What s your excuse

What’s Your Excuse? Why Can’t You Draw?

You’ve tried so many times. You’ve looked at some amazing piece of art and felt this heat in your heart, only to get a few scrappy lines when trying to do the same. Finally you gave up. Let’s be honest, you don’t have talent! Or a tablet. Or better manual skills. But do you really need it all?

I Don’t Have Talent

«I wish I had your talent!» Sounds familiar, eh? You’ve probably said it a lot of times to someone who impressed you. Please, don’t! It’s not a compliment, it’s an insult! What the artist may hear when you say it is, «I don’t care how many hours you have spent developing your skills, I’m jealous that you were given good genes that I wasn’t lucky enough to get.» Or, more bluntly, «I’d be as good as you if only I was born with good genes.» In other words, you keep saying to people who impress you that they haven’t done anything on their own!

«I’m so jealous you were born with natural talent and didn’t need to learn anything»

What Is Talent Then?

You can go anywhere. Using a bike or a car would take you there faster, but still, you’ll reach the destination sooner or later. Having talent is like having a car. It’s a catalyst, something that’s accelerating the process of learning. Having a car doesn’t imply you’ll reach your goal—it’ll just make it easier.

People with natural talent have been encouraged to draw since they were able to hold a pencil. Parents and teachers saw something promising in their childish scribbles, and every praise is a motivational boost to a child. These scribbles weren’t really «epic», nor were they «beautiful». Probably a teacher could see what was drawn there without any explanation, and that was enough. Enough to keep a child drawing more and more! When the other children found games they thought were better than smearing paper with graphite, that child kept on drawing. And then, years later, you both meet. This person can draw a photo-realistic portrait in a few hours, and you can only draw a stick man That’s right, your skills haven’t developed since kindergarten! Now ask yourself, why?

So It’s Too Late, I Should Have Started When I Was a Kid

It’s said you need seven years to perfect a skill. All these talented kids have it already (or almost) behind them, but you still have a lot of time too! Good news is you can now collect all the proof of your progress, use tutorials on the Internet and get feedback from other artists—you’re not a kid anymore, so you can really plan it! And stop asking artists how long it took them to get to that level. You’ll just use their answer to tell yourself that it’s too late for you to try.

But I Can’t Even Draw a Stick Figure!

What does that mean? You’re not allowed to? Your hand stops responding when you touch the paper? You’re probably trying to say it doesn’t look right. So, again, what does that mean? What exactly is the «right way» to draw a stick figure?

I Mean, a Terrible Stick Figure Is All I Can Draw. Are You Happy Now?

The evolution of a stick man

Anatomy Knowledge? Yeah, Sure.

My humble collection of anatomy resources. No, they didn’t come with free talent.

My Hands Are Just So Clumsy

Use your feet or mouth then. Everything can be trained to make marks on a paper. And then, with time and practice, these marks will start to resemble something. Don’t believe me? Check out the work of Larime Taylor, a disabled artist who draws with his mouth. This guy had a story to tell, and his health condition didn’t stop him! If you have fully functional hands, what can stop you?

If My Hands Are OK, Why Don’t My Drawings Resemble Anything Real?

It’s not about your hands. All these talented artists draw exactly the same lines as you. The only difference is they know where to put the lines. It’s about the way you look at things. Have you ever wondered why children draw a stick man when they want to draw a human? Because they see simplified shapes. Everything can be converted into simplified shapes for easier representation. The problem is sometimes you’ve got simplified shapes stuck in your mind the way you saw them when you were a child. A head is a circle, eyes are ovals, a cat’s ears are triangles and a human is made of five sticks.

It’s a good point of view, but only for the start. You need to see more. Look at a tree as if you saw it for the first time. It’s not really made of two elements, is it? You’ll notice the irregular shape of leaf clusters, the way that branches bend, that a tree’s trunk isn’t really straight, and that, actually, a tree is made of many little trees. Now you’ll never draw a stick with a green cloud on the top again!

