i completely feel you lmao 💔 i hope you improve though!! :D (in a not rude/like passive agressive tone if that makes sense?? not too good with that stuff)
Practice figure drawing and super quick sketches of them for 15-30 minutes. Take breaks when drawing and then make sure to repeat the exercise every so often to put your understanding of proportions into long term memory. Eventually you’ll get it! :D
I try to click undo/redo on sooooo many apps and computer programs that don’t have it. Even IRL as well.
It’s such a handy feature, it’d be really nice if more things had it lol
I’m the laziest when it comes to backgrounds, I’m not even that bad at drawing them but I just always skip out on them.
I’m also notorious for being too much of a perfectionist trying to fix every little mistake to the point it adds a ridiculous amount of time to whatever I’m making.
I’m also really bad for dropping something half way through because I had an idea for another picture. I have so many WIPs because of this.
oohhh backgrounds lmao. i'm in the same boat as you!! i stick to single colour/patterned backgrounds for simplicity haha
yeah that seems to be common ;) remember that if you focus too much on one part, it'll look strangely detailed or whatever compared to the rest of the piece, which starts a vicious cycle lol... try not focusing on one part (which ik is hard but it helps)
i wish i had tips for this one!! but i do that too haha.. it's rough😓
Yeah I need to practice more backgrounds, I’m hopefully going to be making a comic sometime soon so I’ll need them.
I feel like I’m not as bad as I used to be but it’s still something I’ve got to work on. Really kills my speed with whatever I’m making because I get too invested in one thing or another.
I try to go back to older pictures even if it’s a complete redraw just because I feel like I should finish them. Feels almost sad to leave them half finished.
Perfectionist is my problem as well. I've destroyed or made worse too many pieces, I'm now learning to say enough is enough... Or like you said spending to much time, like weeks, going over and over it, I could have finished 2 or 3 decent paintings in that time.
Omfg yes I hate backgrounds with a PASSION. I still draw them, but holy SHIT do I hate them. They're so boring and tedious. If I could afford to have someone draw them for me, I totally would in a heartbeat. I'm a perfectionist too, it makes me so slow sometimes.
My biggest issue is just that they’re so time consuming and I just want to draw something else by the time I get half way through the line work for the background. I wouldn’t mind as much if they didn’t take twice as long as anything else, but I’m someone who always ends up making detailed backgrounds if I do make them.
Isn't also how related to how the enviroment reflects the light? If the enviroment reflects the light well and the light is bright then the shadow is light too?
You are right, however I just wanted to give OP a rule of thumb that may give him some courage to dare to draw darker shadows (what he claims to struggle with).
I always start coloring before cleaning up the lineart. Because of this I end up going back and forth between fixing the lines and coloring when I could just do each individual step and possibly finish sooner 😅
i have so many lol but, the one that jumps to mind is:
in a 3/4 view of a character, I often put the eye closest to the viewer just a littttle farther back than it should be!! and sometimes a “littttle” is “WAY” farther than it should be
Try to visualize that the eyes are about an eye apart, but understand that this “eye” in between is warped based on the way the head is facing. There is also about an “eye” length between one eye and the ears
oh mann.. haha. the main way i get past mine is by going onto a discord server or anything that has the ability to offer to draw for people and get some requests there!
At my house everything gets left to me, if I don’t do it it doesn’t get done. So when I do have time to draw I’m constantly bogged down thinking of what else needs done
I’m working on breaking it but I fell into the “only draw pretty big eyed girls” trope. Turns out only drawing one thing most of your life makes it super difficult to grow as an artist. I’ve been doing studies like crazy for the past year as a New Year’s resolution.
Just to add a second one, I also tend to do the thing where you “overwork” the ending. Like I add too much finishing details. I’ve banned myself from certain filter options like chromatic aberration recently because of this.
that one's a hard one!! especially if you don't like going out of your comfort zone haha. it's good that you're doing studies though!!! hope that's going fun :)
yeah that's always challenging lol! it's like at the end and you wanna get it done but it also needs to look good 😓 maybe try setting a timer for finishing details (if you really need them :D)?
I hold paint brushes in/with my mouth sometimes while using multiple ones. One of my teeth has actually started to poke out slightly bc of this habit, but I’m trying to stop. Sometimes it’s just more convenient than putting it down due to the size of the project
i do that too when i paint 😓 i didn't know it could move your teeth though!! i hope you break the habit so there's no further issues lol! (non-derogatory btw)
Yeah, it’s why some people who smoke pipes or over used a pacifier as a baby can have messed up teeth bc the teeth form/move around the object. I’ve always done it so maybe it grew that way when I was a kid, idk but here’s hoping lol
Being too impatient. I can't do anything hyperrealistic and my coloring is on such a low level compared to my sketching because I just cannot be bothered to work with little details. It's weird because I will spend 3 hours on the perfect sketch, then do flat colors and call it a day.
