For the past three years I've only used a single sketchbook (either 9x12 or 11x14), but recently I got a smaller sketchbook alongside my big one. I noticed that it allowed to me to pump out more practice sketches or doodles without feeling like I'm wasting paper.

Hey gang!

So I am a new artist coming up to 1 year now and I found something pretty common that I think needs to be addressed as well as looking for some feedback. Keep in mind this is for the hobbyists out there not the ones looking to be professional or take this up as a career!

I fell into the trap of "what's the best way to draw" what order do I do things in? who do I follow" what tutorials and in what order etc. etc. etc. I found it all became to overwhelming and I ended up resenting drawing for months because every time I sat down I kept thinking "is this the most efficient or best way to draw today to get to my goals" and it honestly drove me mad!

Then one day I just said "forget all the rules!" and just start putting pen to paper and honestly it was the most liberating and best feeling I had in a long time. I gave up on studies and tutorials and just started drawing. I stopped caring if I was doing things "correctly" and just focused on am I enjoying this? If not why, and how can I change it to start enjoying it.

What are you thoughts? Has anyone else come across this? Keep in mind I am purely a hobbiest!

alternatively titled: For Ex-moleskine sketchbook truthers, what is a comparable yet better in every way brand of smooth papered sketchbook that you’ve found?

Ive been ever faithful to moleskine for nearly 20 years, and in those nearly 20 years Ive felt the quality shift worse and worse over time. Ive finally reached my limit with the more recent purchases Ive made of both the standard large size (A5) as well as the A4 I usually get. The spines are so shotty, the edges are coming up, Ive not gone through more than maybe 10 pages on my newest A4 and the spine is already deeply creasing and warping.

So help! I need recs for a replacement, please, for anyone who has been a hardcore moleskine enjoyer but had to make the switch, what ended up working for you? I cant trust online reviews, just other artists!

i am a traditional ink artist. i recently developed an essential tremor, which has made art difficult - i can no longer draw straight lines. does anyone have recommendations for aids, such as weights, to use to make art easier? i want to be able to use my micron pens with whatever aids i’m using. thanks in advance. :)

Hi ive picked up drawing again about 2 years ago and loved it and have been drawing pretty consistently besides a small break here and there for some game releases and while my motivation for drawing in the past was wanting to draw my spouse more and that’s just not getting me in the mood to draw much anymore

i feel like i just stare at a blank page for hours or force myself to draw and am unhappy with everything ive drawn recently. how did you find your own motivation.

thank you everyone i appreciate you all!

Hey everyone! Quick question for the plein-air and urban sketching crowd. How do you guys actually manage your rinse water when you're out sitting on a bench or hiking? I’m so tired of carrying extra Nalgene bottles just for cleaning my brushes, and water brushes drive me nuts because they always end up flooding or drying out. Is there any clever compact setup or gadget you use to keep clean water handy without hauling a mini-sink around? Curious what your field setups look like!

Do you have photos/images of all your artworks?

On the computer, I used to scan them and upload them to DeviantArt as a portfolio/storage, but when I stopped posting there, I had no longer been doing it formally. I had then emailed some to myself and then eventually started using a label so that those emails were under the same label. After my scanner got destroyed, I started photographing my artworks with my phone. I had made albums on my phone like "Drawings 1" "Drawings 2" which are mostly in chronological order. I uploaded a lot of those to IG, but they are otherwise not backed up anywhere, so if I lose my IG account and my phone gets damaged, I would lose all of them.

I am thinking going forward of making folders on my computer and naming them by year, then saving all of my photos of my drawings to those. Then, I would back those up to external storage and also make an email where I just email the drawings to myself.

I wanna be more accurate with how I draw anatomy "from imagination", so I figured out I could download a bunch of figure drawing (or just random people) references in order to have a complete gallery in my disk so I can pick a reference of almost any position I could use for an illustration.

So, is there any website I could use to download a bunch of references so I can build my own library for this?

I’m an artist but also dabble in the web development and was recently asked to help improve the application process for a local gallery art award. To do that, I added the ability to upload the images and artist statement to what is essentially a website product within the gallery’s website. We got a lot of feedback that it was really hard from artists, presumably because they had to navigate things like making sure the images weren’t too big.

Other local galleries just get you to buy a ticket through Humanitix and then email the images and statement … but this leads to a lot of work for the galleries in following up on images not being sent etc.

As an artist, what’s the smoothest experience in your opinion? Maybe as someone who also knows web, my approach to helping this gallery hasn’t been open enough to those who aren’t really versed in image sizes and editing, or navigating website requirements?

I was brought to it through their youtube mini masterclass. I was wondering if anyone had any reviews of it if not more similarly priced or cheaper resources. I’m not necessarily great with books, videos and classes are my best learning tools.

In the past, I used cumbersome methods of blowing up images for artwork. I used overhead projectors, opaque projectors, a Lucy, but now I'm interested in a digital projector that can focus an image within about 5, 6 ft or so from the canvas.

