Hey doom, when I am feeling stuck or having trouble drawing I like to start putting down blobs for things like space ships or what have you (a really light marker helps with this) and seeing what pops out at me. Another cool technique I like to do is take an everyday object and turn it into something else, as popularized by spacegoose! I have had other students find success with drawing for fun by starting with automatic drawing as explained in this proko video.

Obviously I'm more of a hard surface and vehicle kind of artist, so I will be looking forward to others' opinions and techniques when it comes to drawing things like characters and animals! I hope this offers some direction and if you have any questions, let me know!

I think that the struggle you experience may stem in part from the idea that your time is precious. That if you do not produce a pleasing result in the time used you have somehow "wasted" that time. Something to keep in mind is that your time is only wasted if it's spent doing something you don't actually care about. I'm speaking in very broad terms here. But I hope you catch my meaning. You are learning to draw because I want to draw "better" you can already draw so try to worry less about your result and think more about how good it is to spend your time doing something you enjoy. If you enjoy it, it's not a waste. Results don't matter in this case. How you spend your time does.

Which sounds like a better use of your time? Agonizing over what to draw for fun or just drawing because it was fun. One is a waste of your time. The other is a valuable step towards good mental health and perspective.

Chagning your mindset takes time though. So let me offer something practical while you grapple with the demons of perfectionism.

Draw things you are good at. By that I mean draw things that you are confident in and have enjoyed drawing in the past. Doodles of roses, that weird S thing everyone does in school, any sort of doodle that you recall having once given you joy. Because it doesn't have to be good, it doesn't have to be shared, it just has to exist and be enjoyable.

Lower your expectations too. I personally took to drawing and painting rocks for fun. I would argue I'm pretty good at drawing rocks now. But I wasn't before. However, to me, in my own mind, rocks didn't have a "right or wrong" way to look. Any way I tried to draw it I could claim was successful because rocks are kind of a disaster. So I drew a lot of rocks and some to me are truly awful. I don't share those awful rocks. I share the good rocks. But I drew a lot of rocks.

Fun is never a waste of time. Fun doesn't not require and pleasing result. Fun is an act not a product. Try to remember that.

Close your eyes and draw exactly what you want to draw in your mind. Completely ignore what comes out on the paper, results are completely irrelevant as it's explained on the Lesson 0 text.

You can check out some of my "for fun" drawings on #well-that-went-poorly channel on discord. Hopefully I can make a daily habit out of it.

So the thing that I always tell people on the Discord is that "drawing for fun" really means "drawing for the SAKE of drawing". A non-art example is if you're wanting to approach the topic of World War II. You'll interact with it differently if you have to take a test on it (doing the thing for learning's sake) than if you just want to watch some documentaries on it (doing the thing for the sake of it).

It's not that you're not allowed to practice during your "for fun" time, just that the end goal should be to make a drawing, not necessarily to make a "good" drawing. Alternatively, something that might be very difficult but is worth a shot, is do your best to make the crappiest drawing possible. I sometimes draw weird shitty goats when I'm stuck. They're purposefully bad, so I don't need to get in my head about how they're not good. They're good because they're bad.

I do this "Make Drawing Fun Again" an Online Skillshare Class by Hayden Aube - Illustrator & Designer

https://www.skillshare.com/classes/Make-Drawing-Fun-Again/259758012?category=creative

it's pretty good for people who have no experience how to draw so you can have fun with this class regardless of your skill level.

it will teach you to accept failure as a part of the learning process, teaches you to enjoy learning instead of the result, and gives you simple exercises to just have some fun :)

Absolute beginner here. Here's how I approached it.

For me, I divided my artsy brain into two: 1. to learn the basic, tedious, technical part of drawing.

2. to draw whatever i feel like to.

First part, i intend to sit down and chew the slow, consciousness moment of taking up the lessons. This is hard, but very important.

I take a sit in front of my computer, pen on paper, and follow the lesson as good as possible. Can't concentrate anymore? just take a break and go back later.

I do this every afternoon.

Two, I draw whatever i like to draw. For example, i took 8 minutes challenge every morning to draw anything, whatsoever i want. Here, i just mindlessly let the tip of my pen flows on the paper. It's fun, plus it's kinda therapeutic.

This method has been cycling for over a week, and works for me. Sometimes yes i got bored too. But then, I just go doing something else.

Don't let yourself get overwhelmed. Forget it and just take a break. Distract yourself with something else.

I still struggle with this too. I've had success drawing for a set amount of time (15-30 min) without worrying too much about the outcome. It can be anything - boxes, lines, blobs, geometric patterns, little cartoons, animals. Even if you aren't drawing things at the skill level you want to be at, draw anyway. Doing this practice every day helped me discover the things I enjoy drawing more than others. For me, that's animals and birds. Currently fixated on racoons, owls and ravens. Drawing geometric patterns is kind of meditative, so I do that on days when my brain is fried from work.