It seems that the problem is you had too many burdens you had placed onself before you even began. My sketching time has always been that free "me" time before I have to begin an illustration assignment. It should be fun and feel like a creative purge. I have a hard time with advice but if you could let me make one small suggestion. Put away the Moleskine and just draw on copy paper. Use sheet after sheet. Throw away what you hate if you want but keep plugging forward. Do not even dwell on what you have created. Just draw and put the drawing in a box. just keep moving forward don't look back. Trust me the one biggest challenge about his whole thing is trying to keep your inner critic at bay.

ah danny, that's why we love you. You're so much for patient that the rest of us. Blue Sky, put this on your wall and get to it: “Don’t wait for inspiration, it comes while working.” Henri Matisse

Yes! Yes! Indeed, if one is governed by the Inner Critic, one is always a victim, a worm, a failure. To shout "No! You're wrong!" is to take back your power in all things, including the fun in playing with art supplies. Skill will develop along the way only if you keep drawing.

Danny, thanks for those encouraging words. I have the same problem, of wanting my drawings to be perfect from the start, which of course forces me to give up when they aren't! Practice, practice, practice! I think of when I first learned to knit, with clumsy hands and slipped stitches and big holes in my sweater! Now,I can do it with my eyes closed, or in a dark movie theater. I will get out my sketchbook today, and begin to PRACTICE!

Rock on, Danny. We've all felt like Blue Skies, but you're right on, turn on, tune in and draw out that magic. It'll come when you stop thinking and start drawing.

Danny,
You and your books have been an inspiration to me. Your advice to Blue Skies is dead on! When I stop doing creative things, I suck at it when I go back to it. As long as I keep practicing, keep doing whatever it is, I do see improvement. Thanks for sharing your experience with all of us!
Fran

I was reading Blue Skies' comments and I said "YES! Exactly!" and then I read Danny's reply and again, I said, "YES! Exactly!"

Since I haven't given myself permission yet to try to draw (Jay Wholley, my art teacher in college, has seen to taking away that permission and I"m still working on that), I did start doing Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" and I am faithfully doing the morning pages every day. I find it is working in helping reframe my thinking and it's helping me to spew out the negative first thing in the morning so I can focus better during the day. Eventually, I suspect this will actually help enhance my artwork.

Ok, none of that may really sound like it relates to your post, but in my head it did.

A suggestion?

Grab a ream of CHEAP paper, and just draw simple shapes. Cover a hundred pages with circles, a hundred with triangles, another hundred with squares. Each time, work on making the circles round, the triangles true, and the squares...square.

Learn to control your hand, learn to use your pencil, learn to put marks on the paper.

And when you get bored of each shape, change it a bit. The circles become ovals or spheres. Triangles were meant to become cones and squares morph into cubes...soon, you won't be so afraid to make marks and try more complicated subjects. :)

as a teacher, i want everyone to know: frustration is a good thing!

the more frustrated you are, the more rapidly you are learning.

if you work through your frustrations (endure, experiment, research, find a good teacher), you will be smarter and more talented because of them.

honestly, blue skies, i am excited for you. being accomplished at something isn't nearly as interesting as BECOMING accomplished.

your email to danny comes from the brink of defeat but you wouldn't have written him if you had really given up. if you go back to the drawing table now (literally) and give yourself permission to feel frustrated, this time will pass quickly and you will look back on it as the week or the month or the year when you became an artist. you clearly have the appetite for it.

Yes, working with cheap paper is CRUCIAL. I have a year-old Moleskine that I still haven't opened yet. Instead, I've been drawing in a less-fancy journal where the pages curl when I use watercolor. And the pages are easy to tear out when something goes really wrong.

I don't throw those pages away, mind you. I fold them and stick them in the back of the book as little reminders of how far I've come. But I don't necessarily like to look at them as part of my drawings collection.

Danny recommended another drawing book at one point, "The Drawing Breakthrough Book" by John Hastings. One of his first exercises is to draw simple shapes (squiggly lines, curvy circles, etc.) and then attempt to recreate those exact lines you just made. What a great exercise! Especially on cheap paper...

Whew! Danny, you and the other people who commented said it all! Best wishes to Blue Skies and all who persevere in the making of marks.

Just Do It! You're right, this will help you get past every one of your inhibitions and frustrations. Spending just 15 minutes a day will help you push the envelope to creativity. P.S. I love the wonky sketch of this dog. Completely your style and very cool.

I think I could insulate my house with the stacks of drawings I made. Most of them are not what I consider good. But in order to get anywhere, you have to put in the work. I'm really a too result orientated person, and it took some time to learn to enjoy the process and not worry so much over the end result. Every now and then I pick up a stack of old drawings and marvel at the progression I've made over the years. There's a balance to be found between being content with one's progression and being not content as fuel for constant improvement.
Cheers,
Arco

Yes, yes, and yes again!

