16 Non-Drawing Activities That Improve Your Drawings
This is a transcript of a podcast . The YouTube Version can be viewed here:
It would make sense that if you want to become better at drawing, you have to practice drawing.
But what if I told you there are non-drawing-related things you can do to become better at drawing?
This podcast is about that; the non-drawing things you can do that make you better at drawing.
These fall into three global categories: one your health so you can keep going, two things that can inspire you, and three things that are educational.
Welcome to the Practice Drawing This podcast designed to listen to while drawing!
I will discuss 16 non-drawing things you can do that make you better at drawing, ironically while you see me drawing on screen! If you’re watching the video version of this podcast, that is. You see me using my own art flashcards while drawing, and I hope you consider drawing while listening, because that is what this podcast is ultimately designed for.
So let’s dive in!
Thing 1: Sleep
I start with this one because you may not realize it, but it is the most important one, and one you should spend a third of your life on: sleep.
It might not sound like it, but sleep is crucial to your drawing. If you over-work yourself and sleep too little, your drawings will suffer, and you will burn out and burn down. A good night’s rest is crucial for top performances, including as an artist.
I remember programming for 17 hours straight once. I remember being stuck for the last few hours, kidding myself I was working, but not getting anything done. I was just too exhausted. After a good night’s sleep, I solved the problems in a half hour the next day. I would have been better off having done something else the last few hours of that “work day”.
Dr. Eddie O'Connor specialized in coaching athletes and such. He specializes in the psychology of performance. He mentioned somewhere that he focused first on the sleeping habits of the athlete before anything else. All the other things he can help with won’t work if the athlete doesn’t have a healthy sleeping pattern and sleeps long and well enough.
This holds for artists, too, because drawing is also a physical performance.
If you don’t sleep enough, you will eventually just be too tired to draw. So make sure you sleep enough!
Thing 2: Taking Breaks
Related to sleeping enough is taking breaks.
It may sound like the same thing, but it isn’t. Restful breaks are things you take while you remain awake, in between drawing sessions.
When you start to feel you are starting to make mistakes, stop immediately. Your performance will just deteriorate from there.
I remember someone who didn’t want to lunch because they’d become sleepy after lunch. They preferred to keep coding. The problem was that because they didn’t take a break, they were mentally exhausted and made mistakes in the afternoon they were unable to fix themselves.
(You don’t have to eat during breaks, by the way!)
For a while, I had full days to draw, and a routine that worked really well was to draw in the morning, then take the afternoon to do other things: I’d do shopping, work out, cook, et cetera. It turned out to be one big break, as I was recharged and energized enough again to put in another drawing session in the evening.
Taking breaks is productive. Your improved performance after the break will more than make up for the time supposedly lost to taking a break.
Taking a break feels like losing time. Not so! You’re so much more productive after a break that it more than makes up for time lost.
And your health is way more important. And you will be able to keep going for longer. You’ll just burn down if you keep going without breaks.
Thing 3: Stretching
Drawing is tough on the body. If you draw uninterrupted for a long time, your back may hurt, and your hand may develop carpal tunnel syndrome due to holding the pen or pencil for too long.
Get up from your desk, walk around and stretch your body, arms and hands.
If you don’t the pain will eventually cause you to not be able to draw. Period. Your body will give up.
Thing 4: Working Out
A healthy mind in a healthy body. Working out is a part of that. You will just feel better, and be able to be more productive if you work out. Drawing notoriously is labor-intensive. We sit at desks, slaving over a drawing for many hours a day. Being fit will help you perform better as an artist.
Thing 5: Visiting A Museum
There are several reasons why visiting a museum is healthy. For one, it gets you outside. We’re notoriously introvert, like to spend time alone in private. This forces us outside, in the sun, getting vitamin D, walking, which is arguably the most healthy activity, interacting with other people, getting fresh air.
Visiting a museum is also one of those inspirational things. You can gain so much inspiration from walking through a museum, taking it all in. More on that later when I discuss travel.
You also learn a lot by studying masterworks, which you can see up-front in museums.
Museums inspire you, educate you, nourish you creatively and make you a better artist even by walking around and just looking.
Fireworks: This may sound strange because I draw figuratively, but museums that have modern art on display tend to inspire my creativity the most. Modern art tends to be loud and they jump off the walls and at you and it’s just a huge visual spectacle that invades your senses and somehow jogs your creativity. Very inspiring.
