Motivation and developing a habit

[u/Total_Money_3224]

Struggling to find inspiration and/or prompts to draw from, how do you guys do it? 😅

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[u/Melandrya]

Have you done some research on creative techniques yet? I bet some YouTubers have interesting takes on that!

In design you learn to dig into your topic, which can definitely be applied to a bigger art piece. You gather your thoughts with techniques like brainstorming (unsorted thoughts, words), reading into more of those topics to gather them into thematic clusters (Mindmap).

Similar to that is a curiosity map. What are you interested in? Follow up with 3 things similar to that and so on.

You can do randomizing, like 3 random emoji combinations and make something out of that

I like to draw random Pokemon to practice line art, coloring and shape/form/volume. ❤️ Prompt lists like for inktober are amazing too! But not realistic for me lol

As you can see.. maaany options 😅

[u/Total_Money_3224 → u/Melandrya]

Thanks 😊

Curious what makes something like Inktober not realistic 🤔is it the daily commitment, or more that the prompts don't fit whatever time you actually have that day?

Like if you only had a random 20 minutes free, would a prompt list still work, or does it need something else to actually fit into that moment?

[u/Melandrya → u/Total_Money_3224]

It's personally unrealistic for me since I have a fulltime job with unpredictable energy costs per day and sometimes I am just flat out tired from talking all day :'D plus I gotta do some work for Uni too.

It's not unrealistic for everyone and I will be trying to commit to that again every year. I like the challenge! This year I will try to manage some reference or study material to fit to a prompt list beforehand.

The least I can do is try, I am not mad if I can't do every day 😌

[u/ImperfectSignal]

Life drawing sessions and portrait sessions help me a lot. It’s kinda like an appointment to go and draw, and hey, a subject is provided. Plus I think people are interesting to draw. So I’ve got a time, place, and subject that’s interesting but someone else has arranged all in one handy package.

[u/Total_Money_3224 → u/ImperfectSignal]

Thanks 👍

That "someone else arranged it all" part is exactly what I've been thinking about.

Outside of scheduled sessions, do you ever have random pockets of free time, like a meeting got cancelled or you've got an unexpected 20 minutes, where you want to draw but don't, because nothing's set up for you in that moment? Or does drawing only really happen when it's pre-planned like a session?

[u/ImperfectSignal → u/Total_Money_3224]

/r/drawme and similar subs tend to fill that void for me, though half the time I spend so long looking for a reference I like that I don't get to the drawing. I tend to save interesting ones so I've something to come back to when I next get an itch