Make Drawing Fun Again

1. Make Drawing Fun Again: Hey guys, Hayden here and today we're going to be focusing on something a little bit different than my other classes. Rather than focusing on learning a very specific skill to improve yourself as an artist, we're going to worry about something very foundational, and that is making sure that we actually enjoy the work that we do, that we have the passion because that is going to make us a better artist more than anything else. The very fact that you're here watching these classes tells me that getting better is very important to you. You probably spent a lot of time watching classes like this. Maybe you've done a university or college program. Maybe you've been working in in the industry for a very long time, but if you're like me, all of that time spent learning can get very serious. If you think about it, the more time that we spend drawing and improving as an artist, the more that we learn what looks good and what doesn't look good, or how things should look and how that should. Now, this is great because it means that we are improving and our critical eye is getting better. But it also continues to create this idea of what is good and when we don't deliver on that, we can be hard on ourselves or we can feel bad. The days of when we used to just doodle on our sketchbooks and things didn't matter. Those disappear and now we have to deliver good results every single time. So what we're going to do in this class is we're going to go through three different exercises, you can do all three, you can do one, doesn't matter, but they're designed to loosen you up, to get your creative juices flowing and to reconnect you with your passion and just the love of your art. 2. Enjoying This Class: Before you jump into the class, there are two things that I want to mention quickly, to make sure that you get the most out of it. First of all, you don't have to show anybody anything that you make in this class. A lot of the time, the pressure that can come from producing great work, is knowing that somebody else is going to see it. This might be for a client, it might be for a school assignment or a personal project, it might even be just drawing in your sketch book. Has you feel that someday somebody's going to see it. All that pressure is what we're getting away from this class. If that means that for you to be completely free and to have a good time, you need to draw on a scrap piece of paper and throw it away or create a digital file that you're going to bury on your computer or delete. That's totally cool. If after you've done the exercise, you look at your work and you're like, "hey, this isn't too bad, I actually do want to share it." We do have the class project, and I and the other students would love to see your work. You can also tag me in the social places if you want to share it that way, but it's very important that you know above all else, we're having fun here and that means getting away from the pressure of making something that people are going to see. Point number 2; is you have permission to make terrible, awful, trashy garbage work. You have to tell yourself that I like it, it is okay for me to make garbage. In fact, I want your goal in this class to make garbage. It sounds weird because so much of our work is towards making better art, but that's not what this class is about. These exercises aren't about improving your art skill, they are about improving your, find the fun in everything skills. When you're freed up to make mistakes and just have fun, it's not uncommon for the work to actually end up better than you expected. That might not happen, it still might suck, but it's important that again. We just focus on having fun in the exercise and distance ourselves from the actual result. It'll happen or it won't. That's totally cool. Take a deep breath and let's just forget about being some amazing, super awesome art person and just make some bad art today together. 3. Blobs, Blobs, Blobs (Exercise #1): This first exercise is very simple, can be done with any medium and it's just a lot of fun. Simply all we do is create some organic shape. We can do that with markers, with paint, with crayons, anything we want. Then we draw on top of it. I want you to create a sheet of these blobs. Then once you're ready we'll just jump into the exercise. Now if you don't have time to create the sheet of blobs, you're missing out on a pretty fun step. But don't worry, I got you covered. I've made a couple that you can download in the resources. Here we are with the first exercise. All we're doing is taking these blobs. I've created some Photoshop for you but of course you can create them however you'd like. Let's draw on top of them, using this jumping off point for our drawings. Almost like we don't have to stare at a blank canvas and think about what we're going to make, we've to have something to start with. You can do it very intentionally. You can try and look at this and figure something out before drawing. Or you can do what I usually do and just draw lines and letting the drawing take shape as you go. You'll probably notice me starting most of if not all of these by drawing faces. It's what I usually do when I'm doodling. Very comfortable for me. Again you just do them how you wanted to because there's no getting this wrong. This is literally about having fun. I should say, if you don't