Personal Woes and Advice 2

[Grinner]

She does a little bit of art on her Tumblr but she says they're no good because they're all traced from bases but she sucks if she doesn't use a base. She's already declared that she has stopped drawing because she's no good at it and no one ever comments on it anyway. Several people (including myself) have already tried to encourage her that you can start from bases and work up, or have linked drawing tutorials that she hasn't bothered to look at afaik.

She hasn't started blind contour drawing? If she wants to get off tracing, she must start doing blind contours. It's one of the most basic exercises in fine art.

Tell her to do this:

• Get a timer, some things to draw (an apple, for instance), and a drawing board (or even just a clipboard)
• She should place the object on a table, and then sit at the table, the drawing board on her lap and beneath the table, out of sight.
• Set the timer to three or four minutes for something simple.
• When the timer starts, she should begin drawing slowly, and she should draw the object as only a single, continuous line, focusing on the object's outline first. Her pencil should not leave the paper.
• When the timer rings, she should take a break and switch out the object or reposition her chair around it.

The purpose of this exercise is to divorce the mind from physical act of drawing so that it may focus on the subject of the drawing. At first, the drawings look awful. That's natural. However, with practice, they slowly get better.

Also tell her that drawing photorealistically from memory is nigh impossible. Almost every artist that attempts photorealism will use reference material, even if they're not tracing it.