I’d like to practice drawing animals that aren’t cute! Or practice drawing them in a less cute way. But maybe that’s just my thing haha. I do enjoy it! I think what I mean is to maybe be more patient and considered in my pieces.
I really love this article — thank you!!! Setting small goals for myself I think will really help me enjoy the process more, rather than stressing over creating the perfect sketch or feeling like I have to show “progress”!
I agree - I have noticed with my weekly music students, that setting one goal to work on between lessons, reaps much better results than being drowned in a million things to work on.
I love your approach, I am definitely going to experiment with goal setting! I think currently my goal is to practice simplifying a scene as much as possible and not trying to reflect all the tiny details. Some of my experiments are trying to grasp the feeling of the landscape with as few brush strokes as possible. Thanks a lot for sharing your wonderful sketches!
Sometimes nature or life will interfere with your sketch and at the time maybe you don’t like it but it can change your mindset so you have to improvise and often later you love what happened.
Exactly! Embrace the raindrops on your sketch, so next time you look at it you can remember how you persevered sketching right through the bad weather.
It's all about our mindset before beginning, right? I have so many things I want to practice that sometimes that is my biggest issue, so at the moment I'm focusing on subjects, this month is trees. I've been sketching trees in different ways, with different materials, ultimately my goal is to find how I like to capture trees. What have been your goals lately?
I love drawing trees, although I still want to figure out how I want to draw summer trees with lots of leaves. Maybe that will be one of my goals for this summer. One of my recent goals have been to play with a combination of negative and positive space in a sketch. I am really having a lot of fun exploring this.
I found this part intriguing, "The thing that will have a much bigger influence on your sketch is what you think about it before you even start with it."
I don't remember ever thinking about a goal or a why before making a sketch. I'm not going to start either as I'd rather make some marks and maybe take note of what is coming up as I do.
However, I would like to open myself up to the why for the sketch and start writing it down at the end.
Either way...taking note of a motivation can turn our sketches into a self discovery tool...thank you for the idea 👏🏻
This is just what I needed to read this morning! I set myself a goal this year that I would do something in my sketchbook every day and although I started out with quite clear goals (that I wrote down in advance each month), this habit has gradually slipped and I've moved to just 'what do I draw today' and then feeling slightly defeated that I'm not really getting the most out of my practice. You've inspired me to go back to my goal setting - always a helpful reminder!!
Wonderful to hear that! Small, achievable that gradually moves you forward will work wonders over the course of a year. Looking forward to seeing what you will be making.
I love this so much! I recently just started sketching again, and it’s funny I sat down with my sketch book yesterday, and I picked a pose I had saved I wanted to practice.
Normally I am too focused on getting it perfect, and then I end up disappointed and frustrated because it just doesn’t look like I imagined it would. This time I realized how fun it was to draw even if it wasn’t exactly the way that it was pictured. I was learning and that was the goal, and it relaxed me. So it truly was a win.
It reminded me why I drew for hours and hours when I was younger, and I gradually got better by just the enjoyment of it.
I’m going to take these ideas into consideration and use them, the next time I draw!
Thank you so much for sharing! And especially AI free!
I'm glad I found this article. Thank you, Nino. I’m returning to painting and drawing to reconnect with my creativity, embrace imperfections, and perhaps discover something within myself that I feel is there. It's challenging when my main obstacles are perfectionism and procrastination. I'm working on it, so thank you for the great advice. I'm going to set intentions before starting a blank page.
I’m so thankful that I went back to drawing and painting a number of years ago, it definitely helped me to reconnect with my creativity like you said. Hope that you make some great discoveries while you are on this journey!
Thanks for this reminder! It's so easy for me to forget that creative goals--regardless of the medium or scale of the project--are allowed to be whatever I want them to be, even if it's just to play around with colours for 10 minutes. I'm someone who's tried for years to get into the habit of sketching regularly because I want to be a better visual artist, but tend to get overwhelmed and discouraged early on or just not know what steps to take next. I'll try to remember this when that happens. I also loved seeing your different sketches and the goals you had for each of them!
Don’t know how I missed this comment of yours, Nico. But yes, you are absolutely right - you can decide what your creative goals are for a project. Even something as simple as colour swatching can have great benefits.
You are inspiring me to go out and find an urban sketching group. I used to draw in cafes quite a lot but have got lazy recently. I love the harbour sketch you have drawn on a grey day and made it into the happiest of paintings. Art always beats the weather and can make the mood of the day better, which is exactly what we need in the UK.
It’s true what you say - art beats the weather. I often decide to use the colours that represent how I feet in the moment and not what I am actually seeing, because my feelings are also something true in that moment, not just the weather. And making art usually brings me joy.
I know there are many Urban Sketchers groups in the UK. Hope you find one close to you!
I really enjoyed this post. Thanks for sharing! I often sketch to capture a sense of place, play with scale, capture something humorous in the everyday that I have seen. It's great to have a plan at the beginning. It takes the pressure off and helps me get on with it.
I’d like to practice drawing animals that aren’t cute! Or practice drawing them in a less cute way. But maybe that’s just my thing haha. I do enjoy it! I think what I mean is to maybe be more patient and considered in my pieces.
Since you love animals, I can absolutely understand why your animals end up so cute every time.
Patience is a tough one to learn, but so valuable. Rooting for you!
(Are there any animals that you don’t particularly like? Maybe scorpions of something dangerous? Maybe they will come out less cute.)
Very helpful suggestions to help reduce anxiety/fear of making mistakes for freer art making:). Thank you!!
Thank you! I’m glad that you find them helpful. Here’s to more anxiety free art making!
I really love this article — thank you!!! Setting small goals for myself I think will really help me enjoy the process more, rather than stressing over creating the perfect sketch or feeling like I have to show “progress”!