The only way to improve a physical skill is to do more of it. More drawing means more drawings leads to better drawings.

I've been playing with various assists--gessoing over a picture and tracing significant lines, sketching ideas for what I want to build, working letterings in a sketchbook. None of it is frame-worthy, but I see progress.

I may never reach the Zen zone of drawing for pleasure. (I'm more of a 3-D person anyway.) But if drawing can help me to conceive and decide what I'm planning, then I'm glad to add this to my toolbox.

Oh for goodness sakes, lighten up on yourself. Draw like a child. Get some fingerpaints. Scribble! Play with some clay! Creativity has nothing to do with aesthetics or commerce. It's a way of thinking that isn't confined by critical analysis. It's a way of being that makes unusual connections that have nothing to do with logic or status quo. Go out on a limb. No one has your unique ability to see things exactly as you see them. It takes time for the hand to approximate what the eye thinks it sees. No one ever got better at doing something by not doing it. On the other hand, positive affirmations work just as well as negative ones. So repeat after me: I draw beautifully. I draw beautifully. I draw beautifully. Somebody very wise once said: Whether you think you can or you think you can't ... you're right.

Thank you, and all the others in the comments, for your positive and encouraging support. I have come to understand now that the biggest barrier to my experiencing the joys of creativity is myself; my own negative thoughts and focusing more on a certain result.

In other words, I simply need to stop thinking so much and just draw. On copier paper for now, that is.

Thanks again.

I first gave myself permission to draw when I ran away to sydney Australia suffering from ME/CFS. Every day I left the hostel and very slowly would walk toward different cafes. Sit and drink coffee, eat cake and draw, cups, cruet sets, spoons and cup cakes, architectural details, the sydney operahouse, gulls ( Australian gulls are strangely small compared to scottish ones...) I drew every day and even the 'bad' drawings delight me as a reminder of a wonderful month. All that looking really imprinted the surrounds I was in into my memory. Blueskies NO SYMPATHIES get thee to work eep the hand moving. Nothing NOTHING was ever learned with out practice. I only learned to shoot super 8 mm after 30 rolls of film were used up. I only started to learn the vagaries of my various cameras after 1000's of photos. Anyone who had learned an instrument will tell you that they have put in hours of practice and effort before being able to crank out a recogniseable tune. What makes you think drawing is any different>

Drawing , painting make the time disappear;-)
Right before I can start or at times when I can't draw/paint I have this feeling in my belly like I'm right before some important date;-)
Thank you, Danny for amazing notes!
Love YOU, Danny, I started again because of Your book, blog and amazingly friendly intentions;-)

Blue Skies is like so many of my adult drawing students. It is easy to tell them to lighten up, but it seems to me that many perfectionists find themselves interested in learning how to draw as they become adults, having totally given up on it as a child. It is nearly impossible to get them to lighten up- I find it works better to appeal to their understanding that anything good takes practice and devotion to the craft. Some listen and some don't, but if they are interested enough, they will soon find the fun of it and be less hard on themselves. That is always what I hope for in my students anyway.

Getting interested in making art is fabulous at any age, but that whole inner critic thing is a HUGE creativity killer.

Not only is cheap paper freeing, but it can also be liberating to draw on the pages of an old discarded book. Just draw right over the text. This is not my idea- I read it in Trumpetvine Travels, and it has stuck with me as a good tool to get some people over the thought of "ruining" a perfectly good piece of paper.

I find that it seems to be about three things mostly when someone is hesitant to move forward with drawing because of their inner critic, but all three reasons ultimately boil down to the fact that they do not think they are worthy.

1. They are afraid to spoil perfectly good art supplies (Note- it is JUST paper. Everyone is good enough to ruin a sheet of paper. If you are worried what people will say, draw privately at first).

2. They are afraid what others will say (but most do want people to look at their work. They need a SAFE environment to share in) The EDM forum is the perfect place in which to share- all drawing levels are present and it is a very encouraging group.

3. They feel like they should draw as well as _______ (usually someone that has been honing their drawing skills for years)

Like Danny says above, you can't win the race without putting in the practice time.

Isn't it true that many people stop drawing, for the most part, in early grade school? That is why many adults are baffled how to draw something as they SEE it rather than as a symbolic or representational drawing.

Perhaps the frustration comes because accomplished artists make drawing look easy. In reality it only becomes easy with lots of practice and a drawing discipline. Fledgling artists can't hold themselves up to that loft goal right away. Baby steps need to be taken with mini triumphs along the way.

So I agree with most all of the posts here. New artists need a nurturing environment and encouragement. But they also might also just need to realize that all good things do not come easily. Stop whining and just do it- even if it is uncomfortable.

Beginners will get there too if they keep at it. The good news is that keeping at it is fun if you can get that inner critic to take a hike (or at least a nap).