have fun, if it just gets stressful, sometimes it does, it's okay, you still win. As long as you draw, you are winning. Don't worry about whatever might happen for carrying that feeling. I know for me I can watch someone create a tutorial. They're having a really fun time. As I'm watching it and everything just comes really easy to them and I'm like, "This sounds really great, I can't wait to go do this myself." Then I start and it's not as easy and my stuff isn't looking as good as theirs. It becomes really significant really fast. This thing that I thought was going to be a lot of fun, just become very frustrating and I get discouraged. That might happen here, even though I'm telling you guys just cut loose. It's like when somebody tells you, "Oh, just relax when you're worked up." That doesn't really work. However this goes, it's perfect. If you make some cool stuff, that's great if you make a lot of garbage, that's also great. If you get frustrated, that's great too. No matter how this goes, it's counted as a win. Because just like learning how to draw anything, maybe that's again another mean of are getting better with light and shadow. Anything that you would learn in drawing, and they'll just scales and got to work on them, just being okay with making that art is a skill. Being able to just turn off your brain a bit and doodle like I'm doing right now, that is also a skill. Just look at it as you are building this detachment from things being perfect. The whole point of this class is to reconnect ourselves to probably what I'm assuming is why we got on in the first place. I know where I was in elementary school, doodling on the size of my notebooks. I wasn't thinking about being this amazing artist and stressing over everything looking perfect. I was just an autopilot just like, "Hey, I want to draw some stuff, drawing some lines and see what those turn into." That's what I'm trying to get us back to because, the more we study art, the more we get a sense of what is and isn't correct to do and so we start looking at everything we make through these lines of right and wrong. That's good for improvement. But, again we got into this because we like it. It's fun. Being able to give yourself the freedom to just have fun every once in awhile, it's important. Same with letting yourself make that stuff. When you think about it, a piece is only ever finish when you decided is and nobody has to see it until it's done. Or maybe it will be has to see a period. But I think it can be so easy to just try and get things right the first time that it becomes quite stressful. I know there's big restored. It was a big game changer for me when I realized that I don't have to get draws right the first time. I can actually just keep redrawing and redrawing and redrawing until it looks good. That a lot of the pressure went away. I expect my first drawings on a piece to soccer. I usually redraw things over and over again until they finally on a point that I'm like, "Okay, I can I can share this or it's ready to send to the client or whatever it is." Because of that, you'll ever see finished work for people. I think it's important to see stuff like what I'm doing. Which to me isn't exceptional art or anything. It's literally just me to draw on random stuff. Personally, I'm not too happy about this. I think I don't really want to share this stuff with people. The ego in me, once everything will look really good, and I don't feel this does. But I want you guys to get a sense of just that it's okay in this exercise to make whatever you make. It's really more about having fun than anything else. Because idea is if we have fun, if we're actually enjoy everything that we do, we're just naturally going to be motivated to get better at it. I know something that I run into a lot is really trying to push myself to get better and get better, especially doing these classes, "Hey you must improve so that you can make new classes for people. I want to focus on just getting better as an art. That becomes really significant and it steals a lot of our fun. It looks backwards because, it's the times that I am actually interested in what I'm doing that I improve the most. A great example is the animal class that I taught. I just genuinely was having a fun time learning about animals. I would spend days and days on end just studying them, figuring out their anatomy and then tried to doodle them in different positions and stuff. That was actually really interesting and fun. There's no force involved. There's no, I must be good at drawing animals because my career depends on it or anything like that. It was literally born out of just a curiosity and enjoy. As a result, I made a three hour class on drawing animals. Just because I learnt so much stuff and I'm proving in so many ways. If we can just have fun drawing, if we can keep the joy present for ourselves, we're just naturally going to get better. That's what this class is about. Let's rekindle that love. I think it's really easy for us to lose it. Let's just find ways of bringing it back even if it's just a little exercise here and there. Then if it's something that we enjoy we're just going to naturally motivated to improve at it. I really like this last thing I'm trying. I don't know what it is, but it's good. Let me get some scales. Guys, this is the exercise, so not hard, so not significant. You cannot lose just get some blobs, draw some lines on it, and whatever happens, happens, and you've won. I hope this is fun for you guys. I will see you in the next exercise. 