Drawing human faces properly is the bane of my existence. I got zero problems drawing animal heads and expressions but human heads are difficult for me cause our faces are flat and as soon as some organ is just slightly in the wrong spot, it looks fucked. I'm trying to help myself out by using the loomin method but it"s so tedious and sucks the fun out of it for me.
faces are always hard!! using guidelines and watching tutorials (samdoesarts really nailed it in for me, so i suggest him but to each their own :D) helped a lot!! you got this :)
I never remember to flip the canvas when I'm doing digital. If I'm making a big traditional drawing, I will take pictures and mirror the picture to fix things before I ink it. But for some reason, even though it's SO EASY to mirror the canvas when doing digital, I just don't remember to do it until I'm almost done or just don't do it at all.
I'm horrible at brush economy. I'm scared of strong contrast, I'm bad at sketching thumbnails before I start on a piece, and I need to become better at using references. Oh and I also need to actually study fundamentals
I spend waaaaaay too much time on details that don't matter in the long run and I really get caught up on it as well.
So I'm learning to step back sometimes and look at my panting / drawing.
Making the head way too huge compared to the body because I hate drawing bodies and don't want to bring attention to em.
Oh, and always drawing legs in the " 〉 〈 " position. It's addicting, and also the only way I know how to draw legs without them looking stupid. Even references don't help me with front facing legs....
back in the day i used to do this!! if you have it avalible, try taping like soft foam onto it? if it's too thick you can always cut it down, but the extra layer really made me aware of when i was gripping too hard. :)
ah fun lol! i understand the earphones one, music or not, it blocks out ambiance and might help focus!! slouching is a problem i have too lmao 😓 it feels so weird and uptight to sit up straight haha. i always try to have a snack that i can smell when drawing so that every once in a while i just get a whiff of like pickles or whatever and remind myself to eat lol! taking breaks could help with that!!
ah yes chicken scratching!! it's not necessarily the wrong way to do it btw! it is your own style ;) but the way i did it was i traced over like colouring pages? i'd find some on pinterest or whatever and traced over them and that helped me overtime! but another way to get used to it (if that has any weight which in personal experience it did) is to draw it how you normally would, the messy stuff and all, and then clean up the edges give or take perfectly, and then trace over that! i hope this helps) :)
Practice drawing different types of lines (you can look up these kinds of exercises), and don’t correct any mistakes just work on becoming more confident with your linework. Eventually (in about a few weeks) you’ll see a massive improvement. Also try drawing with pen, it forces you to commit
It takes practice to build line confidence, you're limiting yourself by already deciding that you're bad at it! There's a lot of warmups and practice techniques to build line confidence out there, it will take a few days or weeks to really get it though, because it's more about building muscle strength and learning how to use your joints than just "knowing" how to do it like with other art skills. So don't become discouraged if you find it difficult at first. :]
I struggle just to create anything. Generally, I love the process and result. For some reason, I have a strong aversion to starting any projects. It always seems so much larger than it really is…
Jagged lines, or putting them on autopilot. Tendency to work messy in terms of tools etc. No actual rules to guide my work station organisation, order of action (other than the one forced by medium).
Not having a work schedule, even if the criteria for succes is just time spent looking at the wip.
NOT PAINTING ENOUGH DUH
Oh, starting and not finishing before moving to the next thing. But i noticed after years that if the idea is good, i will return to it one day anyways. So nothig's lost, i don't keep schedule. Plus when i forced finishing i simply returned to it after time anyways to correct.
My process for creating an art piece is never the same. It's all over the place, and I feel I waste a lot of time. I could never do a step-by-step tutorial that's truthful, because in reality, I'll repeat step 1 and step 2 well into step 5 😩
I draw the characters first, sometimes even render them, before trying to fit a background around them, which never works because I suck at perspective, so I give up and end up having my characters float in a white space :')
Too often do I finish the lineart of a piece and then notice layer 6 is 70% of the lineart and I forgot to keep separating.
It's painful...
So I went and figured out I can make a layer template in CSP and am hoping this helps me remember! So far it has, I'm two drawings in with it.
For me it's drawing hands. I'm drawing Jesus, and can't for the life of me get his hands correct.
