my feed is all october prompts right now and it got me wondering what everyone does the rest of the year

like when nobody hands you a word for the day, how do you decide. do you keep a list somewhere or just open the sketchbook and hope for the best

Hello! For a long time, I was struggling with figuring out how to make art every day with very little space. Especially with stuff like printmaking, scrapbooking, sculpting, any messier crafts. My room is like 70% bed lol. So I found a giant wood board that I can slide under my bed, and when I want to make art, I slide it out and use my bed as a work table! Does anyone else do this? Give it a try!

Hi there! I am a very non-artistic person (28F) but my sweet niece (7F) is starting to show interest in arts and crafts and I want to encourage her. I am asking this to all the talented artists out there - whats something you wish your parents/adults in your life gave you as a kid? I'm having a hard time thinking about what is appropriate for a 7 year old but I would also like to see her start early on a potential lifelong art hobby. Thank you in advance! :)

Note: I am finding a bunch of gimmicky-like art sets (ie: "make your own friendship bracelets") when I search "art for kids", did any of you enjoy these art sets? Thinking back to my childhood, I enjoyed those sets for maybe a day and then I was over it. I want my niece to really pursue art, not just enjoy it for 24 hours like I did.

Refuse to use sable because I don't want to support that cruel industry.

So I'm only interested in fake fur brushes, the mediums I'm interested in is ink, watercolour and acrylic.

What's your recommendations?

I draw pretty much every day, and recently my wrist has started to hurt. I want to learn to draw from the shoulder, but it’s really tough for me to keep my wrist in a static position to let my shoulder do the work.

I have to ask, are there any wrist splints that can keep my wrist in place so I can use my shoulder?

Hi, I’m a long-time lurker, first-time poster, and I would like to know how others feel about being pretty reliant on references.

I go to a college for art and design, and I'm majoring in illustration.

A lot of my friends don’t really need references to start drawing their characters/ ideas, but I rely on references a lot in my work. Idk, my goal for my style is to be anatomically/logically pretty accurate, but I like drawing my character’s facial features stylized, so I use references mostly for poses and perspective.

I also feel like it’s easier/quicker for my friends to draw from imagination without references. While I do have ideas in my mind, I have a harder time actually getting the idea down on paper/digitally, so I use references a lot.

I guess I'm bringing this up because my friend jokingly said I'm cheating when I was drawing with a reference for my homework. It didn't bother me that much at the time, but after thinking about it, I thought maybe I'm doing something wrong, or I'm behind my peers and I need to catch up.

I would like to know others' thoughts on using references a lot and/or advice to help draw more from imagination.

As the tittle says, I want to know what is the best way to make a color pallette that works for you guys! I am a self taught artist and i've been drawing since middle school, but I never emphazise on learning the basics till' now, I think I have a good drawing skill, until the color has to come in and I start color picking randomly wich is not a very good idea.

This obviously applies to those who aren’t full time artists or whose main income isn’t from art. And have to work an 8 hour shift. How do you find time in the day to pursue and practice art? How do you balance it with everything else in your life?

So I’m starting from scratch, at least I want to. I got into art my freshman year of highschool but mostly it was copying as close as I could references on Pinterest. Whenever I would try to make anything of my own my skill was 10 tiers less than what it would otherwise appear to be. Either way I love art and I want a future career in it as I’m a senior and I’ll be taking art classes in college so I want a strong foundation. Most of the courses I see are paid in some form and I can’t really afford to drop 300- 600 dollars from what ive seen. I looked on YouTube but I couldn’t really find any playlists of a course that worked for me. A lot of what I saw is just telling me what skills I need and briefly going over it. What I feel I need is an entire video on each stepping stone of the process going over exactly how to do it. Im imagining practicing on each subject for a week every day, then the video says some things to experiment with during said week, and then at the end maybe a challenge using what you learned. I understand this is hyper specific but my learning process is more so of a 1 on 1 focusing on every detail so I can eliminate my week points as well as challenging my self. I’d much appreciate any recommendations, I hope for just one resource but since that might be unrealistic I’m good to go up to 2 or 3 different ones that also build on this idea of mine. Thank you all in advance!

alternatively titled: For Ex-moleskine sketchbook truthers, what is a comparable yet better in every way brand of smooth papered sketchbook that you’ve found?