4. Street Stuff (Exercise #2): We're going to start off this next exercise by stepping away from our sketch books for a moment to go out and take some photos. Now if you don't have time to take photos and you just want to get right to drawing, I do have some that I've taken that I will be providing for you in the resources section. What I want you to do is grab anything with a camera and just go for a walk around your neighborhood or if you really want, go for stroll around your apartment or your house. I just want you to take photos and anything you think is interesting. Could have a cool shape, it could have a fancy design that remind you of something. If you're really lucky, you might see a lot of things that look like faces, which is a totally great for this exercise. Don't think too much as you're doing it. Don't walk pass something and think. I wonder if it's worth taking a photo of this. I'm sure you have enough storage space on your camera to take as many photos as you want so just shoot. The whole point of this exercise is to get your creative juices flowing by having you look at the world differently. When's the last time you saw a lamp and thought, wow, that's a cool lamp or you looked at event and saw face in it. By going through this exercise, you're training yourself to find interesting things and inspiration everywhere. Now you might feel weird walking around the streets taking pictures of random things, especially if you live in a busy city area like I do. But think about this as actually part of the exercise. If you can be okay with just being silly and having people watch you take pictures of garbage cans and street signs, then you're going to be okay when people look at your art. The more you can be alright with the opinion of others, the more free you are going to be to just create. Whether it's downloading the ones that I provided or ideally taking some of your own, once you have a grab bag of photos, take out your sketchbook or throw into a digital document and we can jump into the exercises, the drawing part. This exercise is very similar to the blobs exercise, we are using an image in that case just a shape, but now an actual photo as a starting point for just mindless, senseless drawings. Here I've got a fire hydrant. I think they look very masculine, so they have these broad shoulders, only a t-shape there. But I'm just using these shapes as maybe like an inspiration. Maybe I'm going to make something with some character are really big chest or something. Got to add the nipples in. That's what I'm getting, it almost looks like it has these big pointy shoulders. Maybe this character is going to have big shoulder pads with some point is the horns so maybe I'll give some spikes or something. Maybe it's like a gladiator or something like that. This circle here can be a big belt buckle, just think it work with this gladiatory theme that I'm thinking about maybe it's got this are chains here, maybe this character has a chain for a weapon or something like that. It's worth mentioning that I draw a lot of characters and I think it's very easy to think that no matter what photo I'm looking at I'm probably going to turn it into one. I feel like really drawn out this chain to details. I'm just going to do something like that, it's gloves on. It looks like it has a thick neck. I know bray sort of thing and then maybe a little head peeking out from underneath. I'm just going give it well a little bit of hair. That's our little gladiator dude, look like a belt across his chest, buckle on it and some studs. Anyway, as you can see, I'm really not drawing a fire hydrant here, these are two completely different things. But I'm using it as this inspiration. Let's see here if something a little tall, long legs and if all it's feet took like that and maybe, something like that. I think I'm enjoying this little character. I'm taking my time with it. But if any point through what you're drawing, you're like, I'm so over this drawing, you get the stop. You don't have to keep pushing. This isn't about pushing yourself, it's about enjoying yourself. If you're not having fun with the drawing, stop, start a new one. Remembering again that nobody's got to see this thing that you're making. This is just for you to do so don't worry about making it super pretty or super nice or ever or comparing it to what you see me do, it's just about you and your exploration and that's it. That is the exercise really, you're taking the photo and you are using it to inspire something new. I do a lot of characters, so opposite, that's what it made, but maybe you draw a lot of landscapes or maybe you draw a lot of cats so maybe whatever photo you grab, it's going to look like a cat. But just as with the other exercises, have fun, cut back a bit. Don't worry about making bad art, in fact, you're supposed to make bad art and share something if you want to, but you don't got it. I'll see you in the next exercise. 