How To: Overcome A Drawing Hiatus

I’ve had drawing hiatus for an extremely long time. Since I graduated, I lost my enthusiasm for drawing. My fashion degree had caused me hate everything (mostly to do with fashion design). I just didn’t find it in me to be creative anymore, which was quite sad. I burned out excessively.

I grew up with drawing and now feared that if I don’t become creative anymore, I’d lose it altogether. So at the start of 2015, I said to myself that I’m going to start drawing again. I even brought a moleskine. Heard of Cass Art London? Its the best art shop and I just love going in there for buying art materials. 

These are my personal ways of overcoming drawing hiatus:

Step 1: Pinterest is a great inspiration. I could procrastinate on that website for ages and ages because there just so much inspirational pictures to get inspired.

Step 2: You can never go wrong with drawing things you like, whether its buildings, portraits, objects or flowers. Record it in a sketchbook and make it your drawing diary. Currently in my moleskine, I began drawing typography, fine liner hair studies and most recently designing my own book covers, which are quite mediocre because let’s be honest, I don’t know much about layout design. 

I am actually not that great at drawing faces and I don’t look forward to drawing them but I try my best to draw them. When a see a really beautiful editorial, I have this need to draw it. Sometimes I think its not about how realistically you draw them, (unless you are really brilliant at drawing realistic things), but its also about how you interpreted it in your own way.

Step 3: Consider getting a Wreck This Journal by Keri Smith. They’re great for getting back into creativity and to basically get out of your comfort zone. If you’re a perfectionist, then this is the book for you. There are a lot of fun pages to do. I brought one last year and have not finished it yet (too busy) but I plan to finish it this year, hopefully. It is literally taking me forever. 

Step 4: If you’re like me and hate your current portfolio because its bad memories and you know that you can do so much better than what you did at college or university, consider creating a new portfolio of new projects.

I want my portfolio to look more illustrative and print/pattern designs, rather than Fashion Design based. At the moment, I am attempting to do a new project. The theme is Where The Wild Things Are, so I started looking into drawing things such as deers, antlers, wildflowers and pine trees etc. but its quite hard to get back into that mood because projects take longer than anticipated. I'm eager to get it done.

I upload on my Instagram. My artwork thus far: 

Zoella sketch. This was my first portrait in a long time. 

Fineliner hair illustration in the moleskine. 

Emma Watson for Elle Magazine.

Elle Fanning by Thomas Whiteside for Elle November 2012.

Listening to too much Taylor Swift had inspired me to draw her. 

Being creative is like a spur of the moment thing; one minute its there and the next minute it says “right, that's it for me. Bye, see ya next time!” it is about being able to keep that consistency.