rollingrabbit

Aw, thank you.

Unfortunately, I’m absolutely terrible with giving people advice, but I’ll just say some words here. Oh, the pressure is on. Now, let it be known that this stuff comes from someone who does animation and character design primarily, so it might not apply to other areas of art so much.

1. This is obvious, but draw, draw, draw. Don’t be worried about what it is, or if the idea is silly (because if it’s silly, you don’t need to show anyone. If you have an idea you like, draw it, don’t just let it go and forget about it). Just draw, and draw a lot. I think I have improved a lot in the past year just by drawing a lot more and trying new techniques. Finishing more drawings has proven good for me too — I used to only sketch for a long time, but now I find it hard not to go through to the final drawing.

2. The thing about style is it is always going to change. I myself have gone through a huge range of styles, and this is still really only the beginning. So don’t worry about trying to find your own style and sticking to it — you’re always going to be influenced by other things, other styles, other artists. Style flows and changes as time goes on, and that’s what is so great about it. If you look at the works of the masters, you can see that they went through the same thing, too — their style at the beginning of their career is often very different from their style at the end. Eventually, you may find something that works, and it’s up to you whether you want to stick with it or continue the ~style flow.

3. Long story short, try lots of different styles! That’s the fun part of being an artist, you can do whatever the heck you want. Nobody can stop you. You can draw your character in the style of Disney, you can draw your character in the style of Hergé, you can draw your character in the style of My Little Pony, you can draw it in some crazy style that you can’t compare to something. It might give you new perspective on that character’s design.

4. Art block is one of the worst things. When I want to draw, but have no ideas, I try to do exercises like redrawing something old — that’s always a charmer. Or sometimes I just draw randomly chosen Pokémon or a bunch of hipsters on a fashion site. Sometimes what you need to do is just get that pen moving somehow and work through it, and then maybe some ideas will come. We all have our creative dry spells, we all have days where what we draw just isn’t working, but it’s good to at least try. Draw random shapes and try to turn them into characters, try to fit as many different looking fish as you can on one page.

5. Drawing from life is a great thing, I just don’t do it enough because I get super embarrassed about drawing in public and mess everything up. But if you are not easily embarrassed by people noticing you drawing them in coffee shops, I can recommend that to you, too. Everyone does that except me. Maybe I’ll get over my fear soon.

… I don’t know if any of that made sense. It’s 2am and I probably should have left this message for a better time, but hey, I’m here now. Anyway, I wish you luck with whatever art you decide to pursue!