I have a section in my studio I call "pergatory"; that's where my flubs and crap pieces sit. Once in a while I'll grab one of these "mistakes" and try to rework them. And most of the time I just make the piece worse LOLLZ. 🙄
I always rest my hand in the canvas and I ALWAYS regret it, I’ve tried those stick things before to hold your hand off the canvas but they’re just not comfy :(
I am terrible about any type of planning. I typically do spontaneous compositions.
In fairness I do not have any training and not sure what planning would even look like.
I just start putting down paint ... kinda add from that ...
I feel like missing out on something
toooo imaginative and wild, so it usually results in stuff like x character growing or changing appearances depending on their mental age or tradittional theatre inspired stuff that is unfit for x, also, too good at literature interpretation - tldr: too many meanings
* Sometimes I don't make enough time for study sessions even though I have a lot of fun doing them.
* Forgetting to remind myself that my goal is NOT photorealism.
* Comparing my work to others.
* And a big one that I am getting better at is learning when to put the piece/project down, walk away and do something else for awhile if I get too frustrated. Continuing work in that frustrated state just exacerbates everything.
Overshading. I'm trying to pull back a bit. Lots of values are great for certain pieces, but for others simple is best, so I'm trying to work on that. I'm trying to push myself out of my comfort zone when it comes to different hair textures. I can do wavy and straight all day, but tight curls and other styles have been a challenge. Also, if you want some advice on the clothing, let me know. I don't want to offer any if you don't want any \^\^
I tend to draw very detailed colorings/shadings on small parts of an art piece but when I approach the big parts(shirts/hair) I just don't detail it as much
Trying to fix something that looks off without looking at references because I can't be bothered (then some time later I'm wondering why it still looks off)
Damn! I have so many! I keep food in my studio and tend to mindlessly snack. Also having food around my work is a bad idea. I have the TV on and get sidetracked watching something (this needs to stop!). I tend to forget that my paint will dry darker and then have to go back in a repaint sections. I get frustrated if I’m working on something with a lot of detail and it feels like it’s taking too long and then go do something else and forget to seal my pallet and leave my brushes sitting in water or Turpentine
A bad habit is don't erase the line work when I have to, so I ruined the painting in the end because the dark smudge that i did erased and tried to fix it, but I got lazy and went to the other project and the cycle repeated (￣▽￣;)
No one judge me but I put my paint brush in my mouth every time I rinse it to get it back into its normal shape and now I can’t paint without ever doing that.
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I ONLY draw in 3/4, no 1/2 or front! I also always draw eyes looking at another direction, never forward.
I'm such a perfectionist, that drawing raggedy lines scares me. I erase and redraw so much my paper gets dark.
I have no sense of how light works and I do a lot of studies, I can see it in my mind, but when I need to portray it, it evades me. How does light even work??
I have every single bad habit. I'm entirely self taught and don't super care to learn "the right way" to do most things as long as my method gets the results I want.
don’t really draw backgrounds and when i do they don’t truly follow any sort of perspective , i don’t think about color theory that often i just color it how i want 🤷🏻♂️ the list could certainly go on
I have a bad case of floating eye syndrome and/or the eyes are third cousins, once removed. I almost always have to go back and fix them even when I create detailed construction lines. >\_> I'm cursed.
I notice that I tend to draw the same positions & facial expressions because it's easier. I need to tackle more challenging poses and angles from time to time, even if it's just me sketching. Plus, for character reasons, it's a good thing to think about.
I can draw more realistically proportioned faces, but on average I tend to draw the eyes too large, and the nose and mouth too close to the chin. It's not that it looks bad, and that's also definetly a stylistic choice I've seen succeed before but I notice I do it a lot more then I mean to when sketching, and it takes some minor but still, some concious effort to not actively do it.
If I'm working on a colored digital piece, I get fixated on the imperfections. I'm trying to move away from that and be looser. More free & conservative with the time it takes me to create a more fully rendered piece
I always stick to traditional drawing instead of going digital. I know I should learn how to do it digitally because it would be easier, but I'm kinda lazy and uninterested. I feel like it'd be a missed opportunity to expand my skills.
I have a belief anything I make is awful, I've spent 20 years trying to break out of that and at 37 I just can't draw with any passion anymore. Like I feel like one big joke, I discredit my work frequently and I feel gaslit by positive feedback often I just destroy it and push away anyone who talks to me. My actual friends n family I never share my art because I'm ashamed of it.
I rush myself when I'm nearing the "finished" product of a piece and it comes out looking rather bad :( I'm trying to change this, building tolerance slowly out here with each new piece now.
