For the artists in the chat: how did you guys find motivation to keep drawing even when you felt things looked terrible? I have a visual novel I've been wanting to write for years now but I don't have remotely enough skill to fully illustrate it. I'm pretty crap at drawing probably because I never feel like going about and doing it since it sometimes takes a while and I never end up with something I like. I know it'll take years to learn but any tips? Did u guys do like studies of specific things or did u just draw whatever?

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[–] 5 points 3 weeks ago

As a professional artist of 10 years who started drawing only after they left school. Draw what you want, as often as possible. Study and output is most important to improvement. Look at styles you love and try breaking them down. Study books related to your goals and test them out. And make smaller goals. If you shoot for a 1000 page comic when you just start drawing you may never feel like youre accomplishing anything. But making minicomics help work you up to the larger goal. You can even do them on the side. Something I did was I made fanart for other creators or fans often. People always appreciate fanart, and it gives you a wider skillset when you have to jump from drawing a cat from a childrens book to a mech from a revolutionary anime.

But with most skills, you have to make it fun to keep motivating yourself. Otherwise you will distract yourself with other things, and only focus on the failures. There's not a cheat code that will make you better instantly, just trail, error, study, and output, output, output.

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