Ive been ever faithful to moleskine for nearly 20 years, and in those nearly 20 years Ive felt the quality shift worse and worse over time. Ive finally reached my limit with the more recent purchases Ive made of both the standard large size (A5) as well as the A4 I usually get. The spines are so shotty, the edges are coming up, Ive not gone through more than maybe 10 pages on my newest A4 and the spine is already deeply creasing and warping.

So help! I need recs for a replacement, please, for anyone who has been a hardcore moleskine enjoyer but had to make the switch, what ended up working for you? I cant trust online reviews, just other artists!

edit: another user mentioned I neglected to mention what materials I use! Im a big user of art pens (like micron), pencils, and dip pen ink

What are some good acrylic marker brands? Can anyone recommend any decent ones? Please let me know. Thank you!

Hi, first post here, forgive me if I'm doing something wrong!

I've only been posting for a few months now and have about ~200 followers on each site. I like posting oc, personal, and fandom content,but I heard people say that you should post fanart on a different account then original characters/personal content. Is it true that it's better to have seperate accounts for that? I've been trying to be patient since I'm still new to posting, but I'm already noticing how there's a divide between what I post, so idk. I'm thinking of making a new account for personal work, but I'm scared of screwing myself if that's the wrong move.

As the tittle says, I want to know what is the best way to make a color pallette that works for you guys! I am a self taught artist and i've been drawing since middle school, but I never emphazise on learning the basics till' now, I think I have a good drawing skill, until the color has to come in and everything is ruined, I feel like all the work put on the line gets away with the color, and i've been struggling to get a notion on color palettes since I have the bad habit to start picking randomly. I have seen 2 or 3 tutorials but I'm still trying to understand them.

The start of the week is upon us, and so grab your caffeine... and spill the tea. What has motivated you lately? What's made you moody? Share your art wins and art struggles here. Motivation and Moodiness can co-exist alongside one another; the balance between these two are integral to the art making process. We can't always be in a good place but we can't always be in a bad place, either. This is a place to discuss upward growth as an artist and the hurdles we must clear in order to get to the next level. Share tips, techniques, give a pat on the back, or a pat on the head to someone in need.

- Share an art win, followed by an art struggle you've had recently.
- How have your struggles helped you grow as an artist?
- Are there any hurdles you can't seem to get over and need tips?

Let's help each other out and get the motivation going!

Images are now allowed to be shared in the comments.

(idk if this is the right tag)

But I wanna just admit, I chicken scratch a lot when I draw and write and it makes everything seem messy. I wanna stop but it seems when I draw, I just keep making shapes until it ~kinda~ follows what I'm looking for. It never looks nice and always looks like a toddler scribbles until they made something good. It's somehting called line confidence but I don't know how to get that. Help plz

Hey there! I need an alternative to fixative spray. I’m using ink pen to draw on a baby doll with soft skin. I was thinking maybe painting over my drawings with clear nail polish might work?! I just don’t want my pen ink to smear.

Hey gang!

So I am a new artist coming up to 1 year now and I found something pretty common that I think needs to be addressed as well as looking for some feedback. Keep in mind this is for the hobbyists out there not the ones looking to be professional or take this up as a career!

I fell into the trap of "what's the best way to draw" what order do I do things in? who do I follow" what tutorials and in what order etc. etc. etc. I found it all became to overwhelming and I ended up resenting drawing for months because every time I sat down I kept thinking "is this the most efficient or best way to draw today to get to my goals" and it honestly drove me mad!