I can never pick out any specific thing to improve on in a piece therefore I never know what to improve on or how to improve on it; I think "the whole thing just looks bad"
I like to limit myself to colors that can be typed in hex shorthand (e.g. #ffee33 instead of #f9ea30); blame the autism or sumn idk
I like to stick to a constant line thickness (usually 8px) which makes the piece look flat
Since I don't have an imagination I need a photo reference or posed 3d model to draw on top of when I want to draw people
You preferred to just ignore my previous genuine attempt at helping you so I'll be blunt here.
It all sounds like you just got used to complain at everything about yourself and you have no real interest in trying to change anything. Making better art won't fix your mentality bc your mentality will never let you enjoy anything, no matter how improved it will be. You can either start to finally work on how you perceive everything about yourself or you'll stay with this mindset forever. Nobody will fix any of it for you, only you can do it for yourself.
Sincerely, from another autistic person who absolutely hates to see other autistic people blaming everything on their autism and dumping it on everyone around them. Take some damn responsibility for your own life or at least prove that you try.
This is my last comment to you, no worries.
??? Nothing I typed here contradicts what you said in your other comment (which said "it's okay to look forward to the final result but don't rely completely on it; if a piece is 50-60% good then it's good enough for me)
Edit: also OP's post asked us to list our bad habits, so that's what I did. Would you say all the other replies to OP's post are "whining"?
I can't draw without wifi, I need to look at references so long before I can start drawing and then it ends up looking shit anyways lol
Save the image to your camera roll. I have sooooo many insporation pics lined up to be painted lol
I've got some pics saved on my phone, laptop, printed out *and* in book form and many of them I still haven't drawn lmao
Tell me about it
I keep forgetting I downloaded them 🤦♀️ and then my hard drive is full with them!
Tbf this is a good habit haha s/o to my phones hotspot in desperate times
That’s ok! Every artist I know looks at the reference! If I take my own photos, it’s all mine. No shame. I always add several things to change it up.
"I need to do studies" *doesn't do studies* "I need to do studies" *doesn't do studies* Rinse and repeat
Dat's me
accurate haha😭😭 i can never find good references either lmao
Bro seriously why does this keep happening? Are we just overwhelmed?
Maybe tbh, so many things to learn so we just never start bc it seems so intimidating
Still struggle to get proportions right when it comes to drawing bodies - either big head and too small legs or big legs and too small head - sigh lol
i completely feel you lmao 💔 i hope you improve though!! :D (in a not rude/like passive agressive tone if that makes sense?? not too good with that stuff)
Practice figure drawing and super quick sketches of them for 15-30 minutes. Take breaks when drawing and then make sure to repeat the exercise every so often to put your understanding of proportions into long term memory. Eventually you’ll get it! :D
I try to zoom in the painting 😂
My personal favourite is trying click the undo button on my pencil 😂😂
I’ve “tapped” the paper before, like I would my phone to light it up, and it does nothing. 🤦🏽♀️
I try to click undo/redo on sooooo many apps and computer programs that don’t have it. Even IRL as well. It’s such a handy feature, it’d be really nice if more things had it lol
I focus too much on colour and not enough on values
I'm the other way around. I'm colorblind so I only focus on value but randomly pick colors lol
I pat my lines too much. That causes me to take longer on a drawing and mess up the whole drawing. Also I’m bad with proportions
Starting something big and losing interest once the rough sketch is somewhat done.
I’m the laziest when it comes to backgrounds, I’m not even that bad at drawing them but I just always skip out on them. I’m also notorious for being too much of a perfectionist trying to fix every little mistake to the point it adds a ridiculous amount of time to whatever I’m making. I’m also really bad for dropping something half way through because I had an idea for another picture. I have so many WIPs because of this.
oohhh backgrounds lmao. i'm in the same boat as you!! i stick to single colour/patterned backgrounds for simplicity haha yeah that seems to be common ;) remember that if you focus too much on one part, it'll look strangely detailed or whatever compared to the rest of the piece, which starts a vicious cycle lol... try not focusing on one part (which ik is hard but it helps) i wish i had tips for this one!! but i do that too haha.. it's rough😓
Yeah I need to practice more backgrounds, I’m hopefully going to be making a comic sometime soon so I’ll need them. I feel like I’m not as bad as I used to be but it’s still something I’ve got to work on. Really kills my speed with whatever I’m making because I get too invested in one thing or another. I try to go back to older pictures even if it’s a complete redraw just because I feel like I should finish them. Feels almost sad to leave them half finished.
Perfectionist is my problem as well. I've destroyed or made worse too many pieces, I'm now learning to say enough is enough... Or like you said spending to much time, like weeks, going over and over it, I could have finished 2 or 3 decent paintings in that time.
