Creating Art: How to Begin in the Right Direction

In my opinion,

the most important goal of creating something is having fun.

There is a lot of unnecessary stress that goes along with drawing, painting, sculpting, and so forth, as I know from personal experience. If you happen to be someone who is just starting out in making art; whether you’re a little kid or an adult; I have some advice for you.

Before you can be good at anything, especially making things such as art or music, there has to be some happiness in it. At least, that is how it works for me. If I’m not especially invested in a project or an idea, it is very difficult to get through. If I am invested and excited about it, it doesn’t feel like such a chore. If you’re looking to get started in drawing, my best advice would be to draw the things that you like. Draw the things that you truly enjoy drawing, you can focus on getting better at drawing once you’ve found something that captures your imagination.

For me, this starting point was drawing dragons. At this point in my life I could probably draw a decent dragon in my sleep, as I started when I was around 5 or 6 years old, and practiced until this was something that I no longer thought of as a challenge, but as something I could do to relax and have fun. The reasons I started here are simple: dragons are awesome, and drawing them is so freeing. Because they don’t actually exist in the real world, a dragon could be anything you think a dragon should be.

There are no restrictions on how to design them; you could shape and color them however you want. They could be bright and fun and smooth or dark and rough and scary, they could have no wings or two wings or many wings or anything in between. You get the idea. This principle is the same thing for anything similarly mythical, but if fantasy isn’t your thing you could always apply the same process to science fiction. For example: create your own alien species and make it fun to do.

Obviously, this ability to translate an image from your mind to a piece of paper or a drawing tablet or anything else requires a little bit of skill, and this takes practice. The best you could do for yourself in this case is practice; if you want to get better at drawing you have to draw things – as often as you can. There are A LOT of obstacles to growing as an artist. There is always the fear of showing others your work, there is always the lurking anxiety that your art isn’t very good.

Let’s face it… sharing even a little part of yourself with others can be scary.

Creating things will always be stressful, because it is a way of showing a little part of you to the world, or to the people you care about. This part is still difficult for me. I am still afraid that what I do isn’t impressive or intricate enough; that it isn’t my best work, that it won’t provoke a meaningful response or any response at all. However, I know for a fact that dwelling on this, and comparing oneself to others in any way is NOT the way to go. If you want to progress as an artist, and not go through hell to do it, the only one who has to be satisfied with your art is you. If you enjoyed making it – and you enjoy the result – then it is good enough.

Keep in mind that this is only my opinion, and is based on my own experience. I don’t know what else works or worked for other people or other beginning artists, but this works for me. Start with drawing things that make you happy, this will hopefully not only set you on the right track for improving your art technically, but will also help you get some worthwhile experiences out of it.