Annoyances for Artists: Little Issues That Crumple My Pages

I like to draw. I spend the majority of my free time drawing, thinking of drawing, or admiring other drawings. As an artist, I have noticed certain issues that always seem to bother me whenever I am drawing or about to draw. So I’ve listed just a few of them below.

Annoyance 1: When you are drawing and can’t get something that is so clear in your head to be clear on the paper. It really is hard to draw everything in your mind. There are times when I imagine something gorgeous, then I try to draw it and the idea dies because it’s like, “oh wow my talent does not let this idea live.” This feeling is disheartening even to the most dedicated of artists.

Annoyance 2: When your pencil’s eraser runs out. When drawing, erasers are necessary since no one can get what they are drawing exact on their first try (not even famous artists could). So it is really annoying when the eraser on your pencil runs out and the pencil is mechanical. Not only can you not get lead in the pencil that way, but you also can’t use a pencil topper eraser, because when you advance the topper sticks the top down, and your lead keeps getting pushed back into the pencil. It’s really annoying.

Annoyance 3: When people ask me to draw them. When someone finds out that I am an artist, their immediate reaction is: “Will you draw me?” I am not good at realism drawings, nor do I want to spend my whole day drawing random people I barely know, or even people I do know. 

Annoyance 4: When you can’t get the eye shape exactly the same as the first eye. This annoys me so much. You are drawing a character, and everything is blocked out beautifully for where the facial features go. However, when you get to drawing the eyes, they are wildly different. One eye will look amazing, and the other eye will look like the person just spent 30 days in a radiation plant.

Annoyance 5: When you are inspired in the late hours of night, decide to create a drawing, and look back at it after you sleep, and it looks nothing like what you thought it would. I despise when I am so inspired by something that I stay up really late drawing only to discover mediocre results. In the morning, I will say to myself: “I stayed up until midnight for this garbage?!” It’s super annoying because you are tired the next day, and the results aren’t even as good as you imagined they’d be.

Annoyance 6: When you can’t think of anything to draw, or don’t have motivation to draw. This isn’t exactly annoying, but it is upsetting. This happens when I draw up a storm for a couple days, and then after a long time my mind comes up blank and then I don’t draw for a week. 

Annoyance 7: When you are drawing something digitally, and find out you’re drawing on the wrong layer. I turn a lot of my pencil and paper drawings into digital drawings because it is easier to color something on a digital surface rather than with colored pencils. So, since I digitalize my drawings, I color on separate layers. Sometimes I forget to switch layers, and it just annoys me when I realize after coloring for a long time and I have to hit the undo button a bunch of times.

These are just seven of the issues that annoy me when I am drawing; I am sure that there are others out there that annoy other people too. 

• art
• Artist Frustrations
• creativity
• february
• Winona