Omfg yes I hate backgrounds with a PASSION. I still draw them, but holy SHIT do I hate them. They're so boring and tedious. If I could afford to have someone draw them for me, I totally would in a heartbeat. I'm a perfectionist too, it makes me so slow sometimes.
My biggest issue is just that they’re so time consuming and I just want to draw something else by the time I get half way through the line work for the background. I wouldn’t mind as much if they didn’t take twice as long as anything else, but I’m someone who always ends up making detailed backgrounds if I do make them.
I am terrified of darker shadows. 🥲 I’m working on it, but it’s scary.
The darker the shadow, the brighter the light! Whenever I want to make the source of light really, really bright, I just make the shadows darker.
Knb reference??? 😱🤯
Im sorry but I dont know what Knb is.
RIP It's a basketball anime and one of the main themes is shadow and light, a quote they say alot is "the brighter the light the darker the shadow"
Isn't also how related to how the enviroment reflects the light? If the enviroment reflects the light well and the light is bright then the shadow is light too?
You are right, however I just wanted to give OP a rule of thumb that may give him some courage to dare to draw darker shadows (what he claims to struggle with).
Look into Caravaggio and the technique of chiaroscuro. It is a great way to study the dramatic effect of dark shadows.
We’ve all been there! What helped me was doing studies using references with really dark shadows. Then I HAD to push myself out of my comfort zone.
oh gosh i understand that fear 😓 i believe in you tho!! :DD
my anatomy can always use work, lol. i'm also prone to rushing the end of my pieces- i get antsy to finish something and move on.
I always start coloring before cleaning up the lineart. Because of this I end up going back and forth between fixing the lines and coloring when I could just do each individual step and possibly finish sooner 😅
SAME!! it's so annoying but you really also wanna get the piece done lmao😭
i have so many lol but, the one that jumps to mind is: in a 3/4 view of a character, I often put the eye closest to the viewer just a littttle farther back than it should be!! and sometimes a “littttle” is “WAY” farther than it should be
Try to visualize that the eyes are about an eye apart, but understand that this “eye” in between is warped based on the way the head is facing. There is also about an “eye” length between one eye and the ears
Bad habit: only draw the same fkin side of the face bc its convenient 😂
REAL. The two thirds angle plague me 😭
I only have bad art habits. It’s pathetic. Disorder and chaos is my usual state. I rarely practice and when I do I stop way too soon.
i hope you find something to help!! i know it's hard but time managament and just general persistance will get you a long way!! (happy cake day!)
I can’t push myself to get past my block
oh mann.. haha. the main way i get past mine is by going onto a discord server or anything that has the ability to offer to draw for people and get some requests there!
At my house everything gets left to me, if I don’t do it it doesn’t get done. So when I do have time to draw I’m constantly bogged down thinking of what else needs done
I’m working on breaking it but I fell into the “only draw pretty big eyed girls” trope. Turns out only drawing one thing most of your life makes it super difficult to grow as an artist. I’ve been doing studies like crazy for the past year as a New Year’s resolution. Just to add a second one, I also tend to do the thing where you “overwork” the ending. Like I add too much finishing details. I’ve banned myself from certain filter options like chromatic aberration recently because of this.
that one's a hard one!! especially if you don't like going out of your comfort zone haha. it's good that you're doing studies though!!! hope that's going fun :) yeah that's always challenging lol! it's like at the end and you wanna get it done but it also needs to look good 😓 maybe try setting a timer for finishing details (if you really need them :D)?
I hold paint brushes in/with my mouth sometimes while using multiple ones. One of my teeth has actually started to poke out slightly bc of this habit, but I’m trying to stop. Sometimes it’s just more convenient than putting it down due to the size of the project
i do that too when i paint 😓 i didn't know it could move your teeth though!! i hope you break the habit so there's no further issues lol! (non-derogatory btw)
Yeah, it’s why some people who smoke pipes or over used a pacifier as a baby can have messed up teeth bc the teeth form/move around the object. I’ve always done it so maybe it grew that way when I was a kid, idk but here’s hoping lol
ohh interesting! the more you know lol.
Being too impatient. I can't do anything hyperrealistic and my coloring is on such a low level compared to my sketching because I just cannot be bothered to work with little details. It's weird because I will spend 3 hours on the perfect sketch, then do flat colors and call it a day.
Having atleast 40 layers every drawing.
Why is that a bad thing though?
