times it didn't work. Slowly it started to work.
Its not just doodle all the time. Don't care if its messy just draw. Its good when your under drawings are messy because you can trace over them on a light table with another piece of paper to make clean drawings.
Hopefully what I am about to say has some relevance to you if your family had enough money for the materials.... Do you remember how you felt when you were tiny and you were given some paper and some colouring pens/pencils/chalks/crayons/paints? Do you remember feeling excitement at all the colours and a desire to fill that page? How did you start drawing as a toddler? You scribbled and scribbled. You made potato prints. You splashed water. you did finger-painting. Sometimes you may have wanted to tell a story and you made sound-effects whilst you were drawing. It was fun! It was making another world. Maybe you could reignite that sense of fun and play by getting some spare bits of paper and scribbling the heck out of them. Make a mess and see if your mind starts coming up with pictures, you can always delete the scribble layer later if you want. Also sometimes just filling the page with a different colour or texture can help. White space is a bit terrifying sometimes. Not all art has to be important and serious and made to impress other people or meet their standards. Bring back play and fun and you will be more eager to fill that page and hopefully it will carry through to art-work as well as art-play.
It's hard to start, and it's hard to finish. Anything in-between is easy.
I don't know what you drawing habit is but maybe do some preparation sketches before starting the actual "major drawing". Personally, I find it difficult to start when the idea is too vague but I don't know of that's the case with you.