it delights me to know that my art has been conning so many people into BMC lmao

it’s a musical about some good children making stupid decisions featuring an evil floppy disk and teenage angst

Thank you so much! ♥

Hello there! I am TERRIBLY sorry for the late reply ;__;  There were days when I didn’t have time to answer, there were days when I forgot to do this and there were days I couldn’t get my thoughts together... Oh, I feel so bad :C I hope that my answer somehow make your waiting worth ^^’First of all, thank you so much for the kind words! Random positive messages found in my inbox always make me happy ♥ I’ll start gloomy. When you wrote this message to me some time ago, I was having some kind of art block. It was different than the art blocks I had [just a couple] in my life. Usually it was a I wan’t to draw so bad, but I can’t, something restrains me feeling, this time it was I just don’t need to draw... I felt like my beloved hobby, my hobby that I practised for 14 years, meant nothing anymore to me. I felt helpless, ‘cause I wasn’t experienced to dealt with an art block like this one. Actually, I thought it isn’t an art block, but a definite end of my passion. Thankfully, I’m slowly getting over this awful feeling. I’ve started needing and enjoying drawing again. Now, let me explain you how I got the motivation, how to do it in general and some portrait tips for beginners.

Getting motivation

1. Try to feel good. When you’re irritated, stressed, it may have a bad affect on work. Of course some people find the source to create in their anger or sorrow, but negative feelings may as well make you unfocused or easily pissed off if your artwork won’t be coming along as you imagined, may make you feel in hurry, so sloppy, too. What to do to feel good? Get enough sleep, eat decent meal, perhaps a piece of chocolate [endorphins, u know], watch something positive on You Tube… Feeling good makes you more eager to do things and to deal with possible problems that may occur during drawing. Unless… you belong to this group of artists that are fuelled by negative emotions.

2. Find inspiration. Nothing makes more eager to paint or draw or sculpt than some decent inspiration! First of all, browse other people’s art! Viisit art pages, visit Pinterest [many people get pissed when they see their artworks posted there, me too, but still it’s a mine of inspiring ideas for, like, everything], check some videos at You Tube, read a book or some fan fic with your fav characters, go to art museum or art gallery, discuss some important topic with your friend, listen to the different type of music, visit a place you’ve never been to - not necessarily far away from your home. There is plenty of things, places and people that may inspire you. Inspiration for me is like an injection of motivation!

3. Go for a walk and take a sketchbook with you. This paragraph is kinda relatable to the previous one, but this one is more about practice. If the weather is nice, sit in a park and sketch passerby or the nature. If the weather is ugly, go to a cafe, order some tasty coffee or tea and sketch people that sit in the same cafe. Not only it’s a good practice to capture different poses, different faces, but these sketches might start as some base for some drawing or project of yours! Someone’s cool outfit may develop in new fashion designs or someone’s funny face can evolve in your new original character!

4. Use online generators. If you don’t have an inspiration, you lack ideas what to draw, use online generators. You may really sink into these pages if you like to draw OCs and your own places, worlds, universes! These generators were probably created mostly for writers, but it will definitely be profitable to take a look there. You can get a brief description of a character’s look,  personality or clothing, their background, abilities, as well as descriptions of locations, time, things and so on. Once you generate these, they might help you to construct your drawing!

http://fantasynamegenerators.com/ [not only names, but also descriptions of humans, creatures, places]

http://www.springhole.net/writing_roleplaying_randomators/index.html [LOTS of generators, even very specific ones]

5. In case of having some long-lasting art block and having unsuccessfully tried the tips above, force yourself to draw. But only a bit! Just take a piece of paper and a pencil one day and spend just a minute, no more, to draw the thing you notice: a plant, a cup, a mobile phone, a superhero figurine that stands on your desk… whatever. A messy, quick sketch, just to move your hand. Do it every few days. It may become a habit that encourages you to get back to art. That was the method I used to get back on track weeks ago.

Portrait drawing tips for beginners

Now, some general tips! Sorry for some randomness, you didn’t specify what technique you use...

1. Do not press a pencil hard. Shade with the pencil gently, except for drawing hair, but still, don’t press too much ‘cause the paper will get wavy. 2. Draw under decent light. Preferably in daylight, ‘cause when it’s dark and you use artificial light, graphite pencils or coloured pencils reflect light and the light changes colours. 3. When drawing from a reference picture, make sure it’s a big and sharp one. It allows to capture the proper resemblance of a person and copy all the details. 4. Make sure to clean hands before drawing and put some spare sheet of paper under your wrist to prevent the drawing from smudging.5. Invest in some good art supplies. Remember good doesn’t have to mean expensive. It’s true the best art supplies usually aren’t affordable for beginners, but you can use cheaper pencils etc. Just google some art forums to get to know what people recommend. 6. When using graphite pencils, use different pencils [they should vary in softness/hardness] and draw a few layers to get smooth shading. Start with F or HB, then gradually use softer pencils with “B”. 7. When portraying, try to get the resemblance right. Here are some useful tips of mine, I hope.8. Here are some tutorials I did, I also hope you find plenty of helpful tips: How to draw the mouth; How to draw noses; How to get the right proportions when drawing a portrait; how to draw hair9. Eyes. They are the most important thing for me in a portrait as they determine the likeness. Apart from the things I mentioned in point 7, please remember to shade the eyeball. Eye is not a flat part of the body, it’s a ball. You can draw some small veins to make it more realistic and detailed. Also, don’t draw eyelashes straight from the eyeball, remember that there is a piece of skin between the eyeball and the line of eyelashes. What’s more, you shouldn’t draw eyes too close to one another or too far. Usually, the distance between eyes is a length of one eye [from a corner to another corner].10. Draw the faces you like. It’s more likely you pay more attention to drawing your beloved family member or a friend or an actor you adore than some random unknown face. It will help you improve your skills faster. Once you improve, try to find some interesting and/or detailed photos and draw them as a challenge.

Okay, that’s all I guess. Your question was kinda general, so I responded with general advice - I hope that’s okay. If I wanted to write down all things I know, it’d be a book xD You see, actually, I run a blog with drawing tips in Polish, but there is so much info, that it’d take me one year to translate it all xD Hopefully, these tips above will suffice. However, if you have a particular problem, don’t hesitate to ask and tell in details, what you need to know.

One more time, thank you very much for your kind words and your patience. Good luck with drawing!