How to Avoid Overworking Your Drawings

It's easy to overwork drawings but what does it mean to overwork our drawings? For me, it means to add too many unnecessary details throughout the drawing. Doing this can distract from the message or idea we are trying to convey with our drawing. Or it will distract from the focal point of our drawing.

The Focus

One way to help with this bad habit of overworking our drawings is to set an intention or goal before starting your drawings.

What made you want to draw that particular subject in the first place? This is an important question to always ask yourself because it will almost always explain what your focal point is.

Once you understand what your focal point is, now you can make your intention to focus mostly on your focal point first. Your focal point is where you'll want the most details, contrast, and focus. Everything else in your drawing will only be there to support the focal point.

Take a Risk

Sometimes, it's necessary to push your art the extreme and overwork it because you'll learn when to stop in the future. I usually do this intentionally when I'm creating a drawing and it's not turning out as good as I had hoped for.

This gives me the chance to experiment and see how far can I push my drawing because maybe I can improve it somehow. Sometimes it does work and sometimes it doesn't work.

Sometimes I push it way too far and make it worse. These are the ones I can learn a lot from.

If you never push your art or take a risk, you'll never get the chance to learn from the mistakes you make. You'll also never know if you could've possibly improved your work or even found a new method or new element to add to your style or the way your draw.

The Reality

I overwork my drawings and art all the time. It's inevitable. It will probably always happen. But that shouldn't stop you from creating or make you more afraid to draw or paint. It's just something we have to be aware of and understand.

But you'll probably do it less by changing your mindset about it at least.

In the end, overworking your drawings or art isn't even really a bad thing. If it happens, you'll become more aware of your process and the level of detail you desire. Sometimes you have to realize what you don't like in order to better understand what you do like.