👿 I answer your questions
Dear little demon,
Welcome to the edition #12 of the Art Missive! We are now 2190😈 in this newsletter: thank you sm for reading ❤.
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In this Art Missive
1. Q1 : How do you warm up before drawing?
2. Q2 : How to properly handle art blocks?
3. Q3 : What mistakes did you make when you started posting on Instagram?
How do you warm up before drawing ?
1. Why it’s so cool to warm up
First of all, warming up really helps with concentration: drawing requires a lot of concentration and focus, and warming up can help you get into the right mindset for creating art.
It also helps to loosen up your muscles. Drawing can be physically demanding, especially if you are working for long periods of time. Warming up can help to loosen up your muscles and reduce the risk of injury or strain.
Finally, warming up helps improve your technique, especially eye-hand coordination. You can practice your drawing skills before diving into a larger, more complex project. By doing some quick warm-up exercises, you can improve your technique and prepare yourself for the main drawing.
2. My 3 warm-up exercises
You can do these warm-ups on a piece of paper or on your digital devices, it doesn’t really matter.
👉 Exercice 1 : basic shapes.
The easiest way I found to warm up is by drawing simple 2D and 3D shapes. According to me, it’s the best way to warm up when you’re not so skilled as artists.
As every single subject/object can be broken down into 2D and 3D shapes, mastering these is an absolute requirement to improve your art skills.
These kinds of exercises can also help you improve your understanding of value (shadows and light) in a simpler environment.
I often start with drawing parallel lines in all directions. This exercise really helps with eye-hand coordination.
Then I move on to 2D shapes : round, squares, triangles. It helps mastering this simpler shapes but also improves your line strokes.
Then I finish my warm-up with 3D shapes.
The idea is to focus on 1) the light source and the shadow placement 2) on the values by adding different levels of brightness and darkness.
👉 Exercice 2 : simple observation sketches.
Quick sketches of objects are beneficial for improving observation skills, hand-eye coordination, drawing speed, and exploring composition. They help train your eye to see more accurately, improve your ability to translate observations into drawings, and experiment with different layouts and perspectives.
If you feel lazy or intimidated, remember that it’s just a warm-up and you don’t have to seek the best result.
👉 Exercice 3 : simpler versions of my art.
The last type of exercise that I do is just to draw a quick and simpler version of my usual art.
If you take my example, I specialize in characters and portraits. My warm up can just be drawing simple portraits, simple parts of the anatomy or speed painting when I go for a digital art.
👉 Conclusion
Be careful not to be too carried away by your warm-up and end up exhausted! You want to keep your warm-up quick and stress free.
Q2 : How to properly handle art blocks ?
1. It’s part of the process
Art block, also known as creative block, can occur for a variety of reasons.
👉 Burnout: Artists who work intensely for long periods of time can experience burnout, which can lead to a lack of motivation or inspiration.
👉 Fear of failure: The fear of producing something that isn't good enough can prevent artists from creating anything at all.
👉 Perfectionism: Artists who strive for perfection can become so fixated on getting every detail just right that they become paralyzed and unable to create anything.
👉 Lack of inspiration: Sometimes artists simply run out of ideas or feel uninspired, making it difficult to start a new project.
👉 Life events: Personal or professional stressors, such as a breakup or a heavy workload, can also cause art block by sapping creative energy and motivation.
It's important to remember that the art block is a normal part of the creative process, and it's something that every artist experience at some point.
2. Another reason why you feel often art blocked
Social media can be a real source of pressure and self-doubt for artists, especially if you are constantly comparing yourself to others and feeling like you don't measure up. This can lead to feelings of inadequacy and a sense of being stuck in a creative rut.
Also, the constant need to produce content for social media can also be a source of stress and burnout for artists, leading to art block.
So keep in mind that art block is not a bad thing. It’s a way your body have found to tell you that something in your creative process should be modified in order for you to do better.
3. Tips to overcome art block
Often, when it comes to art block, many artists recommend unachievable actions : go to museums, try new techniques…
When I myself go through an art block, these kinds of tricks are useless because - and that’s the point of being art blocked - I feel discouraged and intimidated by those types of things, which lead to no action at all.
