Starting to Sketch

If you’ve seen my Instagram, you’d have seen a number of sketches there. I sketch all sorts of things, and in the last few things that I’ve posted, I’ve done a lot of coffee bags. There’s other things like people, places, buildings, scenes; basically the natural or man made world around me.

I don’t think I’m a super great sketcher, or that everything I produce turns into gold somehow. I know that I really enjoy the moments I capture while sketching, and that’s usually good enough for me. Sometimes it’s not about getting it perfect, as much as it is getting it on the paper. And that means that some things are wrong, cause I saw them wrong (then drew them wrong). Or some colors are what I see as the actual color, but varies when it’s painted.

But here are some motivations to get you started painting and drawing, and it may be a reminder for myself as well.

Start small

Draw something simple to get you going. Start with a corner. A little square the signifies the light indicator. Maybe its just the black base of a lamp. Maybe it’s the logo. But anything small to get your view going, and then lead that to the next smallest thing to it. Within minutes you’ll probably have some sort of image going on that will resemble what you see in front of you.

Don’t overthink it

You’re not going to make the next Mona Lisa, and that’s quite alright. The time for Mona Lisa was well over, and they also probably took months to finish that portrait. Do you have those months? Then maybe okay, you could try it, but point is, if you just get something out now, you’ll start to get somewhere. (Also, I hear that Da Vinci barely slept most of his life. That’s severely unhealthy but you get a genius. Is it worth it? Your call)

What you would start to see is your own creative self coming through it. It’ll take some time, and that time that you’re willing to give to it would match the quality of what you’ll be producing. Give yourself a bit of space and it’ll come.

The Best Tools are the ones used

There’s absolutely no need to get an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil just for the sake of digital sketching. There’s also no need for a Blackwing Pencil that will capture your sketches in the perfect way. I’ve seen some crazy artists drawing amazing things just with ballpoint pens, or with the simplest pencils lying around. It’s the practice of their talent that has been honed. No amount of money could buy a tool that’s been trained for years. That’s exactly where just getting the work out every single day counts the most.

It’s literally the quantity that will sift your quality through all of it. And I personally need to put a lot of my quantity back into the game again.

Publish it

It’s gonna look weird. It might even be bad.

But you’ve seen the other guy on your feed who posts work that you honestly think you could have done so much better. If you press publish, you would have.

And if you didn’t, its okay. Just keep on publishing, and keep on making it happen. At least your work is there, and you’re not saying “that work looks bad” on someone else’s work. Someone might be saying that on yours, but then you could take the chance to make more and more and more work after that.

Sooner than you know, you’ll be leaps and bounds ahead from where you were, just because you published.

Be Kind to Yourself

Yeah you suck. We all know it. Now get over it.

Encourage yourself now, because at least you have work up. You tried, or you’re trying. And give yourself a chance. If you had the chance to make it, you would have right?

So be chill, and you can make something happen soon. Encourage yourself to try, the same way you would encourage a kid who’s just starting one. You’re the kid now. Give yourself a shot.

And you’ll be there someday, or not, but at least you were yourself, and you tried.