I was a CBCC artist.
I can “Copy But Can’t Create.”
That’s what CBCC means.
This is the kind of artist who can copy but can’t draw from their own imagination.
They can rival Da Vinci in copying but can’t even match the imagination of a 3-year-old when drawing something original. 🤷♂️
So, how did I go from drawing like this to this? 👇
I simply (over the span of many years) stopped making these 10 mistakes that beginner artists make,
that prevent one from being the kind of artist they’ve always wanted to be.
In this 3rd part of my 4-part ‘How I Learned to Draw’ newsletter series, I want to talk about those mistakes.
– I explored why I draw in the first place (in letter 1).
– Then we saw how I used “copying” to get started (in letter 2).
And today, before we go on to the Actual “Roadmap” that led me to becoming the artist who’s capable of making comics and animations,
it’s all about removing these mistakes. 💪
“Insanity is doing the same things and expecting different results.”
So what can we do differently?
The 9-5 Job Phase
and the 10 Mistakes
In the previous letter, we left off where I quit art and got a 9-5 job that had nothing to do with drawing.
I was clueless, lost, and hopeless. 😵💫
I wanted to be a better artist who’s capable of drawing the things he wanted so that he could tell stories with his art. But my skills didn’t back it up.
And IT SHOULDN’T HAVE.
Looking back, thank God I didn’t get what I wanted, because I never would have learned the lessons that make me the artist I am today. 😤
During my job phase, I started drawing daily, thinking that would help.
And it did. But not to the level I hoped.
I was making some progress, but my skills weren’t going anywhere.
Months later, I would quit my job to give art another shot. And fast forward 3 years, I would learn to be the kind of artist I wanted to be.
But it involved identifying and removing these mistakes I kept making that acted as a wall between me and my goals.
So what were they? 🤔
1. Waiting for the Perfect time
For years, I was waiting for the perfect time to do things. To learn drawing (or take it seriously).
I thought I had to quit my job to learn art (I didn’t have to).
I thought I needed more time and energy (nope).
Turns out, the time is never right. You have now, and that’s all there is. 😌
I would wait a couple more months after quitting my job to take drawing seriously.
I could have just started a lot earlier and would have gained massive upside. ✏️
Something as little as 10–20 mins a day would do wonders. But I didn’t know that back then.
2. Not having a Goal or A Plan
“I want to learn drawing” was my goal. But unfortunately, that’s just a wish.
A vague one, in fact. 😶🌫️
I would find out that you need to be specific with what you want to learn and plan how to learn it.
Be it character design, environments, or life drawing. You need to be specific, and you need a plan to get there.
The best way to not hit a goal is to not have one in the first place. 🎯
The moment I changed this up and chose a focus (I picked head drawing at the start), I got good… fast.
3. Just “Drawing Everyday”
I would “just draw every day” hoping that would help me get good at drawing.
And it did, only to a point. After which I had to add this super special ingredient called:
INTENTION 🧠
Which basically means, draw with ‘intention’ to improve. How?
Give yourself tiny feedback every time you draw.
That one little addition made my ‘daily drawing practice’ a hypersonic rocket to my goals. 🚀
Just mindlessly drawing every day without intention won’t work (and most people blame their daily drawing practice for that).
It’s the proactive approach toward the practice that matters.
After applying this, I made massive progress in as little as 100 days, simply by drawing daily with intention. 💯
4. Not Believing “it’s possible”
There were countless days where I thought I was pursuing an impossible dream.
I didn’t believe I had what it took to get good.
Turns out, I did. I just didn’t have the patience. 🧘
Because results take time, and you just have to do the right things for long enough to break through.
And not believing it was possible just made the process harder.
I learned this from drawing: ‘Anything is possible’.
Give it work, focus, and effort, the seed will become a tree one day. 🌲
5. Focusing on Quality over Quantity
This was one of the BIGGEST blunders I made when I was learning to draw.
I focused on quality – aka making good drawings,
Over quantity – making lots of drawings.
This is due to a fear that most beginners have, which says, “I should not make bad drawings or else…”
This fear puts on a disguise of ‘quality’.
Fun fact: Beginners learn through mistakes. And you can only make mistakes if you draw a lot. 😌
Volume grows your art more than quality ever will for the first 2–4 years.
I made the most progress when I made 100 drawings in 100 days than doing 1 masterpiece in 100 days.
6. Not Allowing myself to Make “bad art”
I hated making bad art. It just demotivated me to draw. 😩
But turns out, that was exactly what I needed.
By not allowing myself to make bad art (which, btw, is subjective),
I spiraled into a procrastination wormhole that stopped me from making art. ⌛
I feared the blank paper because of my high standards.
The moment I quit that thinking and allowed myself to fail…
I started to succeed in making “good art”. 😉
7. Thinking I was “good at fundamentals”
Lines, shapes, forms, and perspective. I thought I knew them.
Turns out, I didn’t. 🤷♂️
All my time spent on “advanced drawing techniques” pointed me to one thing:
I wasn’t good at fundamentals.
And just fixing that helped me leap miles ahead. 😮
8. Focusing on the Wrong Skills and order
• Trying to find my style before learning to draw a box well.
• Wondering why I can’t draw from imagination when I can’t even draw well by looking at things.
These are the wrong questions to ask. 📝
There is an order to learning a skill, and I completely missed it by jumping to “finding my style”, which only delayed finding it.
9. Being Inconsistent and Not having a Routine
Goals and plans are no good if it’s not paired with an action. ❌
I used to live in a dream world of potential plans and goals.
They never came to fruition because I didn’t have a consistent art routine.
And even when I did have routine, I wasn’t CONSISTENT. 🤦
The moment I unlocked this problems – things came to me.
10. Too much ego and going at it alone.
Goals and plans are no good if it’s not paired with an action. ❌
I used to live in a dream world of potential plans and goals.
They never came to fruition because I didn’t have a consistent art routine.
And even when I did have routine, I wasn’t CONSISTENT. 🤦
The moment I unlocked this problems – things came to me.
Mentors and having good resources would have helped me gain that time fast, but I didn’t learn that lesson then.
And when I did focus on learning from a mentor or resource – My art leapt leaps and bounds. 🚀
———
So these were the mistakes I made and stopped making which eventually improved my art.
But what’s the roadmap? 🗺️
What are the exact steps I took learn drawing…
All of that – in the final part of this blog series (read the next blog ‘The Artist Roadmap – 10 Core Skills’) 😏
See ya then;)
Kesh.
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