So here, I want to give you REALISTIC ways to turn art block into something positive for you.
👉 TIP 1: recognize. The first thing to do is to acknowledge that every artist goes through some type of art block. You have no reason to blame you for being unable to create, or for feeling like you lose interest in your art. The more you’ll pressure yourself, the less you’ll be able to learn something good from this experience.
👉 TIP 2: take a damn break! No-guilty break… the best way to overcome art block is to step away from your work for a little while. Take a break, go for a walk, or engage in another activity you enjoy to help clear your mind.
👉 TIP 3: Set small, achievable goals. Setting smaller, achievable goals can help to build momentum and boost confidence, making it easier to overcome art blocks. For example, you can decide to recreate an old artwork or do several studies of one simple object.
👉 TIP 4: Get feedback. Share your work with others and get feedback. Sometimes getting a fresh perspective can help to identify new ideas or areas for improvement.
👉 TIP 5: Keep posting. If you are a social media artist and you are going through an art block there are 2 ways to maintain your social media activity : 1) share things related to your artblock (a quick cute sketch about you being art blocked for example, as story of your explaining your art block…) 2) repost content that worked well. One of your carousels went viral three weeks ago? Repost it ! Do you have a process video of an old work that you did not share? Post it ! You’ll buy your mental health some time.
👉 TIP 6 : Analyse. It’s probably the most important tip. Seek to fully understand what led you to this art block and find solutions for this to not happen again. Often, it’s linked to lack of rest or too much self-doubt. Work on getting the right mindset to overcome these weaknesses.
Q3 : What mistakes did you make when you started posting on Instagram ?
❌ Thinking I’m shadow-banned. For a long time, my growth was almost nonexistent and I used to think it was because Instagram shadowbanned my account, or something like that.
But the reality of it is that I was not shadowbanned at all. My content was just not good enough for Instagram to show it to other people. It was not designed to make people stay on my profile. It had nothing strategic at all in it.
Understand that the only way to get shadowbanned on Instagram is to act inappropriately like using bots or banned hashtags, engaging in spammy behavior, or violating Instagram's community guidelines.
Once I realized that I should stop blaming external factors and start learning how to make a better content, I started to see some results.
* And here I’m talking about my content, not my art. The content is how you showcase your art.
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❌ Not being social. I used to come on Instagram, post my content and then stay 5 minutes and leave. But Instagram is a social media and the only way to thrive as a content creator is to be social. So I started to engage with my community through comments, DMs and stories. I also engaged with other artists. And this made a huge difference.
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❌ Thinking that you can post a drawing only once. Starting to post 3 to 4 content about one single artwork was the best decision I could make for my growth (and my mental health). Instagram speed is not suited for the artistic process. To create, we need time and calmness. Recycling your content and declining one art piece into several content is your ticket to sustain your social media activity.
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❌ Looking for quick fixes. “I wanna grow fast”, “I wanna gain many followers quickly”, “I wanna improve my art rapidly.” Well… I discovered the hard way that quick fixes are made for short-terme results. Things you want to last take time to build. Once I stopped searching for quick fixes and “Instagram hacks”, I was able to focus on what really matters : work hard on adding value to your audience and work hard on making a strategic, successful content.
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❌ writing short captions. Captions are made for creators to interact with their community and build a relationship with them. I used to write short captions because I felt a bi awkward and shy. But then, I understood that if I want people to learn about me and to be willing to follow my journey, I need to talk to them. Give them reasons to get interested in me. And all of this is made in captions under your Posts and Reels!
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❌ Avoiding Reels. Back in 2021, when Reels first appeared I was so angry!! “How am I supposed to keep on making art AND edit videos? I don’t even know how to do this”. I was so reluctant at making Reels. But then, I saw dozens of artists growing their account thanks to Reels. So I started studying them. I discovered that vertical videos were the futur of content creation. So I decided to stop staying in my comfort zone and get done what needed to be done to build the art community of my dream. I started getting serious in making Reels in 2022. By that time, I had 1k followers. Now, in 2023, I have 100k followers. This was the best decision I could make.