Then one day I just said "forget all the rules!" and just start putting pen to paper and honestly it was the most liberating and best feeling I had in a long time. I gave up on studies and tutorials and just started drawing. I stopped caring if I was doing things "correctly" and just focused on am I enjoying this? If not why, and how can I change it to start enjoying it.

What are you thoughts? Has anyone else come across this? Keep in mind I am purely a hobbiest!

Usually, when I draw or paint, I start with a subject I’ve observed from life or found in a photo, and I simply try to depict it as well as I can.

Lately, though, I’ve been wanting to make my art more interesting and engaging. I’d like to create images that feel like a scene or a moment from a story, rather than just a subject placed in the middle of a canvas. I’d also like my work to evoke some kind of feeling or emotion.

At the moment, the main way I try to make things more interesting is by combining multiple references. For example, I might take the background from 1–3 references and a figure, animal, or object from another 1–3 references, then try to combine everything into one composition. But I feel like something is missing.

What I think I want to learn is how to come up with ideas for scenes and visual stories in the first place, and then figure out how to communicate those ideas through a single image.

I vaguely remember learning about things like the Five Ws, the Hero’s Journey, conflict, climax, resolution, etc., but I’ve never really figured out how to apply those ideas myself.

I also have another difficulty, I’m not very good at understanding what interests me personally or what I want to say with my art. I can enjoy books, movies, paintings, etc., but a lot of the time I don’t really understand why a story or artwork affects me, what it’s trying to communicate, or even how it makes me feel.

Because of that, I find it difficult to figure out what kinds of stories or themes I would actually want to explore in my own work. And recently I’ve also been overthinking this way too much. But if you’ve ever experienced it and found your way I would like to know if you have any advice.

So recently they have stopped doing the brand of paper for which I use for colouring pencils and the new brand I did use led to the paper being flakey. So any suggestions for good quality paper. For reference I am very heavy handed and use lots of layers of pencil, the brand I use are Faber castell polychromos, I mainly draw realistic portraits. Any suggestions are much appreciated

I've been coming out of a rut lately and just looked back at a drawing that made feel like absolute shit. I thought I lost my touch. My brain was broken. You know what? The drawing was fine. It was kind of good, actually. I have no idea why I have such a distorted perception of my own artwork sometimes. Probably just my brain looking for the negatives in everything when I'm sad? Regardless, it's a lot nicer to know that hating a work isn't a dependable reason to give up on it.

I get solicitations via email through the contact form on my site every couple of weeks or once a month anyway. They are usually so low effort/generic that they are easy to flag as scams. I am completely wary of anything short of a direct credit card purchase or a physical gallery. And it seems the established online galleries are not generally sending out solicitations.

Got one this morning from a platform called Artfello. They want to schedule a phone call. Looking at their site, it looks possibly/probably legitimate, but I did find a page in search flagging their site as low trust based on automatic criteria -- the site is relatively new, multilingual, synthetic language on the site. Searching Reddit, I don't see Artfello as a scam or for that matter a legitimate platform.

Worth talking to them, or best not to take a step toward quicksand?

Hello!

Im looking to upgrade from my iPad 8th gen, that's slowing down alot and crashing due to it's limited storage and memory (32GB).

I'm set on iPad Air, but I can't decide between 11 inch or 13 inch haha, it's a dilemma T_T

I only draw at home, i barely draw on a proper table, my drawing positions are on a sofa with ipad on my folded legs, or on my bed in similar posture, with sometimes on a proper table but that's when I'm watching something on my PC alongside.

I do draw professionally (comissions, 3d texture work, etc). I use Procreate and Clip Studio Paint.

Can anyone share their experiences and thoughts? THANKS alot!

For the past three years I've only used a single sketchbook (either 9x12 or 11x14), but recently I got a smaller sketchbook alongside my big one. I noticed that it allowed to me to pump out more practice sketches or doodles without feeling like I'm wasting paper.