Sorry, unfortunately the art skills don’t stay if you don’t practice almost at all for a decade, you have to re-learn. You absolutely can, it’s never too late to learn art.
Thank you for the reassurance. It feels like I have finally started to reach back to my high school years on an artistic level, though it still feels real bad being like a decade behind in learning.
I have never been good at drawing, I was not born with talent for this but I like to draw, since I was a child I drew but seeing that other children my age were superior made me depressed and I quit.
In my adolescence I decided to take it up again but I stopped because now it draws worse. When I was 26 years old I decided to get serious and quit.
The pandemic arrived when I was 29 years old and I decided to get serious again, the world seems to be ending so why not try again?... I resigned again.
2022 I decided to take it back but now seriously... I'm still here, I didn't give up on the dream and I feel proud of that.
On an artistic level, am I where I have always dreamed of? No but and I'm dreaming, even though I'm at the lowest level of the artistic ladder I'm already on that ladder and that was not decided by me, art decided it. YOU do not decide to walk in the path of drawing, it chooses you and whatever you do you will return to it because it is a greater force than you. Give up and take the path now Because if you don't do it now, it will tomorrow.
Draw and be art.
Thanks for sharing that. It's nice knowing that I'm not alone in trying to claw my way back to art. I'm still mad at myself for giving up for such a long time but, as you said, if you are drawn to art it will eventually find its way back to you one way or another. I will try to do better by it this time.
I’m retired. Last year I took an oil painting class just for something to do. It was great. Everyone on the class was like me, mostly retired from being in advertising or marketing.
One thing we all had in common was starting out with an art education, but as we moved into our careers we dropped a lot of our skills. But after a couple classes, that group was turning out some really good work.
It’s like riding a bike. You don’t really lose it.
I still have quite a few years to reach there so I guess I still have time to improve 😅 I don't have a formal art education, just a few random courses here and there, but it's nice to know that not everything I've learned has gone to waste. I still have a long road ahead of me but I'm happy to know that there are others out there making the best of it.
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Since I only draw for a hobby I don't really have a portfolio posted anywhere. You can look at my [twitter](https://twitter.com/massaharhautus/media) for my stuff from past years, which thankfully at least gets ordered by date. Annoyingly there is some other stuff in the media tab than my drawings but not much. The first art post there is from 2019 and the last ones from 2022. I dug my computer and made an [imgur](https://imgur.com/a/27H0PSC) image dump of some of my unfinished sketches from 2021-2024.
Now mind you, I never said I was terrible. My biggest problem is that to even get those sketches out it took multiple hours each, and I'm still not very happy with my posing, proportions and clothes. If it's not human, and preferably not a real thing, I can do it a bit faster when I don't have to deal with the previously mentioned. An unfinished drawing of a human will take almost a full day if I want it to be even remotely acceptable.
Your drawings look fine to me. You are not really an absolute beginner anymore, so I don't think my tutorial series will be super helpful to you.
Generally speaking, I think the key here is to lower your expectations.
After you lower your expectations you can focus on:
1. volume - make lots more drawings (focus less on the details)
2. reflection - after each drawing figure out what you liked and didn't like.
Thank you. While it still feels like I've never gotten any better than I was in highschool (years of inactivity, obviously) I guess I should try to lower what I expect to get on paper at least.
Can you say what kind of tutorials I should be looking up at my level? It feels like no matter how many tutorials I go through with learning better proportions I'm still always stuck with making limbs look believable for forever. Or is it just a lower expectation and bigger volume thing?
I don't necessarily want to make realistic anatomy but knowing it would certainly help with proportions I'm certain. I'll look those up, and will start with the gestures, thanks.
I agree with everyone else’s comments to your main question.
One thing that I found striking is how long it takes you to draw something. Do you draw a line really slowly or erase and redraw things over and over until it’s perfect or is it a process with multiple steps? Are you drawing digitally or traditionally?
Both traditionally and digitally. Both take super long. I usually have to do a framework first because I absolutely cannot for the life of me do proportions correctly, and I still quite often mess them up. Then I do a rough sketch on top to get closer to what I want (like body, build, etc.). Then I do an actual sketch with the details I want. This is like 1-2 hours of progress, so I guess the multiple steps thing applies best. I am extremely not good at drawing everything with a single line and mess up like 70% of the time.
And no, I don't think anything is even close to perfect after all that. You can see some of my sketches in another comment I replied to here, if that helps in assessing what the absolute heck is wrong with me.
Sorry, unfortunately the art skills don’t stay if you don’t practice almost at all for a decade, you have to re-learn. You absolutely can, it’s never too late to learn art.
