What To Do When You Can't Draw Or Think Of New Ideas

Take a break is my usual plan of action, either take a walk, watch a movie, walk the dog, go to the pub or write a plan of ideas that you may be interested in in the future, this is what I like to do and it works every time.

Sometimes taking a break from what you've been thinking about too much helps you come back to it refreshed and ready to go again, there's been times when I've been trying to draw something and it just screws up every time and so I walk away and do something else like have a coffee, although I've just given up coffee and I only drink tea or hot chocolate, the five or ten  minutes you take to rest your mind and your eyes away from your drawing is the best thing that you can do for your creativity.

I'm a great believer in planning for these so called non motivating days that seem to hide and wait for you to fail and by planning I mean so that you always win over them negative thoughts that do cry out and whinge that you can't draw or think of anything to draw, I'm always writing lists of ideas and sheets of notes to guide me on my way, call it my wonder sheet where I wonder what I'll draw next, well that's what I do and I take it anywhere, even on days when I'm not at my desk because that's when ideas strike.

When you're watching the telly or reading a book, ideas infiltrate your brain like planted thought suggestions, I tend to think of visual and audio helpful in bringing excellent creative ideas to the forefront of your mind and while were at it, sleep is one of the best idea generators that we can have, especially if you can remember your dreams, even if they seem vague, but interesting enough to write down moments after waking up, it's all about inspiring yourself in ways that you like and by doing the things that you like to bring about those thoughts and feelings of exhilaration.

For me, there's nothing like working solid on drawing for a whole day and creating some great drawings and pieces of art that you are proud of, so try taking a break, have a sleep if necessary or do something else that will help your creative side to shine!

Draw A Vampire

Been busy on youtube for awhile creating some new videos and a couple of them in how to draw a vampires head and so in the first video I draw up a storm rather quickly with a short video on going through the process of drawing a vampires head.

Drawing quite quickly you can sketch some good vampire heads, so if you want to do that before you start the actual vampire drawing, just to get an idea for a particular way that the head of the vampire will face, I did a fornt facing vampire head which is a good one to do because you can show all the face and features.

Here's the first drawing video...



In the second drawing video I wanted to see a progression of the original drawing so that it looked like it was evolving and gaining some depth on the face, this is achieved through a combination of shading and darkening the pencil lines so that the lighter lines will fade out and eventually be erased later on as they become irrelevant.

Watch this video as you see the vampire becoming more vampire like with it's fangs and the blood dripping from it's chin...

Drawing Tutorial: Let's Draw A Mermaid

Drawing Mermaids!!!! I've never ever drawn a Mermaid before, so there's a first time for everything, I'm more used to drawing monsters and demons, but that's the reason why I want to diversify and show more drawing tutorials and how to blog posts on other stuff, because I'm still a learning artist like you, the thing about drawing is you've got to constantly challenge yourself and draw things you wouldn't draw in a million years, and so Mermaids are the order of the day!

Getting the balance right of a half fish half woman can be difficult, as there is a tendency to over weight the woman half of the Mermaid and leave the fish tail half looking ridiculous, the thing that I've realized when practicing drawing a mermaid is that you can draw the fish tail end as large as you want and the woman half still looks ok.

Right, lets get on with it shall we? - First of all, what I do in my tutorials is to draw the drawing complete and then I backtrack through each step using my lightbox to trace each step as I would have drawn it from scratch, so throughout, you will see a changed pencil line on some of the drawing, this is because I traced at each step to show again how each part of the mermaid is drawn.

First I like to draw a rough skeletal shape which is an ideal place to start and I like to draw a curved line which will be the mermaids spine and fishes tail, see the drawing below to see what I mean...

Now we want to work on that fishes tail first, so that we get that curved tail right as this will be the most dynamic part of the mermaid together with the mermaids hair which will be floating under the water, try and draw the shape around the spinal line that I've drawn below...

Now we need the drawing to come together and the arms need to be sketched in at this point, so that there is some sort of balance, it's all about testing the position of the arms, to see if they look right, it took me two times to get the arms looking good against the flow of the fish tail, take a look for yourself at how the mermaid is coming along....

Now the hair is drawn in roughly and the head is sectioned off with a cross grid to mark out the eyes and the mermaids features, aswell as some smal detail on the fin of the fish tail and my favourite part the boobs are drawn in roughly too....

Now the final stage of the pencil drawing is completed with the eyes and nose and mouth drawn in, try to keep them in proportion of the body and a criss cross pencil mark has been added to a random part of the fish tail to show fish scales and also we draw a cheeky star fish bra to cover the mermaids bazookas....take a look!

Now, you can ink the mermaid drawing to make the mermaid appear more clearer with a permanent ink that is darker, I use the finest ink pen which is usually the cheapest from the store, see the final drawing below.

Drawing mermaids are quite fun to draw, so why not have a go and draw a great mermaid....

Learn To Draw Peppa Pig (Just For Fun!)

Drawing Peppa Pig and any cartoon character is not my usual drawing tutorial to show here on this blog, but since my daughter put in a request, then I thought I would have a go at drawing Peppa Pig in an article drawing tutorial, which you may find quite useful in a step by step kind of way, just to see how you approach the process of drawing a cartoon character.


See how to draw Peppa Pig

Watch Me Draw A Twisted Skull

A new video has been posted to my Youtube Channel on how to draw a twisted skull, the video only lasts a few minutes and it shows me drawing a twisted skull design in real time like most of my videos, I welcome any feedback on this video if any as I do intend on doing loads more drawing videos about different stuff to draw and drawing skulls are great to do and fun!

Enjoy the video....



Also see - Drawing A Skull Tattoo