5. Some Assembly Required (Exercise #3): This next exercise comes to us from my good friend and amazing illustrator Jetpacks and Rollerskates. He created the series called Some Assembly Required, where he creates a list of objects, gives each a number and enrolls the dice three times to find which of the three things on the list gets selected. Then, he makes an image of those things. What we're going to be doing that exact same thing here. First we want to make our list. Jetpacks uses a list 12 items bu I'm going to go for 20 because the Dungeon Master inside of me wants to roll a D20. You can make a list of whatever size you want. If you don't have a dice for that number, you can use a random number generator online, so whatever number works for you. What I would recommend, is when you're creating your list of items, make sure they're things that you actually enjoy drawing, you want to draw, or are just curious about. This is again about having fun. It's not about pushing you to improve and some technical things. If you hate drawn hands, do not put them on your list. Here's the list that I'm going to be working with. You have my complete permission to steal any of it. Now is the fun part. Let's find out what we're going to be drawing. Remember, if you don't have a dice, just pop on over to a random number generator, and you can figure out your choices that way. I got a 12 for crown, a one for wizard, and 13 for mushroom. With our monstrosity decided, let's see what we can manage. The three items that my list gave me was a crown, wizard, and a mushroom. I'm thinking maybe, I'll do some wizard king of fungal magic or something like that. Let's just see what happens. Just well as exercises, its lighthearted. You make some crap. You just get rid of it. You can start again or you can just end an exercise there, so no pressure here. If let's see, maybe the wizard is a mushroom. Let's just do that. This is his head. It's got some robes. He'll be an angry wizard. I think there's some spores here. I don't know much about mushrooms. It can be even a craft because he is the king of the wizards and know that live in the woods, I guess. This is where again, it's helpful to pick a list of objects that you like drawn. I find I just draw was there's all the time. I think it's because I've read so many fantasy books maybe, or played so many fantasy games. Anyway, something that I really liked to do, for you maybe, this is like a nightmare of things to draw. Do not put these things on your list. For me I feel I'm just do it little and we having fun here. Since his staff. I'm thinking that maybe it branches out like a tree here. Then also has all these little, it's like it's a little mushrooms that coronal sides of things. Little bunches I don't know what to call them. This is be a yeah, like a branch, mushrooms grow in all over it. I'm not going to get super detailed drawing. Maybe at the end I really like the concept. I could do some more of that. For the purpose of this exercise, I'm just, plan around really. I think it's worth mentioning to you, I draw a lot of characters. I think no matter what three words I was given, it probably would have ended up being a character just because, when I just let myself just draw whatever my brain wants to draw it so it's a character. For you maybe a landscape person maybe. Maybe the words you get turns into this really cool scene or really interesting environment. That's cool man. Do it up. Since given little boots, we've got long arms and little legs. That's excess, bouncing, settle a little bit. Some of the things I like about Photoshop guys. You can just re-adjust things all I want. Again, this isn't about making perfect art, so it's not really necessary that I do this. Maybe it's better. I don't know. It's not necessary for me to fix that for this exercise to work. Yeah, there you have it here as our, know what, I'm sorry, I'm not finished yet, he needs a cap. There we are. Now is better. Maybe some little pupils. Some cheeks, here we go. All right, so guys, that is the exercise. I took these three words. I turned them into this drawing, and that's what you guys are doing. Have some fun. If you don't like what you made, that's cool. Throw it out and yeah, just enjoy it. 6. The Fun Doesn't Have To Stop: By now, you will have had a chance to try at least one of the exercises in the class. How was it? Did you have a fun time? Did you enjoy it? Maybe it was the complete opposite. Maybe it really stressed you out. Whatever your experience was, I'd love to hear about it in the discussion. If you have any of your own personal exercises that you do to stay creatively charged, please share those as well for the benefit of all of us. If there's one thing that I can get you to do going forward is to carve out a regular period of time where you can just make ugly, stupid, purposeless work. Just, who cares about results? Because there's always going to be projects in our lives where the results really matter. This could be class projects, client projects, just work we want to create to promote ourselves. There's always going to be something where the results really matter and that's why it's important that we can contrast it with time where the only thing that's important is having fun and just enjoying what we do. That way when those projects inevitably push us to our limits, we have this deep passion that we can fall back on and see us through it. Maybe that means drawing on a scrap paper and throwing it away. Maybe that means returning to one of these exercises once in a while. Whatever you need to do, I'd strongly recommend you do it for the longevity of your art career. I hope you had fun and thanks for watching.