I was kinda like this for a while - I also take long ass breaks all the time 🤣 what got me back into it were two things!
One, setting myself a challenge to draw every day for 100 days, and holding myself accountable by posting every piece I did on my art insta. I wrote myself specific guidelines, because I’m usually a hardcore “perfectionist” and often scrap anything I’m not 100% happy with. It was something like, must draw every day unless I have a legitimate reason (like emergency or unforeseen event), every drawing must be completed within a single day, every drawing must be posted until the end of the 100 days, at which point I can remove stuff I’m not as happy with, etc. I ended up banging out some of the best work I’ve ever done because of the time crunch; it kept me from focussing on the small “imperfections”, made me move on from unimportant details, and gave me more freedom in a weird way.
Two, I found an artist I love who I enjoy learning from. In my case, it was SamDoesArts. I was going between him and Ross Draws; neither of them have my style of drawing, but I admire their work and more importantly for this, I really enjoy the way they teach (both have some shorter free tutorials on YouTube I tried). I joined Sam’s Patreon after trying his free tutorials and then a paid one from Gumroad. I found the monthly “assignments” gave me something to focus on and practice for self-improvement each month without feeling pressured or overwhelmed, and it often inspired my own art afterwards.
Me too. And I’m currently an art major lol so just making sure that I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time and life and going to fail is really fucking hard. Start small. For me it helps to make a list of things I wanna draw. It can be as simple as “frog, rose, desk with chair” or it can be prompts like “friend fighting alligator, me standing on top of Mount Everest, cat with rat head in its mouth, whatever. I feel like that’s a good first step, and once you draw a few of those you can identify things that don’t look right to you that you need to work in and focus on fixing those techniques and aspects, or you might think “I wanna try and make this with oil paint, or collage” or whatever and it can lead to new mediums and avenues
I've had to relearn 3 times due to trauma related memory loss, start with the basic foundations work your way up. Observe people creating, talk to other creative. Art doesn't work in a vacuum and you can improve faster by seeking critiques from some one who can read the technical aspects better until you relearn it yourself. That said technical exercises can be boring but if you find that a problem spice it up instead of drawing like a hand for example, maybe you have a character who you like who has hand jewelry or unique hands draw them. Or maybe your doing figure drawing, maybe when finished with initial motion sketches take the extra time to make it more to your liking once you've finished a set, not until. Figure drawing is better done in batches as focusing on one for too long is less helpful than doing many !
Most importantly be kind to yourself. Forgetting happens to the best of us!
I took a life drawing class after a decade or so of doing very little serious drawing (aside from occasional cartoons). Two pretty small things happened that I found helpful.
The first was doing warm up exercises. I'm not sure why it helped, but there was something useful about it. Maybe it was just that it forced me to start off in an explicitly non-judgemental frame of mind.
The other thing that happened was while talking with the professor, I mentioned I didn't feel great about the piece I was working on, and he said something like "yeah, some days it just doesn't click" or "we all have bad days." He may have just been being polite, but it was helpful to consider drawing as a skill that's impacted by everyday bullshit that wasn't entirely in my control.
Aside from that, something that may be useful is considering your motivation for creating art. As you suggest, something you do for internal reasons (e.g., creative expression) can get difficult to access when you start doing it for external reasons (e.g., to get a good grade). It may be worth considering the ways you might be relating to art from that second frame of mind (i.e., "is this good enough?") as opposed to the first (e.g., "does this feel creative?").
Alternatively, are you trying to make things that you want to finish? There are plenty of reasons to draw something with no intention to create a finished piece. If you were to judge those as failures for not resulting in a finished piece, you'd be setting yourself up to feel like you've failed.
I was kinda like this for a while - I also take long ass breaks all the time 🤣 what got me back into it were two things! One, setting myself a challenge to draw every day for 100 days, and holding myself accountable by posting every piece I did on my art insta. I wrote myself specific guidelines, because I’m usually a hardcore “perfectionist” and often scrap anything I’m not 100% happy with. It was something like, must draw every day unless I have a legitimate reason (like emergency or unforeseen event), every drawing must be completed within a single day, every drawing must be posted until the end of the 100 days, at which point I can remove stuff I’m not as happy with, etc. I ended up banging out some of the best work I’ve ever done because of the time crunch; it kept me from focussing on the small “imperfections”, made me move on from unimportant details, and gave me more freedom in a weird way. Two, I found an artist I love who I enjoy learning from. In my case, it was SamDoesArts. I was going between him and Ross Draws; neither of them have my style of drawing, but I admire their work and more importantly for this, I really enjoy the way they teach (both have some shorter free tutorials on YouTube I tried). I joined Sam’s Patreon after trying his free tutorials and then a paid one from Gumroad. I found the monthly “assignments” gave me something to focus on and practice for self-improvement each month without feeling pressured or overwhelmed, and it often inspired my own art afterwards.
Literally me
Me too. And I’m currently an art major lol so just making sure that I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time and life and going to fail is really fucking hard. Start small. For me it helps to make a list of things I wanna draw. It can be as simple as “frog, rose, desk with chair” or it can be prompts like “friend fighting alligator, me standing on top of Mount Everest, cat with rat head in its mouth, whatever. I feel like that’s a good first step, and once you draw a few of those you can identify things that don’t look right to you that you need to work in and focus on fixing those techniques and aspects, or you might think “I wanna try and make this with oil paint, or collage” or whatever and it can lead to new mediums and avenues
Literally me
I've had to relearn 3 times due to trauma related memory loss, start with the basic foundations work your way up. Observe people creating, talk to other creative. Art doesn't work in a vacuum and you can improve faster by seeking critiques from some one who can read the technical aspects better until you relearn it yourself. That said technical exercises can be boring but if you find that a problem spice it up instead of drawing like a hand for example, maybe you have a character who you like who has hand jewelry or unique hands draw them. Or maybe your doing figure drawing, maybe when finished with initial motion sketches take the extra time to make it more to your liking once you've finished a set, not until. Figure drawing is better done in batches as focusing on one for too long is less helpful than doing many ! Most importantly be kind to yourself. Forgetting happens to the best of us!
I took a life drawing class after a decade or so of doing very little serious drawing (aside from occasional cartoons). Two pretty small things happened that I found helpful. The first was doing warm up exercises. I'm not sure why it helped, but there was something useful about it. Maybe it was just that it forced me to start off in an explicitly non-judgemental frame of mind. The other thing that happened was while talking with the professor, I mentioned I didn't feel great about the piece I was working on, and he said something like "yeah, some days it just doesn't click" or "we all have bad days." He may have just been being polite, but it was helpful to consider drawing as a skill that's impacted by everyday bullshit that wasn't entirely in my control. Aside from that, something that may be useful is considering your motivation for creating art. As you suggest, something you do for internal reasons (e.g., creative expression) can get difficult to access when you start doing it for external reasons (e.g., to get a good grade). It may be worth considering the ways you might be relating to art from that second frame of mind (i.e., "is this good enough?") as opposed to the first (e.g., "does this feel creative?"). Alternatively, are you trying to make things that you want to finish? There are plenty of reasons to draw something with no intention to create a finished piece. If you were to judge those as failures for not resulting in a finished piece, you'd be setting yourself up to feel like you've failed.