Creative Drawing Ideas for Beginners
list of drawing ideas that tell you to draw a cat or draw a house? It’s time for something different. offer you honest advice about what you should focus on when drawing. If that’s what you’ve been searching for, you’ve come to the right place. These drawing ideas are different, creative, fantastic, and hidden gems in the wall of knowledge about drawing that you’re about to experience. This is the hard stuff, the accurate information that’s too in-depth for a listicle, but what every real artist needs if they want to draw something spectacular.
That’s not to say there isn’t a place for the tutorials, the guidelines, and the easy answers. There is. Sometimes you need to see a sketch of a cat in stages to understand how to draw a cat. And sometimes, you need some inspiration from other artists or a list of fresh ideas. That’s why at the end of this post, there are over 30 drawing ideas sourced from Pinterest of different things you can draw – most with tutorials, and after that, there’s an infographic with 60 more random drawing ideas. Whether you are looking for sketchbook ideas, inspiration, or how-to-draws – we’ve got you covered.
Fantastic Art is everywhere – The Artist’s Perspective.
I can’t keep up with the sheer riot of incredible artists I see on various media sources every day. How can you not be simultaneously inspired by and depressed by that kaleidoscope of creativity? When I say depressed, I assume you know what I mean. You come up with this excellent design of a goldfish. You work hard on it, give it all the time and effort you have, only to see some other artist’s goldfish … and it blows your goldfish out of the water. Now, here’s what I do in this situation: I never repaint a goldfish, that’s for sure, and then I start looking at other things that maybe I could do better. Because I’m not cut out for goldfish.
What Are Some Good Drawing Ideas?
If that’s why you’re searching for some fresh new subject to lose your creativity upon, I feel your pain. But be cautious with these emotions because it’s a downward slope. Maybe instead of goldfish, you decide on iguanas. But do it bright this time; let’s see how good other people are doing iguanas…Not iguanas, look at THIS guy’s Art, mainly featuring iguanas, by the way. There’s NO WAY I could compete with that guy. Ladybugs. Amazing ladybug artists everywhere. Antique children’s toys? Oh hell no, you know who paints antiques? People who bought those things before they were antiques, that’s who. I love antiques, and I’m just being hateful. It adds drama. Cars? You’ve got to be kidding me; automotive illustrators are brilliant … Football? Well, there’s always business school.
How to Get Rid of Artist’s Block?
So that’s one kind of artist block, but maybe you’re here because you’re stuck. Perhaps you’ve been drawing goldfish, but lately, your goldfish is looking stale. Or maybe your goldfish look fine, but your seascapes look like an 8-bit Super Mario level (all you winner do is get outtalk there, know what I mean?). Or maybe you’re trying to draw, but you’re off, and everything you draw looks like a flaming paper bag that rang your doorbell after eating some somewhat suspect gas station sushi. Ok, that being said, I cannot tell you how freeing it can be to take your blah stuff from the last 3-6 months, stack it like a house of cards in the backyard, and feel your maturity taking shape … by … fighting the urge to … make snores over the embers of all those toxic craft store chemicals. See? You’re growing already. Seriously though, even if you don’t experience the distinct flavor of marshmallow, graham cracker, and chocolate toasted to turpentine perfection, putting away the images of your past can untether you from those expressive habits that once so defined yet now restrict you.
Use a Blank Slate
I mean, it’s a derp moment when you have to be reminded as an artist to start over with a blank canvas, but cut us some slack; we have busy little minds, ok? Deal. Take everything off the walls, or start working in a different room. Anything to jumpstart that idea that from now on, you’re not making anything unless it has something better than everything you’ve done before.
Take Your Artwork to the Next Level
The moment you’ve all been waiting for, the great list of drawing subjects, things you’ve never considered, enticing new issues with onion-like layers of meaning and reflection upon the human condition. I’m sorry, there are so many lists out there of “things.” How to draw a cat or an owl. You were drawing stick figures. Do we need that? It doesn’t answer the more profound question, after all, of how to make your artwork more exciting or how to level up your artwork. A thousand pictures might give the viewer enough insight to grasp the personality of a particular goldfish, but how can that possibly compare to noticing that, when you sit down at your easel, Captain Tickle fins XXVII always comes over and waves with one flipper until you remember his tasty-flakes. Or that he hides in the shadow at sunset until the last bit of shadow, and then he swims out into the light, terrified and one moment later confused by the absence of monsters.
How Do I Know When My Art is good enough?
