◦»»◂❚ ⊱ꕥ⊰ ❚ ▸◂ ❚ ⊱ꕥ⊰ ❚ ▸♫◂ ❚ ⊱ꕥ⊰ ❚ ▸◂ ❚ ⊱ꕥ⊰ ❚▸««◦
Motivation, in it’s purest form, cannot be forced or drawn out of someone so suddenly. It takes time to look for things to give us the strength to draw and create again, and that’s totally valid! In my experience, forcing yourself to draw when you’ve just recently come out of a sad or exhausting slump only makes you more frustrated at yourself. As said in the song from Frozen, “People make bad choices when they’re mad, or scared, or stressed,” do not, and I mean do not, start painting or drawing an important artwork when you know that you are just forcing yourself. It may feel like you’re being productive by forcing your hand to draw when you don’t want to, but it’s not! At the end of the day, when you see your half-assed painting, you’ll just feel more unmotivated and disappointed at yourself, and no one wants that.
My tip for overcoming lack of motivation is by resting and indulging yourself. Take a long nap and drink something cold and fresh to soothe your mind. When you feel relaxed, you feel more enthusiastic in starting your art process. You think more clearly and your plans are more organized compared to when you’re stressing yourself about not being productive enough.
Moving on, you say you’re looking for tips to improve your shading? There are many ways to do that, so here are some of the most important things to remember when starting to shade.
1. Always use a reference.
You may think that you already know how to shade an arm or a leg, but in most cases, a lot of people get it wrong on the first try. In order to make it look accurate, search for real pictures of these body parts and study where and how light and shadow falls on each section.
2. Limit your use of black for shadows.
Look around you. The shadow of every object you see isn’t always necessarily black. Yellow looks orange when darken, pink looks red, blue looks purple, and so on! You have to be experimental when it comes to color, or else your piece would look muddy if you keep using black for all shading.
Xenaya Vera's art (@xenayavera)
3. Decide if you want to use a painting style or cell shading.
Study techniques of other artists and try them on your own art pieces! There are artists who use several brushes to blend their shadows, while there are some who use only one brush to create shades.
Xenaya Vera's art (@xenayavera)
4. Study the program you are using.
Art programs all have different assets embedded in them to further help you with your art. Take your time to play around and see which settings work best with you.
