Category: Drawing Inspiration

A lot of you tell me that you have trouble finding things to draw, and my answer for you is that there isn’t anything you can’t draw.

I know you feel a resistance to drawing sometimes. It happens to me too, and it’s normal. The tricky part about making art is that while our brains think it’s a pretty good idea, they don’t really want to devote any time to it. Drawing bypasses the chatty and easily distracted part of our minds that are usually in charge. Instead, using our eyes and hands to draw strengthens connections to the non-verbal  part. Your Ms. or Mr. Chatty Brain hates that, so if you’re having trouble finding something to draw, it could be because part of your brain is dragging its feet, so to speak. :)

The truth is that nearly everything you can see is fascinating in some way. It might be line, or value, or shape, or texture, or some combination of those things, but after you start to sketch something will catch your attention, time will drop away, and you’ll be back in drawing happy-land once again.

And for those days when you just can’t convince yourself that anything you’ve drawn a hundred times before could possible be interesting to draw again,  I’ve written a few posts that might give you some inspiration. Here they are:

• Make Drawing Easier – Create A Drawing Stash
• The Joy Of Drawing – How To arrange A Small Still Life
• Sketching Vegetables

And one more thing, don’t forget to draw directly from your imagination too! Doodle away. Draw shapes, create gradations, invent textures, and give yourself the freedom to be as creative as you want to be. You won’t be wasting your time. Your future artist self will use everything you draw now in one way or another later. Even the basic hand / eye coordination that sketching builds adds to your successes down the road.