Discover the seven common obstacles preventing your art from flourishing.

By
Leah Sirama
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45
585







Seven Things Holding Back Your Art

What’s up guys in this video we’re going to be talking about seven things holding back your art

So I figured with the new year coming up there might be a lot of people picking up art as a hobby and there might be a New Year’s resolutioners so um I want to help you guys out I just want to give you guys some information that’ll help push you along on your art Journey give you a bit of a head start and make sure that you’re not a failure like me so let’s jump right into it the first mistake that I want to talk about that’s holding back your art is not having goals a lot of people tell me that they feel unmotivated when it comes to jarring they just can’t bring themselves to pick up a pen every single day and draw something on a piece of paper something that could be causing this is the fact that you don’t have a goal you’re working toward…

Long-Term Goals

When we talk about goals I like to break it down into long-term and short-term goals long term refers to what you see yourself doing in the future you want to think to yourself in 10 years time what do I want to be where do I want my art to be do I want to be an animator at this studio or do I want to be a hobbyist still but just be able to tell my own stories more comfortably like for for example the long-term goal for me is to just be able to draw good good enough that every time I flip my canvas I am not horrified and also have a big enough mental Library so that I can just tell stories on a canvas with ease because right now it’s tough so that’s long term but that might be kind of hard to imagine because it’s so far in the future and it seems like something that’s so unattainable and that brings us to short-term goals when you have an idea of generally where you want to be in the future you can kind of work backwards from that and set some short-term goals for yourself if you want to be an animator maybe it’s good to start off by learning how to draw Anatomy it could be something like for the next two weeks I’m gonna focus on human anatomy and it can get even more specific than that you could be like I’m gonna focus on drawin…

Focus on One Thing at a Time

Do it in a way that works for you but set your mind on something and have a little bit of focus have a goal that you’re working towards for that subject that’s going to lead to much better absorption of that information and you can pick things up a lot quicker than if you were all over the place now the third mistake for us to avoid very important one is not using references there’s a lot of idiotic individuals out there say that if you use references you’re cheating it’s like what as an artist you need to observe Things from real life in order to learn you need to understand how lighting works and how it interacts with subjects you n…

ow what do I want to be where do I want my art to be do I want to be an animator at this studio or do I want to be a hobbyist still but just be able to tell my own stories more comfortably like for for example the long-term goal for me is to just be able to draw good good enough that every time I flip my canvas I am not horrified and also have a big enough mental Library so that I can just tell stories on a canvas with ease because right now it’s tough so that’s long term but that might be kind of hard to imagine…


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45 COMMENTS

  8. I've been drawing since I was a kid and recently I really feel discouraged on my art since I feel I haven't been improving at all, to the point that it's really tough to not lose motivation to art, something that I loved since Iw as a kid. but then your video popped up on my timeline and all that you said really helped. thankyou! ^^

  10. Also for not comparing yourself to others: natural talent is real, yes they have to get taught no one will crawl out of the womb and straight up paint like Michelangelo in the first three days of their life on earth. But skill just comes naturally to them so they don't get to struggle as much as others and that is completely fine that is their journey you have yours. But remember there is quite the possibility to become as "good" as these people are and even better with work and practice.
    Happy arting everyone.

  15. 07:59 not only how much time and energy they put into art, if they also have gene's from parents who have artistic streaks they are more likely to develop skills faster than another person. I love the video, amazing tips for not just beginners but experienced artists.

  17. So….

    Ever since i started drawing (3 years ago), i never used references.

    Only a couple months ago did i start using references and OH MY GOD DID IT HELP SO MUCH.

    My art is based off of Anime and Chibi Characters and sometimes real life/Cartoon-ey characters.

    Dont forget to make mistakes because THOSE. HELP. THE. MOST.

    Edit : Also its good to try new things, but dont take too much new things… youll become overwhelmed and once you become uninterested, Art block is out 😭

  22. Just doodling from imagination without using reference basically kept me from not improving for the first two years when I started drawing. If you manage to get a habit of drawing from reference and accept the fact that there will always be someone half your age who is better than you, you'll start to see gradual progress.

  25. I'm really sorry this is not relevant but I didn't exactly where where else to go. 😬Are there any Forms/Documents/Specific processes/Etc. that we should be aware of? Being a noobie digital illustrator, I've (foolishly) openly posted my content on social media. Would the simple route to keeping my art safe be putting a watermark over my photos to prevent theft? Is there anything I can do in the case it still gets stolen or in the case that my already posted content (without watermarks) may be stolen? Whether you have any ideas or not, any and all info would be a tremendous help!!!

  30. Lol, try to do many things at once, that’s me.
    I was trying to draw people with coloring using my stiff hand, with a new style. But the reality is, I only used to draw anime on paper. I have no idea how digital drawing works. I need to practice my hand and find the right brushes first. Other things are for later.

  32. One counterpoint to the advice in that last one: Often the best teachers are not the best artists, and the best artists aren't the best teachers. So judging anyone's advice by their skill (or your perception of their skill) is not necessarily always wise.
    I've definitely heard some pro-level artists give advice that I frankly thought had a lot of potential to be very damaging. Not to mention honestly some ppl misattribute their own success to the wrong things. Not art, but I once saw some girl encourage people to learn Chinese characters by writing it over and over again. Literally encouraging ROTE memorization 😂 If you know anything about how language acquisition works, you know how much of a waste of time that is. But the worst part was, her Chinese was pretty good. Luckily for her, she was doing SOMETHING right (probably lots of immersion and reading), but she credited her progress to rote memorization and was proceeding to pass that on to poor beginner students 😭

  33. Yea, art is not even one of my main interest, its just a hobby, but even I know that using references is vital to learn and make art. well there are a lot of pictures of basically anything and everywhere in the internet, besides 3d modeling programs are basically a limitless supply of human models and you can put them on any pose that you want, watch them from any angle, put any clothes on them, you even have wood figures, muscular systems, skeletons on every age and genre.

  36. Useful and helpful video! I'm a beginner, and while I know a lot of the basics and I think I made some things I would consider really good, I never had the ability to stick to a practicing routine, and I think the lack of concrete goals was a major inhibitor. I also realized that I need to look at other artists' work and processes to see how they do a thing, so i can try a similar thing and see if that works for me.

    My current goals:
    draw some characters I made for a fanfiction, try to get at least one drawing of every character eventually
    find my "style" (i don't need anything big and fancy and intricate and immediately recognizable, i just wanna know how i want to style my art in the future, because i've been flipflopping between visually very different ways of drawing the same subjects)
    learn how to use line weight better

    All of these goals can be done simultaneously: draw my own characters while experimenting with different styles and experimenting with usage of line weight. I think I finally have an interesting roadmap on how to generate some regular improvement on my art.

  39. Comparing yourself to other artists can be healthy too. Sometimes I see art definitely superior to mine online. Instead of feeling bad about my own art, I zoom in like 5 or 10 times and wander around to see the tiny details, ie.: what does this artist do differently? Then I try to keep that information in mind for my next drawing. And it works. My improvement is slow since I cant draw too often but it's there

  41. Could someone PLEASE give me some advise.

    I do not struggle coming up with a storyline but what I CANT do. is make a character I LIKE. how do I fix this! I can make good storys, and good looking characters. but I cant make a character I actually like!