Tips For Artists Working On An Enormous Art Project

Lessons I learned when working on my big art project

Hey there!

Harshini, a multi-passionate artist here!

Sorry for the weird intro. Thought I'd introduce myself to those who are new here. (Not sorry).

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When you're working on smaller artworks that take less than one hour to finish, it's a smooth sailing. You sit down, start drawing, and just finish. You feel proud of finishing it, and you go ahead and take a break, start drawing another piece, or do something else.

But, if you're working on a really big art project, that would take a long time to finish, but it's important to you– it just feels… a hundred times difficult to do.

You can draw, but it feels like it's taking forever, you can't even draw as fast as you did when making that smaller art piece, and you don't feel like you're making progress even if you draw two art pieces for the main project.

So… what causes big art projects to feel so difficult?

The first reason could be that it's too big.

If you're tasked with just sketching a character or an object, you can just finish it right away. No sweat.

But if you're tasked with drawing for… a large book, with 100 high-quality, fully rendered, illustrations for example. Would you feel very motivated? In most cases, you can feel motivated at the start, it feels easy for the first two illustrations, but you would notice that your motivation is slowly dissipating, until you have no motivation, but 98 illustrations left to draw.

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#1: Are you really ready to take on a big art project?

First things first, you have to consider a few things before you say yes to the big art project offered to you by someone.

If you're a beginner, and you haven't built an art portfolio yet, definitely don't take on a big art project or start doing commission work. Especially if you’re not very confident in your art skills.

I’ve seen a lot of beginners make the mistake of accepting bigger offers, and regret their choice later down the line.

I know it feels exciting, and you don't want to miss an opportunity that comes your way, especially if you have never gotten an art project before.

But most of the time, what happens is that the big art project becomes too much of a burden, difficult to manage, stressful, and in the worst case scenario, art will become not fun anymore, and you will lose your passion for art.

So what I recommend doing is making a lot of small artworks, to both improve your skills and also to pick some good ones to add to your portfolio.

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#2: Break your project into smaller parts

I asked my friend who is a manga artist for advice, and she said she usually breaks up the big project into 3 or 4 parts.

For example, if you have to draw 100 drawings in total, you can break it into four parts: 25, 25, 25, and 25.

And then finish the storyboard (or script if you're making a comic) for the first part.

And then start sketching the first part, and add line art, colours and so on.

I haven't started following this tip yet, but I’m sure it will be effective since it's similar to a productivity tip called “Chunking” where one breaks a big task into several smaller parts to make the project seem less intimidating.

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#3: Start working on small side projects

Make time for practicing drawing things, separate from your main project.

Aside from working on your main project, set some time aside for practicing drawing things that are separate or unrelated to your main project.

I learned this from the book “Steal Like An Artist” where Austin Kleon shared the importance of side projects. And also from my friend who is a manga artist. He calls this art practice, “Training”.

At this point, some people might get confused. Like- isn't that being counter-productive? Why spend time drawing things that you're never going to use in your main project, when you can use that time to work on the main project?

Let me explain.

If you're really good at drawing trees, you are able to draw them fast. But if you try drawing something you haven't drawn before– for example: a chair, it takes you significantly more time to draw. Even though the tree looks more complex than the chair, the chair took way more time to finish than the tree. Why is that?

Because you've drawn a lot of trees, many many times, learned a lot of tips and techniques that are specific to drawing trees and you've gotten yourself familiar with the process. While you're not so familiar with the process of drawing chairs.

When you draw something new or something you haven't practiced enough, it will take you a lot of time. It's a struggle to finish.

That's why when you have a big project like creating a comic or a manga, which requires you to draw tons of new things you haven't drawn before, it gets pretty difficult, and you slow down a lot.

Continuing to work on the main project can become quite hard, especially if you're getting stuck every week because you have to keep drawing new things you're unfamiliar with.

It's like navigating through a huge forest with no map or a compass.

What's the solution? Spend some training to improve your art. Drawings made when training are separate from your main project, and it focuses on helping you improve your art skills.

Start super small side projects that can be finished within a day or a week, and just keep drawing things on the side.

If you're struggling with drawing poses for example, spend 15 minutes to an hour every day, on just drawing a bunch of poses. Use references while practicing, so that you can build your visual library.

In one month, when you draw poses for your main project, they'll be difficult and take a lot of time to finish. And the next month, you would have gotten faster at drawing the poses, thanks to the training and side projects you worked on.

You won't give as much importance to the training drawings as much as your main project, so you can draw more freely, and faster, and you'll have a piece of mind because it's okay to mess up.

When training, you can experiment a lot, practice drawing things that you want to get good at, try that one drawing technique you learned yesterday, and most importantly, have fun drawing. It helps you make creating art feel less stressful and the process feel more enjoyable.

Working on side projects, or sketching or doodling something for fun will help you improve your art skills alongside making progress on your main project.

But, obviously you don't want to end up spending too much time on your side projects. In this case, balance is the key.

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#4: Have a good collection of artworks to show

Here is a common problem for ambitious artists who take on big projects:

If you keep working on only your important big art project for a long time, you'll feel like crap.

Why?

Because you keep drawing for such a long time, but you still don't have anything to show for all your spent time and effort.

The thing with big projects like making art books and comics, is that you can't show much of it to anyone until it's complete. Especially if you're working on a comic or a manga (like me), because you don't want to spoil the story, and people won't understand the pages or panels you share without the context.

This is another reason why you have to work on side projects.

If you're an artist who is trying to build your online presence (like me), you have to share some of your drawings with your friends and audience, to keep them from forgetting that you exist. to remind them that you're still there, drawing and creating stuff.

As an independent artist, it's hard to survive if you don't have a good art portfolio.

And working on side projects will help you get a good collection of artworks, which you can show to your friends, post on your socials, add to your art portfolio, or just browse through them to feel good, seeing the awesome art pieces you've created.

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Thank you for reading! I hope you liked reading this article, and I hope it was helpful. Come again next week on Friday for a ✨new post✨

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- Harshini

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