Hey! I'm a huge fan of your art, and also incredibly nervous to ask this, but I was just wondering if you have any tips for beginning artists...? I've never drawn anything from my own head or without a lot of help, but I want to create beautiful things. I have no idea where to start, but I have Procreate, a bunch of colored pencils, a bunch of sketchbooks filled with terrible scribbles, and enthusiasm.

hi! thank you, i’m glad you enjoy my art <3

i assume you were looking for advice on artist technique & resources when you messaged me, and i don’t know if i can offer something substantial on that front because it’s a very, very broad topic 🤔 people go to school for this kind of stuff, and i don’t think i can condense that into one singular post on tumblr (and even if i did, it would be eight billion links that would be rather discouraging and overwhelming to see, or at least it would be for me).

what i can recommend though (and i hope this doesn’t sound patronizing) is that if you’re just starting your artist journey, it’s a good idea to ask yourself why you’re doing it. when i started drawing as a separate distinct activity, a thing i pursued, i did it because i liked the process (and later the end result) of expressing an idea i had in my mind. i like illustrating a thought! i like depicting small pieces of narrative, a metaphor, or a feeling in a singular visual form. honestly, at the end of the day, i draw because i enjoy telling stories. that’s why i decided to get better at drawing—i wanted to be able to impart the gravity and the drama, however self-indulgent and self-important, of the stuff that i was thinking about, and ultimately it has directly informed how i chose and have been choosing to improve my skills and what art style i wanted to pursue. that’s why my art is character-driven and why i focus on anatomy, why i work more on color and less on geometry, why i pay a lot of attention to allegories and symbolism and so on.

i see you mentioned wanting to create beautiful things, which in my opinion is an awesome reason for wanting to draw! i would personally try to define what ‘beautiful things’ means to you. drawing and painting is a subject with infinite facets, so when you look at them all at once you might feel like you don’t know where to start and that you will never master even a fraction of them. but if you precisely identify why you want to draw, it might become easier to pick a point of entry! if 'beautiful things’ first and foremost means 'beautiful colors’ to you, you may want to start with studying color theory. if it’s 'watercolor paintings of flowers that would look stunning on the wall’, you can start by looking into watercolor technique and the anatomy of flowers. you might even come to the conclusion that 'beautiful things’ to you is whatever other people find beautiful, and maybe you can explore why you want to create beautiful things for other people, and then search for techniques that would help you in that endeavor.

'why do i want to draw’ might be considered a very navel-gazing sort of question, but i truly believe that it has practical application (among other things); because if you know why you want to draw, you know better where to start and where to go after. really, if you narrow it down to one specific thing, or the thing that matters most, or the thing that takes precedence, it’s much easier to open your browser and look up 'perspective in art’ than it is 'how do i become an artist’.

i hope this is even a little bit helpful! i’m sorry i can’t tell you exactly what to start studying first, because there’s just so much and better art teachers than me have composed curriculums that perfectly balance all the aspects without overwhelming the student. but i can tell you that you know better than i do where you should start! if your ultimate goal is doing art for pleasure and not as a job (also absolutely valid, but it doesn’t seem to be your case), don’t worry about efficiency and one singular 'correct way’ to learn, just figure out what brings you the most joy and you will naturally find where to begin.