Hello hello my dear hivers! How's everyone been!? Hope you had an awesome Thanksgiving! 🦃😊
Our post today is about self-confidence and trusting the process! I've been so happy to witness the overwhelming success of my previous post on sketching and Confronting fears while painting.
In fact, I was so much so invested in talking about it back then that seeing the success of the post really helped me putting a few things into perspective:
- First, people here on HIVE as mostly young artists or at least folks who are taking their first steps into the amazing art world we live in.
- Second, as a beginner artist is it common to be surrounded by limiting thoughts like "Perhaps this is foolish" or "Argh, I can't even draw this hand right". And although these thoughts come to ALL of us (even professionals), most of the time they take control over our minds because we don't trust ourselves AND our process just enough. (You're not alone, we've all been there! You got this! 😉🤙)
- Third, it's encouraging to follow other people's processes. People tend to enjoy seeing how professionals handle their process because of one simple truth:
Naturally, seeing how other people solve drawing and painting problems with smart design choices is inspiring! Not to mention it is a great way to help young artists build up their mental library of artistic tools to achieve proper design.
Tutorials like this one I made on Composition can be really helpful in terms of basic painting design, but I am planning another post on composition to dive deeper into design choices and study some of my favorite paintings together with you guys. Like anything else in life, STUDYING is key to mastery. And it CAN be fun. 😉
Alright, let's get into the main topic!
Trusting your process means you must certainly have a preferred way to draw. We started this in the first place because DRAWING IS FUN! When you force yourself to draw you are taking a good chunk of the fun away from it! 😢 More often than not, the thing you're trying to draw or paint is right around the corner of having fun with it.
Take my word on it: When you have an assignment, try to lift the obligation of doing it and just start WITH SCRIBBLES. Play around with wild shapes and lines...you'd be surprised at what may come at you from those nonsense scribbles! Let's check my latest process here:
I had to design some concept art for a client, he wanted a bunch of character ideas for a videogame. They could be either human or animal-like humanoids with a funny and naive look to them (much like some Disney characters). As someone who is really bound to realism and realistic paintings, this was a challenge for me, but also a fun way to push my boundaries! So here is what I did:
Step 1 - I started with scribbles!
You see? These are random scribbles, I was super laidback when putting these together. Just let your pencil or stylus glide on your drawing surface and don't think much about it. The next step is just to move to the next scribble. Spend like 10 seconds in one scribble, then move to the next. Try to make at least 6 scribbles (or as many as you like). The main purpose here is to get you into drawing mode!!! 🖌
Step 2 - Fun time! Guess what those scribbles look like.
Now this is where you exercise your creativity. What can you see on those scribbles? Try to see that the lines are suggesting... What kind of drawing or character is trying to come out of these scribbles but still can't because you haven't drawn them yet?
Did you do it!? DID YOU DO IT!? Alright, below you can see mine. Click the SPOILER ALERT button to check whether by pure chance we manage to see the same characters hidden in those shapes! 😊
Reveal spoiler
These were mine!
I was immediately drawn by those first scribbles looking like a penguin priest saying hello to his assembly of faithful followers...Later I saw it as a singer, playing the lute - lol! This first character brought me memories of the Disney Robin Hood film. Soon enough I had a mouse guard, a weak panther meister, a crazy chicken lady who is probably the mother of a princess, the princess herself, and lastly some opera singer (with huge breasts, I dunno - lol!😂).
STEP 3 - Polish your ideas!
Although this is a fun exercise, this is still just the sketching phase! You still have to bring some clarity to your lines to really get inspired for your next move. A good tip is to grab an eraser and make those scribble lines lighter. If you're painting digitally, you can just lower the opacity of your scribbles` layer and create another layer to draw on top of it like I did here:
Reveal spoiler
- I am keeping these as SPOILER BUTTONS in case you missed the exercise on STEP 2. Going forward we are going to grab one design of all those ideas and bring it to a polished concept art drawing.
STEP 4 - Grab your favorite sketch and bring it alive!
The first time I saw this chicken queen regent character I knew it had all the energy I needed for this particular concept art gig. She acts like a Karen, makes a bunch of noise in the Castle, and is certainly cut to be the comical relief character of my client's story!
AND IT ALL STARTED WITH SCRIBBLES. ✏️😊
Trusting the process is also believing in the fact that you have an artist's vision and sometimes going back to the core of why you started doing art in the first place is the key to having fun with any assignment and making it enjoyable!
I hope I could get this message across and also provide you with some fun in this post! Took me a while to write it but if I got a smile out of you, we're on! 💪 Get those scribbles going and be amazed at what is brought to life from them! 😊
Wishing you all the best as always,
Your big bro,
Galiant =)
As it sounds simple theoretically, but one have to be committed in order to achieve the goals.
It challenging at start but with commitments, everything becomes simple
Hey @paulyoung1! I absolutely agree with you there! A great word of motivation for everyone reading this! =) So true!
Creative
Thank you, @bullmoney7 ! Great to have you here! :)
Seems so easy when you do it haha. Still, the only thing I can draw is an elephant 😂
Congrats on the tutorial!
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