Your work will fall short. You see all the mistakes in your work and how amazing their work is. It can be demoralizing.
Do allow masterpieces to inspire you! It is a good idea to start the day by looking at art you admire; it will make you want to start creating yourself. You see the poetic beauty in the art and want to make something like that! Let that inspire you.
After you finish a piece, do not compare it to masterpieces. Instead, celebrate! Feel good about it, and you will want to draw again tomorrow when you start by looking at art you admire to get inspired to draw.
Look at masterpieces before you start drawing, not after.
I got advice from a fellow artist the other day, and I realized that while I don’t always agree with their advice, I learn a lot from them simply by seeing what they do and how they approach things. I love seeing, and learn a lot from, seeing process. I mean the actual process, the messy process, the trial and error, the dead ends, not the polished time-lapse videos on social media.
This could be a newsletter article on its own: Do As Other Artists DO, Not As They SAY. The predominant reason is that if they don’t know precisely what you are trying to achieve—and they tend not to if they didn’t ask you—then their specific advice might not be right for you. They project themselves onto you and imagine what they would do if they were in your shoes, which they aren’t. They need to ask you questions first to understand what success looks like to you or at least look closely at your work. Which, amazingly, at least in my case, they don’t do! Artists who don’t look! But I digress.
Almost every Saturday, I take a step back and take stock of how my creative week went. What did I do? What went well? What didn’t? I have a text document for that, but I could be doing that here, especially this week when the main article was short.
The idea behind my short newsletter articles is that you, and I, should be busy drawing. So, I want to take up as little of your and my time as possible with the newsletter and leave you with one thought, something to ponder.
But the newsletter articles you read here were written long ago. As I write this in 2025, I have many articles scheduled up to the end of 2027. That means the articles don’t reflect what I am working on now or what I am experiencing now.
My ’My Week’ section is about what I did this week. I can’t promise to write one every week, but at least there will be a regular article.
So here is my process. Here is what I did last week.
I started making anatomy reference images for the art flashcards. The rationale behind that was that I don’t have many anatomy references on the website yet. Also, it allows me to practice drawing anatomy, which is good. And I was hoping that, as form studies, it could do well on Pinterest. Which is good, right? (Not necessarily, as Pinterest can remove images it doesn’t deem suitable for children.) I could even end up with a Practice Drawing This anatomy book. That also sounds like a good idea.
But I wasn’t having fun with it. I just wasn’t enjoying drawing these finished anatomy pieces.
And it’s not like the world needs another anatomy resource. There are already tremendous ones out there.
Instead, Practice Drawing This has several things no one else has, like parametric 3D models and the art flashcards scheduler. That is more useful than Yet Another Anatomy Resource.
It would have meant doing something I hadn’t enjoyed for almost a year.
So, I dropped making anatomy references for now.
I made this cool (I think) podcast player, ArtPodPlay , that immediately starts playing podcast episodes so you don’t have to waste time searching for one. There’s no excuse not to start drawing!
The problem was that while it was cool to listen to voices talking while drawing, it was distracting when drawing from memory. And that is the ultimate drawing exercise.
This week, I added a new section, ambient noise sound podcasts, which is now also the default category. It’s okay to have it on the Art Flashcards pages now, too.
I was drawing with fountain pens and colored ink using my art flashcards and timed drawing pages for reference. I had water on my hand and accidentally rubbed a nose off a Roman face. Then I realized the ink wasn’t waterproof. I decided to grab a water brush to pull washes from lines to see how that looked.
I decided to take a page spread I had made before and didn’t like because I had over-worked it.
This ink came out really saturated after scanning it! I couldn't find a way to reduce the saturation in a pleasing way yet.
Then I took a page spread where I had done five-minute timed drawings and tried it there, too.
I like the effect. It punches up a drawing, and this allows me to ‘erase’ mistakes a bit.
I was considering putting more effort into the Pinterest account. Pinterest has been so good to me—most people subscribing to my newsletter come from that place—and yet I keep trying to make Instagram happy. It didn’t make sense.
Pinterest is a long game. It can take weeks, months, and sometimes years before a post gains traction. But when it does, it just keeps on going.
These are some I made this week:
In case you’re interested in the articles behind these pins, this is the one on drawing textures for practice , whether you should measure or freehand draw , how to make yourself want to draw , and the one on seven things to consider when choosing a sketchbook .
They’re just part of the resources, the newsletter articles on the website. I’ve historically been bad at promoting things I made.
I’m mainly making drawing resources for myself, but it would be cool if they reached a bigger audience. And I’ll learn a few new things.
I updated the memory drawing workbook with some additional photos. The Heinrich Kley illustrations were a bit hard to start with. I added that you can also memorize by drawing from observation, which is especially useful when memorizing a complex reference that is not yet within your reach.
I made this DrawnCompare tool , which allows you to compare your drawings to reference images using the camera on your mobile phone.
I added this DrawnCompare tool to the flashcard page. If you press the “Compare to drawing” link and point your mobile camera at your drawing, you can compare to see how far “off” you were from the reference!
I drew this one from memory while waiting somewhere.
The goal isn’t to make a perfect copy. It’s to arrive at a visually pleasing image. But still, it might hint at details in the drawing you can adjust.
With this tool, you potentially don’t need a teacher to tell you what is wrong with your drawings!
Happy drawing, and till next week!