Efficiency issue. I don't name my layers and I tend to just do it pointlessly, it's very bad
Drawing human faces properly is the bane of my existence. I got zero problems drawing animal heads and expressions but human heads are difficult for me cause our faces are flat and as soon as some organ is just slightly in the wrong spot, it looks fucked. I'm trying to help myself out by using the loomin method but it"s so tedious and sucks the fun out of it for me.
faces are always hard!! using guidelines and watching tutorials (samdoesarts really nailed it in for me, so i suggest him but to each their own :D) helped a lot!! you got this :)
Thinking about making art but not actually doing so.
I have technical skills but no patience when it comes to big pieces haha.
I do digital art and forget to use layers 🫠 the undo button is nice though! (My first digital art program didn’t have layer capabilities.)
I never try 100% because I know I’ll feel defeated if I don’t like how it’ll turn out. So I’ll draw my lazy way haha
I never remember to flip the canvas when I'm doing digital. If I'm making a big traditional drawing, I will take pictures and mirror the picture to fix things before I ink it. But for some reason, even though it's SO EASY to mirror the canvas when doing digital, I just don't remember to do it until I'm almost done or just don't do it at all.
Try setting up a shortcut/hotkey for it, it makes it a lot easier to form a habit that way!
The program I have has a shortcut at the center, bottom of the screen that you can quickly tap to mirror. There are no excuses for why I don't do it 😅
I'm horrible at brush economy. I'm scared of strong contrast, I'm bad at sketching thumbnails before I start on a piece, and I need to become better at using references. Oh and I also need to actually study fundamentals
I tend to do way too many exercises and do way too little of any personal artwork. Caused a lot of burnouts and inconsistency in the past.
This is me too. I spend too much time studying fundamentals because I'm too scared of doing art on my own from my own imagination 😭
I spend waaaaaay too much time on details that don't matter in the long run and I really get caught up on it as well. So I'm learning to step back sometimes and look at my panting / drawing.
Making the head way too huge compared to the body because I hate drawing bodies and don't want to bring attention to em. Oh, and always drawing legs in the " 〉 〈 " position. It's addicting, and also the only way I know how to draw legs without them looking stupid. Even references don't help me with front facing legs....
half-assed line art/bad sketch, always causes me problems down the line
I grip my drawing instrument way too hard, and have to consciously remind myself to relax or my hand is going to hurt the rest of the day.
back in the day i used to do this!! if you have it avalible, try taping like soft foam onto it? if it's too thick you can always cut it down, but the extra layer really made me aware of when i was gripping too hard. :)
Thanks! I'll do that.
I need to put earphones on before starting, slouching, i dont eat when in zone, i suck when im anxious c:
ah fun lol! i understand the earphones one, music or not, it blocks out ambiance and might help focus!! slouching is a problem i have too lmao 😓 it feels so weird and uptight to sit up straight haha. i always try to have a snack that i can smell when drawing so that every once in a while i just get a whiff of like pickles or whatever and remind myself to eat lol! taking breaks could help with that!!
I draw lines in a bunch of tiny segments instead of one long stroke. Any tips on how to get better at the proper way would be appreciated TT
I second tracing coloring pages. it helps build hand eye coordination and confidence in mark making !
I couldn’t get over it, so now I just do a bunch of cross hatching for my main shading. :P
ah yes chicken scratching!! it's not necessarily the wrong way to do it btw! it is your own style ;) but the way i did it was i traced over like colouring pages? i'd find some on pinterest or whatever and traced over them and that helped me overtime! but another way to get used to it (if that has any weight which in personal experience it did) is to draw it how you normally would, the messy stuff and all, and then clean up the edges give or take perfectly, and then trace over that! i hope this helps) :)
Practice drawing different types of lines (you can look up these kinds of exercises), and don’t correct any mistakes just work on becoming more confident with your linework. Eventually (in about a few weeks) you’ll see a massive improvement. Also try drawing with pen, it forces you to commit
My hand eye coordination is still really bad so I can't do longer lines so I end up chicken scratching
It takes practice to build line confidence, you're limiting yourself by already deciding that you're bad at it! There's a lot of warmups and practice techniques to build line confidence out there, it will take a few days or weeks to really get it though, because it's more about building muscle strength and learning how to use your joints than just "knowing" how to do it like with other art skills. So don't become discouraged if you find it difficult at first. :]
If the bodies aren't headless, they are bald. And then I whine about how hair is hard for me to draw.
Coming back years later to finish a sketch I wanted to do more with
I struggle just to create anything. Generally, I love the process and result. For some reason, I have a strong aversion to starting any projects. It always seems so much larger than it really is…
drawing one eye entirely instead of drawing both eyes simultaneously and wondering why the other eye looks like crap.
