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Hey, Heather! I think it’s amazing that you feel this way. 😀 I hope we can help you out a little. Someone else actually recently asked about getting started with art, and so since I think a lot of what I would say to you, is what I told him, I’m just going to copy paste what I said there. 🙂 (The thread is called “just a question” and rn it’s on the 2nd page, if you wanna see what everyone else told him too.) If you have any questions or want me to expand on anything just ask! 🙂

“Hey! This is kind of a hard question to answer, but the best thing to do is just start. Learning how to draw is a skill that takes time to develop. To learn to draw well, you’ll have to be okay with making some less then excellent artwork. Practicing means making a lot of artwork that wont look good. But if you can make a habit of practicing, you will improve. Now say someone started drawing everyday. That’s great! That’s all they need to improve. However, there are some things they could do to make their practice more efficient, and therefore, improve faster. The biggest thing is to use references. Real life references are better, but referencing from photos works well too. There is also value in doing something called ‘gesture drawing’. Which is, in the most basic terms, drawing really fast. The idea is to capture the gesture, or flow of an object in as few lines as possible. It’s also important that you don’t get caught in a loop of drawing the same(ish) things over and over. This is super easy for most artists (myself included.) and it hinders artistic growth A LOT. Try to keep drawing things you’re not comfortable with yet. And to close this ramble off, I would suggest getting either A. A sketch book, or B. A folder of some sort to store your papers in that you’ve drawn on. Many people are tempted to throw away their “bad art” but with hindsight that’s a terrible idea. Training yourself to throw away the ‘bad art’ will cause even more frustration, and nurture negative feelings. And then keeping it is an amazing way to track your progress. And those old pieces may even inspire future creations! The things I’ve said may not be true of everyone, but are definitely the case for me! Lemme try to sum everything up, since I’ve probably confused you. 1. Draw a lot! 2. Accept that getting good will take time, and a lot of ‘failures’. 3. Keep pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, as comfort will hinder growth. 4. Your bad art is precious! Don’t throw it away, and try to be patient with yourself as you’re learning. (If you wish I could tag some of the other lovely artists on the forums? There are actually quite a few!)”

Tagging some other artists..
@ori-art @lin @sageinthemeadow