i always see advice to artists from abled guys thats like “draw every day even on the days where you feel totally uninspired and like you cant even pick up a pencil” and i actually think that advice sucks and is terrible because some of us will spiral out of control into horrible depressive episodes if we force ourselves to draw on days where we feel terrible and end up with something less than spectacular so my advice to artists is “take breaks and love yourselves”
Don’t draw every day. It’s terrible advice. Drawing all the time just reinforces bad habits if you aren’t actively paying attention to WHAT you’re drawing. If you’re having a hard day creatively, just find something small to work on until you feel better, on the days you feel up to it. Draw some hands, draw some feet, draw some heads, look at stuff other people are drawing and try to figure out why it looks good to you…don’t worry about drawing every day. Just focus on little things you can do better and they’ll add up over time just the same. (Coming from someone who has had to power through depressive episodes and lost drawing focus on a regular basis as such.)
I think there might be a miscommunication going on here somewhere? As an art teacher, I am, technically, one of those guys who says “draw every day” – not sure about the “abled” part though; I don’t consider myself disabled, but my manic-depression is so severe that I’ve been signed off as unfit-to-work for a coupla years now, so I guess you could say I know a depressive episode when I feel one (especially since mine come with psychosis as a fun bonus) – but the “little stuff” described here counts as drawing. “Drawing every day” /is absolutely not/ about creating a piece of finished artwork every day; it’s about taking a little time, even just a few minutes, to sketch something, anything. A daily sketch will exercise your ability to translate 3D to 2D; your hand-eye coordination; and your understanding of how things fit together. It’s the process that’s important, /not/ the finished article; you’ll learn far more from a five minute, daily scribble where you concentrate on figuring out angles, light and shade, negative space, perspective, etc., than you will from creating perfect, finished drawings you can show off. That practice is what sketching and sketchbooks are all about. Drawing hands and feet is perfect – I’d even say a little ambitious when you’re feeling crappy; a plant, or even a cereal box in stark light, will keep your brain in trim; just doodling some circles will keep your hand-eye coordination in shape, ffs.
You wouldn’t run a marathon without training for it; that’s all drawing every day is: training for when you want to make that finished piece. Of course running a marathon every day would be too much, but if you’re in training for a marathon then you’ll be advised to exercise every day, even if it’s only a quick jog; that exercise makes the marathons easier. This really is no different: you’re training so that your performance in the inspired finished pieces will be better, and less difficult and frustrating for you to make.
Reblobbed for that last comment.