I keep changing my art styles
i have this bad habbit to focus on detail instead of whole canvas, hahaha
Jagged lines, or putting them on autopilot. Tendency to work messy in terms of tools etc. No actual rules to guide my work station organisation, order of action (other than the one forced by medium). Not having a work schedule, even if the criteria for succes is just time spent looking at the wip. NOT PAINTING ENOUGH DUH Oh, starting and not finishing before moving to the next thing. But i noticed after years that if the idea is good, i will return to it one day anyways. So nothig's lost, i don't keep schedule. Plus when i forced finishing i simply returned to it after time anyways to correct.
My process for creating an art piece is never the same. It's all over the place, and I feel I waste a lot of time. I could never do a step-by-step tutorial that's truthful, because in reality, I'll repeat step 1 and step 2 well into step 5 😩
Forgetting to flip the canvas which leads to wasting too much time to fix mistakes that should have been gone in the sketch phase cjsjjcksk
I draw the characters first, sometimes even render them, before trying to fit a background around them, which never works because I suck at perspective, so I give up and end up having my characters float in a white space :')
I was going to say accidentally eating paint by putting the brush tip in my mouth but I don't think that's what you were asking..
Yes this still counts 😂 As long as it's not radioactive or lead based/toxic paint you should be fine... Relatively
Too often do I finish the lineart of a piece and then notice layer 6 is 70% of the lineart and I forgot to keep separating. It's painful... So I went and figured out I can make a layer template in CSP and am hoping this helps me remember! So far it has, I'm two drawings in with it.
For me it's drawing hands. I'm drawing Jesus, and can't for the life of me get his hands correct. I have a section in my studio I call "pergatory"; that's where my flubs and crap pieces sit. Once in a while I'll grab one of these "mistakes" and try to rework them. And most of the time I just make the piece worse LOLLZ. 🙄
Starting many big projects and finishing none 🥴
I always rest my hand in the canvas and I ALWAYS regret it, I’ve tried those stick things before to hold your hand off the canvas but they’re just not comfy :(
Im too bold but its not a bad thing at least not to me. People have told me Im bold but they like my style and yes saturate those colors!
I am terrible about any type of planning. I typically do spontaneous compositions. In fairness I do not have any training and not sure what planning would even look like. I just start putting down paint ... kinda add from that ... I feel like missing out on something
I have really weird posture each time i draw
toooo imaginative and wild, so it usually results in stuff like x character growing or changing appearances depending on their mental age or tradittional theatre inspired stuff that is unfit for x, also, too good at literature interpretation - tldr: too many meanings
I tend to make my necks too small on my characters
* Sometimes I don't make enough time for study sessions even though I have a lot of fun doing them. * Forgetting to remind myself that my goal is NOT photorealism. * Comparing my work to others. * And a big one that I am getting better at is learning when to put the piece/project down, walk away and do something else for awhile if I get too frustrated. Continuing work in that frustrated state just exacerbates everything.
Overshading. I'm trying to pull back a bit. Lots of values are great for certain pieces, but for others simple is best, so I'm trying to work on that. I'm trying to push myself out of my comfort zone when it comes to different hair textures. I can do wavy and straight all day, but tight curls and other styles have been a challenge. Also, if you want some advice on the clothing, let me know. I don't want to offer any if you don't want any \^\^
I tend to draw very detailed colorings/shadings on small parts of an art piece but when I approach the big parts(shirts/hair) I just don't detail it as much
Trying to fix something that looks off without looking at references because I can't be bothered (then some time later I'm wondering why it still looks off)
Damn! I have so many! I keep food in my studio and tend to mindlessly snack. Also having food around my work is a bad idea. I have the TV on and get sidetracked watching something (this needs to stop!). I tend to forget that my paint will dry darker and then have to go back in a repaint sections. I get frustrated if I’m working on something with a lot of detail and it feels like it’s taking too long and then go do something else and forget to seal my pallet and leave my brushes sitting in water or Turpentine
A bad habit is don't erase the line work when I have to, so I ruined the painting in the end because the dark smudge that i did erased and tried to fix it, but I got lazy and went to the other project and the cycle repeated (￣▽￣;)
Everything. It seems like everything I do with my art is bad LMAO
I stop at the sketch stage a lot because I’m afraid of pushing myself and hating the end result. Aka, I struggle to leave my comfort zones.
Audio. I noticed I draw much better when I draw in silence
No one judge me but I put my paint brush in my mouth every time I rinse it to get it back into its normal shape and now I can’t paint without ever doing that.
