The official home of the KNKL Show on Imzy!
Need Help getting back into Drawing
This is probably the 15,000th post here about getting some help in drawing, but I'm making one nonetheless.
Before all else, I am aware of basic anatomy. However, that is the fullest extent of my knowledge. I can't do backgrounds, dynamic poses, head positioning, etc. Lines of action confuse me and expressions fluster me. Anything beyond flat coloring is outside of what I know too. Basically, I'm quite a beginner... even though I've been into drawing for 4 years. At this point, I feel like I should have some knowledge on these topics.
Recently though, I've been having a difficult time doing any piece of art. I've been tracing and doing research, but when I spend an hour or two trying to apply these to my own style, nothing seems to come out right and I set the pen down for a different day. I feel like I have unnecessarily high standards for someone like myself, especially when I'm looking forward to pursuing a career in concept art.
As an artist, I think I need to find a fresh start to push myself forward. I want to relearn a lot, and perhaps learn something new, but I don't know where to start. Does anybody have any ideas to help renew my senses?




Most of learning is repetition. The rest is being smart about how you study. Take it one step at a time, don't try to dive right into full dynamic illustrations with backgrounds and complex lighting all at once.
Figure out one thing you'd like to learn/do better. For an example, we'll say dynamic poses. give yourself several different types of studies, not just one. Find some pose photo references on DeviantArt or something, and re-create them (side point, do not trace. If you do, you're not training your eye to see and deconstruct nearly as well). Start "creating" some poses by crossing two curvy lines and forcing them to represent a pose. Go to figure drawing classes.
Once you've done several studies, apply those studies. Use them in your next piece. Really focus on incorporating what you've learned.
Rinse repeat. It may seem tedious to only study one or two things at a time, but if you start with the basics and continue adding more you'll have a strong foundation and you'll develop (relatively) very quickly.
Don't feel bad for being a beginner despite how much time you put in -- that was basically me until I found the KNKL show. You'll find as you learn that sometimes you learn a lot really fast, other times you feel like you're plateauing.
There's two ways to do this. One is to just power through it and do relentless studies until you're confident enough to actually draw (which might work for you, but I personally found it tedious), two is to just start drawing. I know, it sounds a bit weird to tell you to start drawing when you feel like you can't. But ask yourself, what exactly is it that's stopping you from drawing? Most of the time, personally, I feel as if I'm "supposed" to be making some huge improvement with every piece, and that discourages me. But if I just randomly get inspired to draw, say, a girl reading on a park bench, I tend to just dive straight into the drawing (after thumbnails, of course) and my expectations seem to fall away. Of course, this isn't a one-size-fits-all solution, but if you notice that high standards are what's discouraging you from drawing, first try to focus on having fun drawing like you probably used to. After I found a way to have fun again, it became a lot easier to do the "boring" stuff like research and studies, because I found myself wanting to put all of that knowledge to use somewhere. Once you've started, it becomes a lot easier to continue on. I also found it really useful to follow along with Kienan when working on something, but not just copying every aspect of it. (shameless self promotion: ) This picture was done while working along with Kienan's Isometric series . It's far from perfect and I ended up rushing by the end, but the point is that I wouldn't have drawn this picture otherwise, and watching those videos helped to keep me motivated as well as teach me new things along the way -- this was the first time I'd ever tried using a colored ambient light.
For your situation, the Let's Paint Ahri series and the Splatoon series might help with dynamic poses and lines of action/flow. If you want, you could try drawing along -- I don't recommend drawing the exact same thing, because you'll probably end up comparing yourself, but pick something else that you could draw that would have a similar concept. So, long story short, try not to worry about improving too much, it'll happen as you go. Focus instead of having fun, even if your drawing looks horrible, and find some drawing videos to keep you going and teach you a few tricks.
(sorry for long post with lots of links!)