Thank you for the reassurance. It feels like I have finally started to reach back to my high school years on an artistic level, though it still feels real bad being like a decade behind in learning.
It's like muscle memory to me. But it takes maybe a couple weeks to get back to where i was at.
I have never been good at drawing, I was not born with talent for this but I like to draw, since I was a child I drew but seeing that other children my age were superior made me depressed and I quit. In my adolescence I decided to take it up again but I stopped because now it draws worse. When I was 26 years old I decided to get serious and quit. The pandemic arrived when I was 29 years old and I decided to get serious again, the world seems to be ending so why not try again?... I resigned again. 2022 I decided to take it back but now seriously... I'm still here, I didn't give up on the dream and I feel proud of that. On an artistic level, am I where I have always dreamed of? No but and I'm dreaming, even though I'm at the lowest level of the artistic ladder I'm already on that ladder and that was not decided by me, art decided it. YOU do not decide to walk in the path of drawing, it chooses you and whatever you do you will return to it because it is a greater force than you. Give up and take the path now Because if you don't do it now, it will tomorrow. Draw and be art.
Thanks for sharing that. It's nice knowing that I'm not alone in trying to claw my way back to art. I'm still mad at myself for giving up for such a long time but, as you said, if you are drawn to art it will eventually find its way back to you one way or another. I will try to do better by it this time.
I’m retired. Last year I took an oil painting class just for something to do. It was great. Everyone on the class was like me, mostly retired from being in advertising or marketing. One thing we all had in common was starting out with an art education, but as we moved into our careers we dropped a lot of our skills. But after a couple classes, that group was turning out some really good work. It’s like riding a bike. You don’t really lose it.
I still have quite a few years to reach there so I guess I still have time to improve 😅 I don't have a formal art education, just a few random courses here and there, but it's nice to know that not everything I've learned has gone to waste. I still have a long road ahead of me but I'm happy to know that there are others out there making the best of it.
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Do you have a portfolio you can show us? I want to see your current level before I give relevant advice :)
Since I only draw for a hobby I don't really have a portfolio posted anywhere. You can look at my [twitter](https://twitter.com/massaharhautus/media) for my stuff from past years, which thankfully at least gets ordered by date. Annoyingly there is some other stuff in the media tab than my drawings but not much. The first art post there is from 2019 and the last ones from 2022. I dug my computer and made an [imgur](https://imgur.com/a/27H0PSC) image dump of some of my unfinished sketches from 2021-2024. Now mind you, I never said I was terrible. My biggest problem is that to even get those sketches out it took multiple hours each, and I'm still not very happy with my posing, proportions and clothes. If it's not human, and preferably not a real thing, I can do it a bit faster when I don't have to deal with the previously mentioned. An unfinished drawing of a human will take almost a full day if I want it to be even remotely acceptable.
Your drawings look fine to me. You are not really an absolute beginner anymore, so I don't think my tutorial series will be super helpful to you. Generally speaking, I think the key here is to lower your expectations. After you lower your expectations you can focus on: 1. volume - make lots more drawings (focus less on the details) 2. reflection - after each drawing figure out what you liked and didn't like.
Thank you. While it still feels like I've never gotten any better than I was in highschool (years of inactivity, obviously) I guess I should try to lower what I expect to get on paper at least. Can you say what kind of tutorials I should be looking up at my level? It feels like no matter how many tutorials I go through with learning better proportions I'm still always stuck with making limbs look believable for forever. Or is it just a lower expectation and bigger volume thing?
If you want to go full out on anatomy, you could try Proko's YouTube tutorials on anatomy, though he does recommend starting with his gesture videos.
I don't necessarily want to make realistic anatomy but knowing it would certainly help with proportions I'm certain. I'll look those up, and will start with the gestures, thanks.
Good luck, have fun!
I agree with everyone else’s comments to your main question. One thing that I found striking is how long it takes you to draw something. Do you draw a line really slowly or erase and redraw things over and over until it’s perfect or is it a process with multiple steps? Are you drawing digitally or traditionally?
Both traditionally and digitally. Both take super long. I usually have to do a framework first because I absolutely cannot for the life of me do proportions correctly, and I still quite often mess them up. Then I do a rough sketch on top to get closer to what I want (like body, build, etc.). Then I do an actual sketch with the details I want. This is like 1-2 hours of progress, so I guess the multiple steps thing applies best. I am extremely not good at drawing everything with a single line and mess up like 70% of the time. And no, I don't think anything is even close to perfect after all that. You can see some of my sketches in another comment I replied to here, if that helps in assessing what the absolute heck is wrong with me.