I keep trying to learn to draw but I simply suck at it no matter what. I’d love to learn how to draw all kinds of things like architectural drawings, or cute designs, etc. But I can barely even copy something if I have the picture right in front of me.
I’d like to take a class that teaches the basics of drawing that I could follow along with using Procreate or something. Does anyone have good recommendations for someone who seems unable to gain any proficiency at drawing?
Practice. Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice.
You’re going to suck. It’s okay to suck. You only get better through failure. Drawing and art is a skill that you develop over time like training a muscle. Don’t throw away your old stuff. Keep it. Look at it, decide on something you don’t like - then focus on doing that better the next time. Repeat. Draw. Like…draw a LOT. Like a LOT A LOT. Draw anything. Try different styles.
The biggest thing to remember is you’re going to suck. Everyone sucks. The people who don’t suck, are people who kept at something long enough to not suck. Remember also – you are going to be far more critical of your art and the mistakes you made vs others. Don’t get discouraged - especially if you post that shit on the internet. Someone will tell you it’s terrible and you’ll get discouraged. Surround yourself with people who will lift you up and encourage you.
Procreate on an old iPad 6 + Apple Pencil is what I did for my daughters and they both are so much better at drawing now than they ever were - so you just have to keep doing it.
The biggest misconception that people have is that you’re just born with this talent - those people weren’t born with the ability to make great art, they were born with the ENTHUSIASM to do it every day, constantly, as an obsession. And then they developed a SKILL, based on that enthusiasm.
I’ve been given this advice my whole life and I’ve always hated it because it’s never worked for me.
I used to love drawing as a kid. I was always sketching things. I got a lot of praise for my artwork and was told that I was highly skilled for my age.
The problem was, I mostly just copied other works of art. I wasn’t very good at drawing something unique. And even with decades of practice, my skill never improved. I never figured out how to draw unique styles, shading, or details. Despite my “skill,” I eventually gave up drawing altogether.
As an older man looking back, I realize now that I was focused on technical details I could actually see and I could never recreate them from a mental image. I never had an artist’s mind. I was just really good at copying exact details from other art. I could’ve even draw based on a photo, because I didn’t know what details to include and what to exclude; there was too much information in a photograph and my brain couldn’t parse it all.
To this day, I can mimic other works of art very well, but I can’t create unique works, and no amount of practice will fix that. I’m just not artistically inclined. I can’t visualize a scene well enough to create it from scratch.
You may simply have aphantasia. The inability to picture things clearly in your “mind’s eye”. This ranges from being able to VR your imagination into the real world like it’s something that’s really there, to only ‘seeing’ a faint idea of what it is you’re thinking of, all the way to not seeing anything at all.
My mother was blessed with hyperphantasia, and art came easier for her than most - but it was always better with practice.
I most definitely have aphantasia (trauma based), but I’ve been able to practice ‘seeing’ things in my minds eye by taking pictures, practicing remembering the picture, drawing it from memory, and then comparing it afterwards. I’m no photocopier like you seem to be, I mostly deal with engineering drawings all day so I think my mind has simply adapted to putting together sets of rules like a puzzle.