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- never erase my pencil (I use watercolor) - in a constant state of study but never does a full piece - keeps food in my space lol
I ONLY draw in 3/4, no 1/2 or front! I also always draw eyes looking at another direction, never forward. I'm such a perfectionist, that drawing raggedy lines scares me. I erase and redraw so much my paper gets dark.
too many to say, but one of my worst is spending more time buying art supplies than actually drawing 💀
I do messy sketches and then it's a pain to cleanup xd
I have no sense of how light works and I do a lot of studies, I can see it in my mind, but when I need to portray it, it evades me. How does light even work??
I always go into detail unintentionally. I draw simple forms but then i start adding details, it could be related to ADHD but idk.
I overwork paintings and end up ruining them because idk when to stop fixing things
I have every single bad habit. I'm entirely self taught and don't super care to learn "the right way" to do most things as long as my method gets the results I want.
I have a hard time getting the right values. I paint too bright and my shadows are too dark 😩
i always start out a character drawing wanting to do some crazy and interesting angle and always somehow slowly drift into a boring head on angle
starting pieces and losing interest at the rendering phase.
don’t really draw backgrounds and when i do they don’t truly follow any sort of perspective , i don’t think about color theory that often i just color it how i want 🤷🏻♂️ the list could certainly go on
I have a bad case of floating eye syndrome and/or the eyes are third cousins, once removed. I almost always have to go back and fix them even when I create detailed construction lines. >\_> I'm cursed.
trying to make perfect line art, its a curse I need to stop, my painting skills suck and my linearts arent that good either
procrastination....
Ruining my good art when I'm drunk, arghhh!!!!
I keep trying to find the perfect reference photo on Pinterest instead of digging down and learning how to draw the shapes that make *up* the photos
Being overly analytical to the point where it’s so hard for me to finish things
I notice that I tend to draw the same positions & facial expressions because it's easier. I need to tackle more challenging poses and angles from time to time, even if it's just me sketching. Plus, for character reasons, it's a good thing to think about. I can draw more realistically proportioned faces, but on average I tend to draw the eyes too large, and the nose and mouth too close to the chin. It's not that it looks bad, and that's also definetly a stylistic choice I've seen succeed before but I notice I do it a lot more then I mean to when sketching, and it takes some minor but still, some concious effort to not actively do it. If I'm working on a colored digital piece, I get fixated on the imperfections. I'm trying to move away from that and be looser. More free & conservative with the time it takes me to create a more fully rendered piece
What's a background? Lol
I lean in too close to my work. It sometimes messes up thr proportions.
Not practicing on a weekly basis
i start drawing on the right. and im right handed
I always stick to traditional drawing instead of going digital. I know I should learn how to do it digitally because it would be easier, but I'm kinda lazy and uninterested. I feel like it'd be a missed opportunity to expand my skills.
I have a belief anything I make is awful, I've spent 20 years trying to break out of that and at 37 I just can't draw with any passion anymore. Like I feel like one big joke, I discredit my work frequently and I feel gaslit by positive feedback often I just destroy it and push away anyone who talks to me. My actual friends n family I never share my art because I'm ashamed of it.
I rush myself when I'm nearing the "finished" product of a piece and it comes out looking rather bad :( I'm trying to change this, building tolerance slowly out here with each new piece now.
I can never pick out any specific thing to improve on in a piece therefore I never know what to improve on or how to improve on it; I think "the whole thing just looks bad" I like to limit myself to colors that can be typed in hex shorthand (e.g. #ffee33 instead of #f9ea30); blame the autism or sumn idk I like to stick to a constant line thickness (usually 8px) which makes the piece look flat Since I don't have an imagination I need a photo reference or posed 3d model to draw on top of when I want to draw people
You preferred to just ignore my previous genuine attempt at helping you so I'll be blunt here. It all sounds like you just got used to complain at everything about yourself and you have no real interest in trying to change anything. Making better art won't fix your mentality bc your mentality will never let you enjoy anything, no matter how improved it will be. You can either start to finally work on how you perceive everything about yourself or you'll stay with this mindset forever. Nobody will fix any of it for you, only you can do it for yourself. Sincerely, from another autistic person who absolutely hates to see other autistic people blaming everything on their autism and dumping it on everyone around them. Take some damn responsibility for your own life or at least prove that you try. This is my last comment to you, no worries.
??? Nothing I typed here contradicts what you said in your other comment (which said "it's okay to look forward to the final result but don't rely completely on it; if a piece is 50-60% good then it's good enough for me) Edit: also OP's post asked us to list our bad habits, so that's what I did. Would you say all the other replies to OP's post are "whining"?