Duration: 27:48

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Line and Color Quick Start Guide: https://www.thedrawingcodex.com/quickstart

Progress is one of the hardest things to manage as an aspiring artist. It's easy to get discouraged when you are in the trenches trying to get better one small step at a time.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step... the problem is all those other little steps in between.

I have found... both from my experience and from mentoring students... that you need to have a plan... or a system in place to make sure you are heading in the right direction... and you are making progress.

The 4 elements I talk about in this video are:

1 - Motivation
At some level you need to passionate about the art you are making and care about it. It's hard to use hustle or massive amounts of pressure to get better at art... as the emotional tole those things take can often affect the feeling your art has. If you are pushing through the pain and forcing yourself to draw till your fingers bleed... that emotion will come through in your art... to a degree anyway. And it's more important to stay in touch with the art you want to make and focus on positive methods of motivation.
Get in touch with why you wanted to be an artist in the first place!

2 - Creation Loop
Drawing and Art happens in a loop of creation. We start with an idea. We have a process to create that idea. We then call it done... and put it out into the world. We then take the success and failure from that process and try to do better the next time.
It's hard to truly see your progress and skill level if you are not completing these loops. Make sure to try and finish as much of your pieces as possible. And share them in some way shape or form. It helps to get clarity on where you are at. And helps the next piece.

3 - Ritual
We are what we repeatedly do. We operate mostly out of habit day to day. And the best way to rise above the struggle of creating art regularly is to make it a ritual. This tends to bypass the need to constantly push and pump yourself up to create work and stay focused. If we build the habit... then it tends to happen by itself.

4 - Tracking Progress
Often it's impossible to see actual progress. Image to image we see small changes. And the artist tends to be critical of their own work. It's only when you can step back and see some kind of measurable improvement that you can trust in the overall process. It's also important to make sure you are going in the right direction! Not all progress will serve your overall goals. So tracking is key.

In the video I elaborate on all of these issue and give some things you can implement right now to help build a framework for your progress.

If you want to learn how to develop your own simple line and color workflow check out the Quick Start Guide above! It has all the brushes and tools I use to create images like this in Photoshop.


Happy Drawing!


Tim Mcburnie


Learn Drawing and Illustration from me: https://www.thedrawingcodex.com


Portfolio: https://www.timmcburnie.com
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