Long, long ago, I had a habit of drawing with just pencils, sketch pens, paints etc. When I took art very seriously as a career my full focus was to draw digitally and learn digital art. I was very passionate about it, even now, but eventually I figured out that having a sketchbook and being consistently sketching in it everyday, could not only be relaxing but it gives a sense of originality towards my art. It even brought back the nostalgic memories of me sketching ideas in my exam sheets and random doodles in my school/college textbook, proudly showing it off to my peers. long story short I felt more lively!
This is emotional me talking. Now, let's get to what my strategist/art adviser says (which is me haha).
There's, always a reason why every artist highly recommend having at least a small sketching session everyday. The goal here is to put a mark on your sketchbooks that doesn't have to mean anything! it can look messy and candid. Thats the beauty of it!
Treat your sketchbook as your playground!
Now, many of you may have a doubt which would be - what to draw? and should I need to draw from imagination or from reference?
I understand, an outbreak of such dilemma exist and that didn't allowed me to have a healthy sketching habit for so long! This has to be addressed, thus I experimented a lot to help me tune up my sketching habit. Eventually, I ended up setting two strategies for sketching,
#1 - Drawing/doodle random forms! you heard me right, for 70% of the time I draw random doodles of various "forms" in my sketchbook, they don't have to mean anything, they are just solid looking objects, thus you cannot be stressed drawing them. It would be a very good meditative warm up exercise too!
#2 -Drawing from reference! this could be little tricky, because you might tend to start expect drawing something cool and you want to be proud of it. Well, I'll again put it here, it also doesn't have to be perfect! try capturing the essence of the reference image, don't get into details when starting out! Go with your flow!
I followed this strategy for quite sometime, eventually I was truly motivated to draw from imagination!
did you see what happened? Yes! this is how you evolve as an artist! this is how you slowly introduce productive habits in your routine and make it worthy of your time!
Start to sketch with something small and without having any set results in mind, be playful and let yourself make mistakes, because really, who cares?
Follow your own strategies, work it out and then see the magic!
Until next time
-Dejeshwini
Bonus Section - I also came across these two amazing, on point videos on YouTube (links below), Check them out if you can spare few minutes.
Hope you have found this elaborate newsletter helpful, if you like it feel free to share it with someone who would also get benefitted from this! Happy drawing cheers!