Stay Motivated to Draw,Post your Work

For years I have tried to improve my drawing skill, but I could never sustain the motivation I needed to keep practicing and producing drawings. I would get the idea that I wanted to start drawing look up tutorials on YouTube draw a couple of things see a small improvement and then just stop.
Its not that I didn't want to carry on its that I lacked a purpose to draw and lost motivation to carry on.

I didn't see the point in drawing more and improving until I came across something on the internet that said to show your art. I can't remember which article it was or who wrote it (if it rings any bells with you let me know where it is). The article suggested framing your work and putting it up around your house. Now the kind of things I like to draw are primarily comic book based and there is no way my wife is going to let me put them up around the house.

So I though of something different, I started posting my work on Instagram. The prospect was quite daunting to start with, I had never done Instagram before signing up was pretty easy just needed an email address and a password then start posting.

Iv posted statuses on Facebook and I've tweeted every now and again but I never got any likes or comments apart from people I actually know, and even that was a rarity.

Instagram seems to be different I always got some likes for my picture. I would recommend putting hashtags to get your pieces noticed by people searching for drawings and art and you will defiantly get some likes.

I was worried about getting negative comments but to date I have never had a negative comment about my drawings, I did have one about my spelling but who gives a crap about that.

Back in 2014 I posted the following drawing, I was practicing gestures, I got 5 likes for it which for having no followers I was pretty chuffed with.

I did have about a year break from posting and drawing because me and my wife had a child (some times not only lack of motivation is the reason you can't draw more).

My latest post is this inked drawing of batman and I have received over 100 likes for this piece which is my first drawing to break the 100 barrier. 

So if you find yourself just to being bothered to draw I recommend that you post some of your work, preferably on Instagram because the community there seems to be really nice and if you are looking for your first follower comment below with your Instagram tag and I will follow you.

Good luck and keep drawing.

Entering my First Compatition

I entered an online art competition on Instagram its the first time I have ever done any thing like this. Each week the Instagram account magnificent.art runs a competition with a theme and last weeks theme was Anime and manga. Now I have been a fan of anime since before it was called anime and on of my favorite series  in recent years has been bleach. so I figured lets have a go at drawing Ichigo.

I found a reference drawing for the pose on google images but he was wearing his hollow mask so i found other pictures of his face and practiced by drawing a close up version of his head and colouring it with pro-markers to get an idea of the colours I would need for the finished piece. I have posted my close up of Ichigos face on my Instagram account if you would like to have a look. Just follow the link on the left.

I got to try out a new pen that I had bought for the inking which was a Faber-castell Pitt pen with a brush tip. I like how it allows me to be able to vary the thickness of my lines in on stroke depending on how much pressure I apply and the angle at which I hold the pen. 

I bought a dark grey pro-marker especial to colour his clothes as I thought it would be better than just coloring the whole outfit in black which would have ended up rather flat.

In the end I posted the full version on the competition page 5 days before the deadline and received 182 likes and 2 comments which was a far cry from winning but was by no means the worst performing piece. 

I think I will enter more competitions on Instagram  its nice to expose my work to a larger demographic to see how it is taken and compare my work with others to see how I need to improve and where I am doing ok.

What do you think to my Ichigo drawing I think his face looks a bit odd especial around the mouth but I do like the pose.