In elementary school, I had a friend who could just look at a picture and replicate it. So for most of my life, I thought people were either good at drawing or they weren't.
Turns out, that's a pretty convenient belief when you don't want to practice.
Now that I'm learning to draw, I've realized most of the people whose art I admire have been doing it for years. Even my grade school pal.
I've also learned it's hard to make things look the way I want. So I've decided drawing should be fun, not good. At least at first.
Draw weird stuff. Draw bad stuff. Draw the same thing ten times. Whatever it is, let it be for fun.
When I get frustrated, I try to remember what it felt like as a kid to sit down next to an adult who was drawing. The adult always seemed like a professional. But that's just because they had been alive longer. They had more practice.
Well, you and I are the kids.
Whichever artist we're comparing ourselves to now has probably been drawing for thousands of hours. Of course our work doesn't look the same.
Lately, I've been using DrawABox to improve my forms and perspective. It's helping me think more in 3D instead of drawing the symbols my brain thinks things look like.
My drawing still isn't good. But I get less frustrated when I see that I am getting better and that I'm doing something other than doom-scrolling on my phone.
So be bad at drawing and do it because you like it. Do some stuff to learn and do some stuff because you feel like it.
The improvement will follow. One day at a time, kiddo.