But I Can’t Even Draw a Straight Line!

Neither can I. Seriously, we use a ruler for these things. And if your lines are really shaky, you’re probably drawing in the wrong direction. Go ahead and draw a few wavy lines in every direction, from top to bottom, from left to right, across the paper and so on. Check and see what makes your hand relaxed, and when it takes slightly more effort to draw a line. There is a reason all my characters are heading left. It just feels more comfortable!

But Every Tutorial Starts With a Circle, and I Can’t Draw Them Without a Compass

Actually, you’re never supposed to draw a perfect circle. It would be pointless, since a circle is just a base for the rest of the picture, and it’s usually erased afterwards. You’re not an architect! A lot of people think artists draw a full picture from memory, with every line being perfect from the start. The problem is you only see the final draft of a picture. No messy lines, everything clean and perfect. You don’t know about the guide lines, about all the corrections, mistakes and whatever the artists did before they finished it. There’s an illusion the picture looked like this from the start. Then you try to draw it like this and end up frustrated.

Be messy! There’s a long journey from a sketch to a final picture, and you’re allowed to make a whole bunch of mistakes at every level of drawing. Don’t push your pencil, don’t draw long lines, touch the paper very lightly, learn to draw with your hand relaxed. That’s the first step to leaving stick figures behind.

A circle is a visual average of all the short arcs

I Know Exactly What I Want to Draw, but My Proportions Are Always Off

Learn to see proportions where there seem to be none

I Can’t Afford a Graphics Tablet

And if you could, you’d draw epic, colorful landscapes, right? You could use layers and Control-Z away any mishaps, so there would be no fatal mistakes, and that would be like having all painting tools in one! And all these digital brushes. You can just download a cloud brush, click a few times and there you go! Or a fur brush. No more drawing hair by hair, just a few smudges and it’s done! Ahh, it’s so cool to be a digital artist.

Wrong. OK, it’s really cool to be a digital artist, no arguments there, but first you need to be an artist. If you can’t draw with a pencil, how are you going to draw with a tablet pen? When you can’t drive, buying an expensive sports car won’t take you to your goal any faster. OK, you can take a taxi (photo brushes, tracing) and go right to the destination without any learning. But. you wanted to learn how to draw, right? Not how to pretend you can draw.

What About All This Special Equipment: Pencils, Markers, Paper, Colors.

When you were a child, all you needed to get creative was a stick and dirt. Now you can be more professional and buy yourself a real pencil! And by real pencil I mean a classic, cheap HB. You can also buy a heap of cheap copier paper that you won’t be sorry to waste. And that’s all. Of course, painting is great, and better paper makes a difference, but we’re talking about starting out here. Again, don’t even try to get yourself a better car when you’re still learning how to hold a wheel.

But I Know How to «Hold a Wheel». My Drawings Are Just Ugly and I Think I’d Do a Better With Colors/Better Paper/a Tablet

My Pictures Are Never Good Enough

But Drawing Imperfect, Ugly Pictures Isn’t Fun

And when you’re happy with the outcome, you can try and show it to someone. Don’t expect praises, ask for a critique. Suddenly your «decent» work will become lame again, but you’ll know how to do better next time!

Building your skills by drawing lots of useless, messy sketches is like starting a collection of building blocks. You can try and make a working roller coaster with only a handful of blocks, but you’ll get better results if you start with simple shapes and save the complex projects for when you’ve got more materials.

Actually, I Like My Artwork, It’s Others Who Say I’m Not Good Enough

Are you happy with the level you’re at? Awesome! You can now draw things you have in mind in a way you like, without feeling pressure to be better. Maybe you use bases for your characters, maybe you use someone else’s line art to create the characters from your mind. And that’s great, as long as you really don’t need to be better. There are two types of people:

Conclusion

Wow, that was a whole bunch of excuses! If you can find any more, I’ll happily discuss them with you in the comments. So, why can’t you draw?