Any Artists start drawing late?

[Reedy]

Hi, I'm new btw, I've been following furry stuff for awhile now and thought I'd make an account. So my question is, did any of you artists start drawing later on after teenage/highschool years? I would assume most artists have been practicing a lot since they were younger. I did a little drawing when I was a kid, but I pretty much stopped entirely for a long time.

Basically I want to try making art stuff, but at the moment everything I do is shit. It kind of feels like I'm not getting anywhere. I just want to hear other people's opinion/experience on this. Thanks guys for reading this.

 

[FluffyFenrir]

Never too late to start in art, I did some drawing on and off growing up, stopped for a number of years, been going on and off ever since now.
It can be a slow process to get to a point you are happy with but if you keep at it you'll improve.

 

[Anthrasmagoria]

I used to draw a lot as a kid. I stopped for a few years after I left home and went to university. Too much work there to relax and draw, I suppose.

I took a summer job at uni with a quango there and the boss taught me a little on the job about Photoshop and ZBrush. I got seriously interested in digital media (before that I was just drawing in pen and pencils and scanning them in). Got back into drawing again, discovered digital was amazing, I could fix all my errors and learn fast about lighting and colour with less frustration that way. But, it still took years to be able to get anywhere near to the "vision" I had in my head and translating that into a decent drawing.

Back then, 2005-ish I found Feng Zhu's website and studied how he was doing perspective and colour from some of his examples. Since then I just learn based on studying other works of art, zooming in on the details to see how they're done.

 

[Brood_Spider]

I drawn since I was a kid but I wasn't focusing on art as I had my hobbies and jobs. It just recently that I took art more seriously. Now that I have a passion for it.

 

[Trndsttr]

I wouldn’t say I started late, I just started and couldn’t find the motivation to draw after a few months. I’d always pick playing video games over drawing in a heartbeat, which myhave caused my lack of serious improvement which caused my lack of motivation. I still would choose gaming over drawing, because video games have been an important part of my life for waaay longer than drawing has. So I’d say I didn’t start late, but I have not improved like I should from starting where I did.

 

[Ashwolves5]

I did some art as a kid but only started being more serious right after high school, probably because I was just starting to do digital stuff then.

 

[DRGN Juno]

I used to draw years ago in my elementary school days. I've been picking it up again since I joined here last week. In some respects, it feels like starting over, so I get exactly what you're feeling.

For me, it boiled down to persistence and honest self-critique. I started a number of sketches that mostly started looking like crap. I'm going over them daily, making minor adjustments and basically doing trial and error until that little fragment I'm working on looks right, with the hope being that I'll eventually end up with a somewhat finished product. Study others. Look up the tutorials around here. Try some exercises, like drawing heads or hands at various angles on a regular basis. And remember that art doesn't happen overnight, and perfect art doesn't exist.

If you need more on the motivational side of things, look up Temiree on Tumblr. He tends to share much of his thoughts and struggles from behind the scenes, and it's helped me get over some of the blocks I was running into.

 

[Tovey]

I drew a lot in high school, etc, but stopped once I had real-world shit to focus on like bills and work. So for a long time I actually got WORSE at art because I wasn't practicing. So don't feel bad for being a "late start" there are plenty of people who have been drawing for a long, long time and don't improve. It's not about how long you've been at it, it's about how hard to work to improve.