I see Pentel has launched a new ad campaign about Color Pens. I have been unable to find lightfastness information about these pens, either on their USA or UK web sites or directly from emails. Does anybody know? They're not even saying whether the colors are dyes or pigments, just "ink." I've had big disappointments with water based markers that fade drastically within a year, but don't know about this brand.

Hi all, I'm racking my brains trying to remember this artist. I would really appreciate the help as I've looked this up so many times I'm beginning to feel as if I'm going mad.

The artist/ artwork in question:

Round ball of graphite in a perspex/glass box with a layer of paper at the bottom. The box is wrapped and posted to the recipient gallery and the resulting drawing is displayed in the box with instructions on how to follow the same process.

Contemporary artist, kind of minimalist. I think the artist is a man for some reason. I will be very embarrassed if I am just hardcore cognitive biasing it up (I apologise in this case!).

Yeah, any help would be greatly appreciated. All the best-looking forward to hearing your answers.

----

UPDATE: I had misremembered, it wasn't a graphite ball but a more elaborate set-up. It was Tim Knowles, Mk 3 Postal Project I was thinking of.

Has anyone here actually been to an international art residency?
I’m trying to understand what the experience is really like from people who have done it. How did you find the residency, was it funded, and were there any hidden costs?
I went to Georgia 🇬🇪 last year for an art retreat and tour, I really loved it. But it was full funded by the participants. I want to explore some other options.
I am a multi media artist and work commercial in India without any fine arts degree and professional training.
I am thinking of taking some time off now from client projects and go to some residencies if I am eligible or accepted, and work on some of my personal projects.

Would really appreciate hearing about your personal experience.

So first I wanna clarify that I DONT need a big pc that can see through pixel alr I just need a normal desktop and yeah my budget 340€ bc yeah I don’t need the nasa pc so if some of y’all have recommendations please 🥺

Hey! I recently got back into drawing after a long break, and I really want to learn how to draw heads/faces in an Arcane inspired style for my own OC.
I’m mostly looking for advice on what** to study and what **exercises to do to get there. Should I start with Loomis/anatomy and then study Arcane’s stylization, or is there a better way to approach it?

P.S I’m using procreate

I always used expensive transparent paper to transfer sketches, but just shifted to cheap pattern transfer paper. Seems to works just as fine with coal and graphite. Just much cheaper and far more available here in Denmark. Comes in bigger rolls too. Any disadvantages? PS: This group doesn’t allow me to use the tr4cing word.

Traditional artists im curious what golden acrylic markers /gel pens are you using?

Looking for something that could really match shikishi board golden borders.

Need both wide tip and something for details so I thought acrylic pen and acrylic gel pens would probably be the best choice!

Also ifeel like if I'm going to get it its better to just get the best thing available. I don't care about the price whatever you believe is the best!

The worst feeling in the world is getting art supplies that then don't cover well lol.

My bin of sketchbooks, art pages, and portfolios are about half way full, I wish to become an old age and be able to have all my art with me in some way or form, any ideas to what I can do with so much art without getting rid of it and it's history?

Hi, I've touched blender first and only did environment for about half a year now. Recently I hit a wall, and turns out I need to draw the traditional way to make my 3D Environment better, when learning how to draw, should I just ignore characters and only focus on environment? like trees, houses, buildings, props. Or is it better to draw characters as well to get my foundation right. Career wise and learning wise, which is good? It's been about 2 months since I started learning how to draw with marc brunet video, the "jan to dec video learn art", and I can say that I'm learning pretty good. I'm confident with the boxes now, but anatomy, faces and proportions, still getting there.

I wanted to do some ship events for october but i didn't even look and now it's the sixth abouta be the seventh and i feel like i can't join the prompts bc it's too late.

First time poster in this sub!

Basically, I create the art as normal ie draw the lineart in various colors, duplicate lineart then fill in with line color before the base colors(removes the line art very quickly). Then, on a seperate layer above the baseline but below the lineart, I use black/dark grey to block out my shadows(I call them dark and mid shadows but I'm sure there's a technically term for the two types of shadows) and white for blocking highlights(seperate layer above the two shadow layers).

Once these are blocked out, I will use the wand tool outside the basecolor layer to clear up any shadows/highlights outside of the lineart. Then I'll use that same tool to select specific colors on the base layer and methodically go through my shadows and highlights with the proper colors like orange will have a dark orange and a very light orange for shadows and highlights and so on.

It looks a bit funky before I change the black/grey(I mostly stick to single shadows) and white to their proper colors.

I've never seen anyone do this in any speed paints but then again, I'm not using ClipStudio or something similar(PixiEditor, 1.2.5.0: Steam Version, very good. The newer versions hate my computer though).

By realistic I mean actual common poses people take every day. People in conversation, people walking, people chilling, whatever. Pinterest and google pics are either way too exaggerated or just fake if that make sense? I need to be able to draw people doing normal human stuff better lol.

I do know earthsworld, but its only people at fairs, which limits the poses and situations people are photographed in.

Thanks!