Staying Loose When Sketching

I’m sure you all know this: You want to draw something awesome, something that’s never been there before, you are all motivated but… it just won’t happen. You crank out sketch after sketch and they suck everytime. Maybe not completely, but you are never satisfied.First of all, know that every artist has experienced this before. Still, I want to give you some ideas or inspiration to try and get out of that position where you feel like you can’t get it right.

Allow yourself to DRAW BADLY.

Amazingly bad. Draw and laugh about how bad your sketches are, and realize that nothing bad happens to you just because you just created something that does not look super cool. This way your attitude towards sketching becomes “Let’s see what happens”, instead of “This HAS TO be good!”

What follows is fascinating:

You will draw without the thought of somebody looking at your art and judging. This leads to a free mind while creating, and this will lead to great art!

But not only can you get a loose mind, but a loose hand as well.

I want you to try these two exercises, keeping your hand super loose:1-Draw simple shapes, things like rectangles, triangles and circles. You can also vary them a bit and make them more organic. You can also combine shapes.

Then turn on music that makes you sing and drum along, relax and look what you see in the shapes. It can be anything, whatever your eye sees in there, sketch it!

You can flip the canvas all the way you like as well, because when you draw the shapes, often times you already try to build something in at that stage of the exercise. Try to avoid that! The shapes should be constructed without an image already in mind.2- Draw lines ALL OVER THE PLACE. Enjoy creating chaos. And then look at the mess and find stuff again. Doesn’t matter if you fill the holes, or use the lines as outlines, it’s okay even to just take one line as a guide.

As you can see in my sketches, I tried sticking to the mess I created, yet I didn’t stop my creativity from expanding. You may see this exercise as a support to get you going. As soon as you have an idea or rough sketch, don’t limit yourself.Don’t forget to keep your hand very loose and enjoy experimenting, what works for you, works for you.An empty canvas can be daunting. It’s much easier to draw something if there is already something on the canvas. This method can be super much fun and stimulate your creativity! Have fun trying it out! Be sure to post your sketches in the comments below, OR share your work with the Evenant Design Facebook community.