Thing 6: Drawing From Memory
This has been mentioned elsewhere. Memory drawing is an exercise you can do everywhere and any time you have interesting things around you . It does not require drawing tools!
Look at something, really study it, try to memorize it. Then close your eyes, and draw it in your mind’s eye. Then open your eyes and look at the thing again and determine what you got wrong while drawing it in your mind’s eye. Note proportions and angles you got wrong, details you missed. Really consciously focus on these, try to remember them. Then close your eyes again and try to draw it in your mind’s eye again.
In reality, this is cheating a bit, because in my view, you are actually drawing, in the sense that your brain is doing the actual work of drawing even if you are not holding a pen or pencil. Your brain is still going through the motions of drawing. Which does mean you get better at drawing.
Thing 7: Sculpting
Sculpting is a great way to explore the three-dimensionality of things!
Also, it is a different creative medium. When you are stuck drawing, feel like you hit a plateau and that you are not improving, and that you hate your art, it can be a good idea to switch up the medium you use to express yourself. Sculpting is a good alternative. You can then later switch back to drawing.
You may also end up with 3D objects you can use for drawing reference, ones you can look at from all sides.
It’s generally a great skill to be able to create three-dimensional reference through sculpting. If you find you need to draw something often from different angles, having a 3D model really does come in handy.
Sculpting makes you better at drawing because it helps you understand the three-dimensionality of things, results in reference objects you can use when drawing, and provides a way to take a break from drawing while still creating visual art.
A good friend once told me that when a child becomes self-conscious about their drawings being “bad”, meaning not realistic enough, it can be a good idea to guide them to a different art form, where everything is fresh and they don’t see their mistakes. This holds for adults, too. When you get stuck hating your drawings, it can be useful to do another art form for a while, one that is fresh and where you don’t see the mistakes yet as much. Sculpting can be a great candidate for that.
Thing 8: Cleaning Your Workspace
For some reason, we don’t work as well when we work in a cluttered environment. All the clutter subconsciously keeps our brain busy. In a clear, cleaned environment, we are clear-headed and can focus on the task at hand much more easily.
Especially when you don’t feel like drawing, it can thus be a good idea to clean your workspace, the area where you draw. De-clutter the space. It gets you up and moving, gives you something to do, and it results in a cleaned space where it much easier to get work done.
Thing 9: Critiquing Art
Critiquing art requires you to look at it critically but objectively. I don’t mean that you should send your critique to the artist! If the artist didn’t ask for the critique, the chances are high they are not interested in what you have to say about their work. For one, they don’t know if you are a credible source of information. And they may have just finished the project, be emotionally attached to it and not ready to receive feedback on it yet.
I mean critique a work but keep it to yourself.
Don’t bother with whether you think the thing is “good” or not “good.” That doesn’t matter one bit. Are you going to buy it if you think it’s good? No? Then why bother determining whether you think it’s good? Rather, try to imagine what the artist was attempting to achieve, how he went about it, what you think he got right, what you think he got wrong, intentionally or not, and figure out how they could improve it, how you would improve it.
Above all, figure out if there are parts to their approach you can use in your own process.
In that way, it helps you become a better artist, and you can even learn from artworks you don’t consider “good.” It doesn’t matter if something is “good”, it matters if you can learn something from it you can use in your own work, or try to avoid in your work.
Thing 10: Reading Books On Art
Books feed the brain. You can go through art books and be inspired by or learn from the art, critiquing it, being inspired by it like you would when visiting a museum.
But that is not all.
You also have written books, non-fiction books preferably. You can read biographies and learn about how famous successful artists lived and worked. It may help you change your life, change how you do things, how you make art.
There are also non-fiction how-to books, and some of them are really good and worth a read. Some of them are even free.
Let’s put it like this; reading a book is far, far better for you than mindlessly scrolling social media. If social media is fast-food for the brain, books are the health food for the brain. It’s insane how much more informative books can be. And they don’ t have to cost anything. There are libraries. Libraries have the additional advantage that again they get you to, walk, move, go outside and be among people.
You can also take books with you and read them anywhere, so if you are in a place where you can not don’t want to draw, you can read a book that will help you become a better artist.
Libraries are also a great place to draw, like museums by the way, but we were discussing non-drawing activities that make you better at drawing.
Thing 11: Get The Right Reading Glasses
I went through a period where I drew using one of those big lenses with led lights that manicurists use. I thought it clever. I was making small pen and ink drawings, and through these lenses, I could just see the lines much better.
