Exercises to Build Your Confidence as an Artist (Patreon)

Confidence comes from self-belief, so to build your confidence as an artist you need to slowly nurture the belief in yourself that you can make art that you like. 

I spent most of my 20s thinking of myself as a ‘creative’ person but really struggled to actually sit down and make something. I didn’t have any confidence in my skills or my ideas, and because I wouldn’t create very often, that confidence became worse over time.

It wasn’t until I reduced the pressure that I had on myself and then slowly built up my self-belief, that I actually started to make art often and from there could improve my skills - and for me that eventually led to a career as an artist.

So let’s look at some simple exercises to help you reduce the pressure you put on yourself, and then how you can build sustainable self-belief.

Reducing Pressure

1. Be a student

First, try embracing being a student and let go of the expectation that you should already know how to do things. Especially as we get older, it’s really natural to feel like we already know a lot, but we’re always learning new things and leaning into that is what helps us grow.

Find a beginner tutorial on an art subject that interests you but is different to the type of art that you’ve made in the past. I think that it’s helpful for it to be different because it’s easier to lean into being a student when we know that we haven’t done something before.

There are loads of beginner art tutorials on YouTube, or you could follow a tutorial from an art book if you have one. Just make sure that it’s easy and beginner friendly, because this is a warm-up to get you in the mindset of learning and to help you let go of some of the pressure you might normally have on yourself.

2. Draw silly, wonky things

If perfectionism is something that you struggle with, then this exercise might help with that.

Get some paper and art supplies and try to intentionally draw something silly and wonky - my favourite subjects for this are animals like dogs, cats or birds.

Don’t try to draw them well, instead try to draw them like a kid - be really loose with your art medium and don't think too much about the lines. It might help to draw with your non-dominant hand or with your eyes closed if you’re struggling to let go of control.

The point here is to just enjoy making something goofy with the intention of them not looking quite right, because if you can make that the intention and have fun with it then it makes drawing 'badly' a positive thing. If you give anything a big smiling face and draw them in bright colours then they’re bound to feel joyful, regardless of what they look like!

3. Draw on scrap paper

Sometimes a blank page in a pristine sketchbook is intimidating because you want to make something beautiful but the pressure makes it hard to feel creative. Instead, try drawing on scrap bits of paper to reduce the pressure of making something ‘good’, and allow yourself to just make anything.

Scrap paper doesn’t belong anywhere in particular, so if you don’t like what you’ve drawn you can hide it away or put it in the bin - there’s no expectation for it to be something that you keep forever. 

You can use a few pieces of paper for doodling and scribbling shapes or colours to warm up on, and then move to new paper once you’re feeling creative. Sometimes just making marks on paper is enough of a warm up to start feeling more inspired.

Even better, draw on the back of bits of cardboard destined for the recycling bin, because that way whatever you create on them will make them more beautiful than they were before.

Building self belief

4. Draw recognisable things

To start building up belief in yourself, you need to provide yourself with small pieces of evidence that you’re a creative person, and a great way to do that is by drawing easily recognisable things.

Some subjects are just so visually iconic that you could make them look so weird and wonky and they’d still be immediately recognisable. Things like ladybugs, rainbows, snails, butterflies, fish, flowers - simple shapes that are beginner-friendly and have key visual features that make them identifiable.

Choose a subject to draw that is visually iconic, and make sure to include it’s key features.

For example, as long as a ladybug has a round, bright red body, some spots, and a black face with antenna, it’s going to look like a ladybug no matter how you’ve styled it.

Drawing recognisable things is an easy shortcut to giving yourself those small pieces of evidence that you need to start building up a belief in yourself that you can make art.

5. Start small and easy

To avoid the overwhelm of jumping head-first into a new skill, try starting really small and just doing whatever feels easiest to begin with, because improving your art skill is a long journey that you take one step at a time and there’s plenty of opportunity for the hard things later on.

Get a small sketchbook or cut up small pieces of paper and draw some simple doodles or characters on them. They don’t have to be anything groundbreaking or impressive, just draw whatever feels fun to you.

And because the page is small, it won’t take as long to fill the space which makes it much more achievable and gives you a sense of accomplishment in small doses rather than needing to complete a full-size painting or illustration.

If you’re stuck for drawing ideas for these activities, you can use my free drawing ideas generator over on my website for a little inspiration.

Enjoy! 💖