I’m going to spell it out if my goldfish fantasies muddied the intellectual waters. It’s not about who can paint the best goldfish. However, if you buy a goldfish and try to paint it as fast as you can as it swims around in circles (great painting idea, right?), you’re going to get quickly at painting things you only see for a moment. Practical, you’re thinking. I didn’t invent this; check out gestural and time-limited sketching.
The other thing you’ll get out of this impossible task is this: your brain will start to absorb information from and about the living creature you’re studying. You’ll begin to learn how its form moves in rhythm to propel it forward. You’ll start to understand how and why it needs to take on specific shapes to change direction, arrest momentum, or respond to outside stimuli. Just as a cat behaves in an almost celebratory manner when it knows it’s about to be fed, a fish has its biological clock and becomes animated by the anticipation of sustenance.
Here’s what you should draw: something you see with your eyes that instantly makes you laugh, cry, or pee in your pants. Draw something you can’t capture with a camera, something that would never be seen by any eyes other than your own unless you bring that image to life. That’s how you truly enhance your drawing skills.
Finding the Motivation to Draw or Create
I think motivation is the most significant factor. It’s hard to push toward something when you’re not even sure it’s the direction that’s right for you. And there’s this whole other aspect in looking at Art you find kinship with while wanting more than to riff off another artist, but to make something entirely personal and fulfilling. Look at it this way when comparing your skill to someone else. Imagine you’re looking at this sketch by another artist. You enlarge it to full size on your monitor, pick up your pencil and sketchbook, and you try to sketch exactly what you see. For most people, the result will be the same. That guy’s sketch will look way better than yours. That guy is doing something you’re not doing. Yes, because that guy isn’t drawing a drawing of a sketch; he’s pulling an illustration of a person.
Creative Drawing Ideas for Artist at Any Level
These three drawing ideas help artists of all levels experience drawing differently. These ideas will help you learn how to draw value, defining shadow from light. Once you master this, you will be able to draw anything.
Garbage Drills
Take three things of similar shape that you find lying around the yard, the living room, in a drawer – group them in such a way that their bodies align or agree with each other – if you’re drawing with something like graphite, remove the objects in only two shades, or two colors: one color or shade for the dark values, and one color or no shade for the lightweights – after this exercise, try sketching the objects again as you usually would, and notice if your second drawing experience feels any different.
The purpose of the exercise is to teach yourself to simplify things. Still, also to observe your subject for some time without the pressure of laying down a sketch that’s got to be good enough for anyone’s standards (especially your own) – then, when you go to draw the objects for real, you already know pretty well what they look like. Now you can focus on drawing something familiar instead of something foreign. If you want to know something crazy, this is a miniaturized version of how professionals work. They don’t just pop up in a cornfield with a handful of paintbrushes, scratch in a masterpiece, and sell it for a fistful of cash to the first farmhand they see (farmhands are notorious collectors of Art, ask anyone).
Draw with Your Eraser
When I sit down with a blank page and try to draw something, my first draft is like something you’d get if you zipped up a wild raccoon in your backpack with all your drafting tools and let your little sister drag it behind the training wheels of her bicycle she got four years ago and is way too small for her now. But somewhere in there is the thing I was trying to sketch, and if I push back some of the static with my eraser, it looks more like Leonardo Deviance is being dragged across the neighbor’s lawn instead of a raccoon. That’s more likely to happen than me getting a drawing perfect on the first try. Just try it, don’t give up on it until you’ve worn a few holes in the page. It’s good for you.
Dream into the Image
This is hard to teach because it is the thing that artists have, or have developed, that other people haven’t. I see 50 naughty shades of green in a single tree, but most people see a green tree. It’s not their fault; they don’t have any reason to stop and stare at a tree. You’d be just like them if you weren’t holding a pencil right now; think about THAT. When I draw a tree, I don’t want to outline every leaf, twig, or squirrel in view. Instead, I want to look at the tree first as a mirror. Does it have any qualities that remind me of myself? Of someone, I know? In concert with their surroundings, do they trigger your sense of beauty, nostalgia, and spiritual awareness? If so, then there must be something about that scene, visibly, observably connecting with you on a psychological level. Should you choose to accept it, your job is to observe, let your mind try to grasp what it is about whatever you’re drawing that stands out.
What is Art Supposed to Be?
I’ll leave you with what a friend once told me, “I like art that makes me feel uncomfortable.” Weird right? It kind of challenges what Art is supposed to be, at least according to one person. I mean, isn’t all Art supposed to give me a tickly giggly feeling all over? Shouldn’t our drawing ideas convey that? Is this post all over? That’s what I want to know. I get that was a lot. As an artist, I sometimes get too into the weeds and details of my craft and don’t realize that sometimes, people want to draw a cat.