Then, by chance, I was at a coffee place, and they had reading glasses on the table. On a whim, I tried one, put it on, took a newspaper, and went… wooooww…. The letters were so sharp… That’s when I realized I didn’t need these manicurist lenses, but rather I needed reading glasses.
If you approach fifty, chances are you need reading glasses.
Getting reading glasses will make you see your art much clearer which is a requirement for drawing accurately.
Thing 12: Travel
When you travel, you will find that the first day or two will feel like you are there for a week already. So many new experiences, things you are seeing, feeling, smelling. Your senses are bombarded with new experiences.
I find that, similar to visiting a museum, this assault on your senses jogs your creativity, inspires you. You get so many ideas during travels!
The experience of traveling will do your drawings a world of good.
Also, drawing is a great activity when you are traveling, but we were discussing non-drawing activities. But still. Just saying.
But when you’re stuck in a rut, you can do worse than visit a museum, library, of even travel. It will do wonders for your creative habits.
Thing 13: Explaining
If you’ve ever taught, you probably experienced the following: as you explain something to someone else, you find yourself understanding it better yourself! This is probably because you are being forced to express things in words, therefore also explaining it to yourself, after which you have more clarity.
Don’t explain, or man-splain even, to others. If people didn’t ask you, they are usually not interested in what you have to say, usually because they assume you’re not a credible source of information.
Rather, explain it to yourself.
Do this by writing.
It’s a large part of why I write my newsletters. You often write not to say something, but to figure something out.
Thing 14: Collecting Reference
If you can’t draw or don’t feel like drawing, you can also collect reference images. In the past, artists would do this by cutting photos out of magazines and keeping them in so-called swipe files or morgue files. They also collected books with photos on subjects. Some artists, for example have shelves full of books with reference images on medieval things, what costumes and such looked like.
Or they took photos. But that was costly, as the photos needed to be developed.
Nowadays, things are different. We can scour the various places on the internet and find a gazillion images everywhere. We have digital cameras, even if alone in our mobile phone, so we can take pictures always.
My Art Flashcards lean heavily on the many photos I took over the years but also images that can be found online and which are provided through a license that allows me to use them in my art flashcards system.
Reference images are very useful to have because they make your drawings better. So collecting reference images are great preparation for when you are preparing to draw things, and can be a great activity that helps you improve your drawings if you don’t feel like or can’t draw.
Thing 15: Photography
Next to sculpting, photography is also a great complementary art form. You have your mobile with you. You can take reference photos, but you can also practice creating great compositions, training your visual abilities to create pleasing designs. Also, studying photography can be very useful. You can learn a lot. It is not a replacement for drawing from life, though! There is great value in drawing from life. When you take photos, you effectively put this object between you and the thing you are looking at. You click a button and a photo is taken, and you walk on. When you draw from life, you sit down, take your time with it, really study it and notice things you hadn’t noticed before. You can walk around it. The way you feel, your senses, what you smell, the temperature, these things all also end up in your drawing.
But we were talking about non-drawing activities that complement the drawing habit, and photography is a great option.
Thing 16: Look At Your Heroes
I used to be jealous of the artists who worked in the golden age of illustration. They would work in bullpens, each at their own drawing table, which meant they could look over each other’s shoulders and see how the others did things. They could also challenge each other to do better through friendly competition.
Nowadays, for better or worse social media plaforms can serve that purpose! It’s one of the very few advantages to social media platforms. There are many artists who post videos online of themselves drawing, and you can just look at those videos, as if you’re looking over the shoulder of a grandmaster! Do look at the real-time videos. The time lapses are just eye candy and are not useful. You need to be able to see how they hold their pens, how they make the movement to make the marks. That is part of the reason you see me draw in real time in these videos. A time lapse video is just special effects. It looks cool but is less useful for artists.
You also get to see how big they draw, you get to see them make the under-drawing that will be erased later, how loose or tight they draw it, how fast or slow, et cetera.
And for better or worse, social media also challenges you to do better of course, as you get the dubious privilege of comparing the drawing you made today to the masterpieces the best artists in the world produced over decades. I’d say that’s rather a disadvantage in this case because your drawings will almost always fall short.
But the videos where you see artists draw in real time are gold! You can learn so much from them. Bonus points if you draw along with your favorite artist. This is not always possible, though. Kim Jung Gi just drew way too fast for me to be able to follow him.
That concludes the list.
Thank you for listening to this podcast, and until next time!