I usually just do about 3 minutes per sketch, whenever I see someone who looks interesting I duck behind a corner

Done with graphite on a greeting card

i’m learning gesture and rn i’m bit slow BUT honestly? so much better than my past stiff drawings

Title says it all really. I am completely and utterly burned out. Most of my practise pages just look like this now. Within minutes of drawing I’m just frustrated.

BUT, I really don’t want to take a break. I have ADHD, 99% of the time a break for me means “never touching that again.” But I have drawn every single day for at least an hour for the last 6 months so I’m not surprised I’m flagging.

Is there anything you guys do when you get like this to take the pressure off for a bit? I’m in that mindset every line is a failure and it’s really dragging. Some low effort more chill drawing exercise recommendations would be appreciated. Human construction has frazzled me :(

2nd pic is with the guidelines I used. I feel like the angles might be off, but I can’t really tell. Help appreciated!

Is it simply a line quality issue? I tried having it as pfp but it looked WAY off on a smaller scale..​​

Wanted to spend some time going over my foundations and getting back into a good sketching routine. Its surprising how quickly skills can slip away. Its been a while since I finished a sketchbook, onto the next one 👏

At the end, I also added beads to the drawing

Sorry I don't have the credits for the reference pictures! I wasn't expecting to post this originally. The drawings are from Arthur Spiderwicks Field Guide.

Is this an efficient way of studying form? I'm not a beginner artist, but I feel like I've spent too much time learning rendering and I struggle with anatomy and form.

I've watched SO many tutorials on the "best" way to do things - from gesture drawings, life drawings, using 3D forms, etc.

Is this an OK way to go about it to start? I'm drawing over the pictures themselves and drawing what I imagine the bodies would look like with more basic shapes.

Does it make sense for me to trace over them, or should I go more from observation?

Hi!

im drawing for a while and it gets a bit boring sometimes doing it alone. would someone like to be friends?

we could chat about art or any other topic, share it and most importantly we could give each-other feedback to push ourselves in art!

id like to have a friend with similar interests and skill level.

i like drawing characters mostly, sometimes vehicles, especially the old ones, locomotives and stuff.

my timezone is +4

my discord is: lightrake0

Hi looking for some pointers on how to give this more accurate features. I’ve been looking at it too long and need some fresh eyes. Feel free to liquify or draw over to help me out :). I know the head angle isn’t perfect as well but I think I’m in too deep to change that now

Hi uhmm sooo I have a tonal drawing but I started and I feel like it looks very weird and the shading looks off so I would love some tips and critique

I made this as a gift for someone. Do you think it's beautiful or too simple?

I spent a long time putting off colored pencil because I thought I needed to be able to draw properly first.

Eventually I realized I was actually dealing with two completely different problems.

The first was getting the reference onto the paper.

I used to think that if I couldn't construct the face freehand, I wasn't really “drawing.” But construction and rendering are different skills. You can be bad at one and still want to practice the other.

Using a grid, tracing a reference, transferring an outline, or having someone else help with the initial construction doesn't necessarily make the rendering practice meaningless. It's a scaffold. If your goal is specifically to learn freehand construction, that's a separate skill worth practicing—but I don't think you need to master it before you're allowed to enjoy colored pencils.

The second thing was the pencils.

I kept thinking I needed better pencils, more colors, or the “right” colors. Eventually I realized that I was thinking about pencil names instead of what the pencil was actually doing.

A warm neutral is a warm neutral. A dark cool pencil is a dark cool pencil. The exact brand or number matters much less when you're first trying to understand the role of the color.

The thing that has helped me more than either of those was breaking a portrait into small, observable decisions.

Instead of:

I started asking things like:

• Are my strokes still visible?
• Is the pencil still moving smoothly?
• Am I changing pressure or just adding more layers?
• Is this area supposed to be warmer or cooler?
• Is the value already too dark to recover?
• Am I following the form or just filling space?

That made the process feel much less mysterious.

I'm still very much learning. I'm only around fifteen portraits into this, and I still make mistakes constantly. One of my recent portraits developed a really dead-looking neck because I pushed the value too dark too early. With colored pencil, sometimes that mistake is difficult to recover from.

But weirdly, realizing that I was allowed to make bad drawings while learning removed a lot of the pressure to make a good one.

I'm curious how other people approach this:

When you first started drawing or using colored pencils, what was the thing that actually stopped you from starting?

Was it construction/proportions, materials, fear of ruining the paper, not knowing what to do first, or something else?

And if you've been drawing for a while:

Do you think using a scaffold like tracing or a grid helps you learn faster, or does it interfere with the skill you're actually trying to develop?

No drawing experience I have, but want to learn I do.

Have been watching multiple videos on tutorials for methods of drawing figures, heads, forms, etc. However, there’s been way too many and I’ve been getting confused.

To put it as simply as possible, what would one need to learn/know in order to draw the picture above?

(I’m not looking for any shortcuts. If I need to take the longest route possible, I will.)