I agree - I have noticed with my weekly music students, that setting one goal to work on between lessons, reaps much better results than being drowned in a million things to work on.
I love your approach, I am definitely going to experiment with goal setting! I think currently my goal is to practice simplifying a scene as much as possible and not trying to reflect all the tiny details. Some of my experiments are trying to grasp the feeling of the landscape with as few brush strokes as possible. Thanks a lot for sharing your wonderful sketches!
Thank you Lisa! Easily simplifying a scene takes a lot of practise, but it is such a valuable skill to learn. Go for it!
Thank you! ❤️
Sometimes nature or life will interfere with your sketch and at the time maybe you don’t like it but it can change your mindset so you have to improvise and often later you love what happened.
Exactly! Embrace the raindrops on your sketch, so next time you look at it you can remember how you persevered sketching right through the bad weather.
It's all about our mindset before beginning, right? I have so many things I want to practice that sometimes that is my biggest issue, so at the moment I'm focusing on subjects, this month is trees. I've been sketching trees in different ways, with different materials, ultimately my goal is to find how I like to capture trees. What have been your goals lately?
I love drawing trees, although I still want to figure out how I want to draw summer trees with lots of leaves. Maybe that will be one of my goals for this summer. One of my recent goals have been to play with a combination of negative and positive space in a sketch. I am really having a lot of fun exploring this.
I found this part intriguing, "The thing that will have a much bigger influence on your sketch is what you think about it before you even start with it."
I don't remember ever thinking about a goal or a why before making a sketch. I'm not going to start either as I'd rather make some marks and maybe take note of what is coming up as I do.
However, I would like to open myself up to the why for the sketch and start writing it down at the end.
Either way...taking note of a motivation can turn our sketches into a self discovery tool...thank you for the idea 👏🏻
Taking note of the why of a sketch and writing it down afterwards can be very interesting. Will definitely need to try that too.
Comes in handy for finding meaningful titles and headlines too. I'm enjoying how your reflections are tickling my brain Nino.
This is just what I needed to read this morning! I set myself a goal this year that I would do something in my sketchbook every day and although I started out with quite clear goals (that I wrote down in advance each month), this habit has gradually slipped and I've moved to just 'what do I draw today' and then feeling slightly defeated that I'm not really getting the most out of my practice. You've inspired me to go back to my goal setting - always a helpful reminder!!
Wonderful to hear that! Small, achievable that gradually moves you forward will work wonders over the course of a year. Looking forward to seeing what you will be making.
Love your sketches, the expressive colors and bold lines differentiate them with a unique personal style.
Thank you for the kind words and encouragement, Jo.
I love this so much! I recently just started sketching again, and it’s funny I sat down with my sketch book yesterday, and I picked a pose I had saved I wanted to practice.
Normally I am too focused on getting it perfect, and then I end up disappointed and frustrated because it just doesn’t look like I imagined it would. This time I realized how fun it was to draw even if it wasn’t exactly the way that it was pictured. I was learning and that was the goal, and it relaxed me. So it truly was a win.
It reminded me why I drew for hours and hours when I was younger, and I gradually got better by just the enjoyment of it.
I’m going to take these ideas into consideration and use them, the next time I draw!
Thank you so much for sharing! And especially AI free!
I’m feeling so inspired now!
Hanna! Thank you! It makes me so happy to hear this! Hope that you find more and more enjoyment in your art in this way.
You are welcome, and thank you so much!😊💛
I'm glad I found this article. Thank you, Nino. I’m returning to painting and drawing to reconnect with my creativity, embrace imperfections, and perhaps discover something within myself that I feel is there. It's challenging when my main obstacles are perfectionism and procrastination. I'm working on it, so thank you for the great advice. I'm going to set intentions before starting a blank page.
I’m so thankful that I went back to drawing and painting a number of years ago, it definitely helped me to reconnect with my creativity like you said. Hope that you make some great discoveries while you are on this journey!
Thanks for this reminder! It's so easy for me to forget that creative goals--regardless of the medium or scale of the project--are allowed to be whatever I want them to be, even if it's just to play around with colours for 10 minutes. I'm someone who's tried for years to get into the habit of sketching regularly because I want to be a better visual artist, but tend to get overwhelmed and discouraged early on or just not know what steps to take next. I'll try to remember this when that happens. I also loved seeing your different sketches and the goals you had for each of them!
Don’t know how I missed this comment of yours, Nico. But yes, you are absolutely right - you can decide what your creative goals are for a project. Even something as simple as colour swatching can have great benefits.
You are inspiring me to go out and find an urban sketching group. I used to draw in cafes quite a lot but have got lazy recently. I love the harbour sketch you have drawn on a grey day and made it into the happiest of paintings. Art always beats the weather and can make the mood of the day better, which is exactly what we need in the UK.
It’s true what you say - art beats the weather. I often decide to use the colours that represent how I feet in the moment and not what I am actually seeing, because my feelings are also something true in that moment, not just the weather. And making art usually brings me joy.
I know there are many Urban Sketchers groups in the UK. Hope you find one close to you!
Very useful tips.
Thanks, Jane!
Waouw ! Incredible post! I love it. I note your point of vue for myself.
How inspirant! Thank you🤩
Thank you! It is good to hear that the post inspired you.
I really enjoyed this post. Thanks for sharing! I often sketch to capture a sense of place, play with scale, capture something humorous in the everyday that I have seen. It's great to have a plan at the beginning. It takes the pressure off and helps me get on with it.
Having a plan at the beginning does help to take the pressure off, right!?
And playing with scale sounds like a fun goal/plan, I’m definitely going to try that one out sometime.
It really does!