I'm curious what the experiences of the artists and would-be-artists in this community have been like. How long have you been drawing? How did you learn? How do you practice? How much time do you spend on art? Do you use any media besides digital/pencil/marker? Why do you draw? (yeah, I know, horrible question to ask anyone in any creative field), etc. I'd also love to hear from anyone who's picked up a pencil but has yet to produce anything they consider worth sharing.

Myself, I've been drawing for about a year but I don't practice a lot. I've done a few sketches relevant to this website but I doubt they'd pass the quality filter.

Hey, you need to practice if you wanna get better!
I mean come on, if you do a lot of drawing/sketching, you can improve a ridiculous amount in a short period fo time. //is speaking from experience.

Anyway.
To answer your questions~

I've been doddling for as long as I could hold a pencil. Been seriously drawing for about a decade now. Got my first dA account after about two years.

How much time? Ehhhh, that's random. Could be just a couple of hours, to a few days worth. It depends on what is needed. Average though? Probably about 6-1o hours total.

Media.... mostly just digital. Although I love working with Clay. I totally need a fucking Kiln so that I can bake some clay =D
Should pick up some more some day too, actually.

Why do I draw? Simple. It's a passion. It's like writing - lets me get my ideas out of my head so they aren't beating me up anylonger [or just so that I can sleep XDD]

Agreed. Practice. Ya gotta force yourself on that stuff.

I learned what I know from drawing in notebooks all through school. I've got a few notebooks worth of bad old sketches lying around my bookshelf. Finally I got a tablet and pretty much only do digital stuff now. I try to keep pencils and sketchbooks on hand but I always lose them somehow. I still experiment a lot with different settings on my computer. I've been doing that for a couple years and I still feel like I don't know enough.

Usually it takes me about 3-5 hours to finish one drawing, but I cel shade most of my things because I like the shiny look, so I imagine a painting would take a lot longer... doubt I'll ever find out.

I don't really know why I draw. There's been times, after working really hard on something I think is awful, I swear off drawing forever. But I just keep on doing it, for reasons I can not name. Which is kinda cool I guess. I've yet to hear anything really bad about the things I post, so I guess as long as everyone's ok with me putting stuff on the internet, I'm gonna keep doing it. Just to do it.

I've been drawing for practically as long as I can remember. Though horrible self-esteem issues always kept me from ever being active on the internet or interacting with people about it. I suppose embracing the hypno stuff is another stepping stone there. Though I guess I always just liked making up characters and things in general.

How long I take to make a picture? Guess it depends how complex it is, I hardly ever keep exact track of that sort of thing, I do have an awful habit of almost finishing a piece, and then sitting on it for a while before I properly call it finished.

Oh Petal, just keep drawing, a year is little time ^^

Hmm, I draw anime since 2008... Before it I just draw landscapes, tried realism and many disney character (...Don't know why). I love drawing since I was child, but just drawn seriously when I began to receive requests for commissions (2012).

Learned by myself, I really love drawing.

The time that I spend is very irregular, a sketch can take 30 min or 2 hours, a complete drawing can take 4 to 6 hours, but I try don't draw too much without pause, it hurts. So I don't know correctly the time, but is more or less like... I draw the sketch, pause, draw the lineart and base colors, pause, and after, the shading. But it really depend if I'm inspired, the Hypno-tan I did the lineart, color and shading in a one time, was really fast ^^

About the media, I started with pencil and paper, only, never liked much color-pencil, paint or anything that have color (in traditional). In 2011 I started in digital, using mouse, and just in the start of this year I bought my first tablet :) (still very happy with this!)

And why I draw... Because I can't live without. The life is boring, gray, without emotion. When I took a vocation, I was a little sad because of the time that I don't drawn. Is like... "missing a piece of me" if I don't draw. I love it, is me, is my mode of express myself.


By the way, why you draw Petal? (just returning the question)

Edit:
time of drawing in my life is everyday, it's my job.

Thanks for the responses everybody. Just to clarify, when I asked how much time you guys spend, I meant in terms of a proportion of your life, not in terms of how long you spend on a particular piece. While time per piece is interesting, I think it's more of an incidental factor to art. I know from writing that the answer is usually, "a long time, but I wasn't really paying attention."



I know the feeling :D Essence of art, ain't it?

e: Why do I draw? Well, I'll be 100% honest: I wanted to draw porn. After reading you guys' thoughtful comments, that feels awfully reductive, even degrading to the art form, but I guess when you wait until college to pick up the pencil your motives are a bit less pure or noble. But when I started really thinking about drawing, and looking at the technique and energy of my favorite artists, not just the content, I felt jealous. I know from writing and music the power you can access through artistic expression. The turn of phrase, or even single word, that cuts to the heart of an idea or emotion, the agony that you make yours and make known in vibrato. And I love the ability of art to let you see other people's worldviews. So I saw there were, there are, people out there who can use an expressive power I can't even apprehend, and you know, I felt greed and jealousy. I can scratch lines on paper but I want to scratch them with the same meaning and power I put in my words. I want to be able to construct a perspective on reality on paper. The kind of tactile concreteness of drawing is interesting compared to piles of words, too.

I guess that's why.

To be fair people get into art for their own reasons, I love concept art myself. While I'll probably not ever feel comfortable drawing outright sexual explicit stuff I'm warming to kinky stuff in general now. I should really draw more often than I do, but other things like videogames often take up my time, though videogames are pretty much the only reason I never developed and interest in at alongside cartoons anyway.

Man, I wish I could draw.
I couldn't draw a stick figure with a ruler and a protractor. -_-

*snickers* You an' I both. I picked up a pencil the other day out of sheer boredom, and let me just say: it's a sad day when you can look at <<www.pixiv.net/member_illu...ig&illust_id=38222942|this>> (I'd give a loli warning, except I think this ended up as abstract art) and honestly say, "Man, this looks ages beyond what I can do!"

To be honest, the only thing I ever drew that I was even remotely content with was a random disembodied (as in, attached to nothing, NOT ripped off or something) elf ear. With proper shading, I actually felt it would have looked good.

Why an elf ear? Who the hell knows.

Me and KinkyLoli LMAO'ed a bit but don't mind xD

Also... I actually doodled some porny stuff before I knew the internet. I burned it along with other drawings/writings so that nobody would see it, but I still can draw (only "meh"-style realism though). Even if usually I never do >.>

That's why I have AutoCAD.

But in all honesty I can't draw either. I'm pretty good at weaving a story together because I like words and words like me. That's why I love the amount of artistic support that this site gets for original content. Everyone has a certain way they like to promote their way of thinking. And I say for every 1 artist out there drawing, there are a 1,000 people who feel the same way.

Well, that was the intended reaction. :P
Seriously though. I have NO fine motor skills with my fingers. My hands are naturally shaky, and while it doesn't bother me at all for most things, anything that requires me to hold my fingers in a completely controlled manner and move them slowly and subtly...

Needless to say, for me, traditional art (pencil and paper sort of art) is pretty much out of the question.


I keep hearing that brought up around school, too. Mainly amongst the artistic or technological bunches of people. I know a google search would suffice, but I'm feeling illogical, so I'll ask: what is that, exactly? And can it be used for the sake of porn? :P

It's a big old drafting program that you can use to make blueprints for pretty much anything, 2D or 3D. Huge with engineers, probably architects too. I guess you could use it to make some pretty good porn if you get a raging hard-on in car factories and construction sites or something.

Lol. Cars (that animated movie) porn. Made in that program. I can see it now.

<<iran-banner.com/Portals/0/productimages/167957_111c1.jpg|Oh, god this is so hawt fap fap fap>>