There is No Rule* (Mostly)
I have a lot of hangups about drawing and painting in general it would take me so many years to unpack, but recently I've gotten to a point I don't totally hate what I make. Along the way, I have weird moments of epiphany — things I should have known but never internalized. Feel free to laugh at my folly. Do keep in mind that, in line of my Manifesto, this post pertains to the act of casual creation (which I defined as something you do for yourself, as a hobby). If you're looking to make art for a living, perhaps don't listen to me. The "rules" are usually there for good reasons.
First, I was drilled on the importance of a "proper" workflow, a combination of a (botched) semiformal training and my own stubbornness. Sketch, lineart, base color, ...I would usually get stuck at lining, not getting a good result or ending up ruining the sketch. Or I got it somewhat right and smudged it when I apply base colors. Point is, I always got something wrong. It took the joy out of the activity and I would be too demotivated to continue. It turns out that for me skipping the lineart phase and going straight to blocking base colors works so much better. I will still outline the picture, but now at the end instead of the beginning.
I could have saved a lot of heartache if I just kept at it even if I never gotten to lining, doing sketch after sketch after sketch is totally fine.
Second, I have only ever worked with colored pencil, watercolor, and oil pastel before, because those are the mediums you can get basically everywhere and are familiar with from all those schoolyears. Now, I will preface that everything I will list after this is a me problem. I've never cared for oil pastels, too messy for me. I'm extremely messy when working because I need to see all my tools and they would roll off the table and break, or smudge on the drawing surface, or get crushed under my palms. I adore colored pencils, I'm able to lay down colors, but I can't get them to work the way I want them to. Now, watercolor painting is personally a favorite of mine...to look at. I'm terrible at it. The crayon situation applies here. Cleanup is always a nightmare because I would somehow knock over the water pot and spill paint all over the place. You keep spare paper on the table? Yeah, what a dork.
On top of that, my motor skills aren't the best. I'm not at all impaired, and I actually have a pretty decent handwriting. Thanks to my mother's...ahem, meticulous record-keeping, I have lovely notes from my kindergarten report cards to testify that I'm not the most graceful creature around. Now, I want to believe I have improved since kindergarten days, but it's also nice to work with something that doesn't actively fight you. I simply work better with a pen-like construction.
Enter the markers.
No, not the schoolyear felt tip markers that bleed through all your notebooks.
I may have spent questionable amount of time in the Copic display aisle across the years but I never could get more out of a couple test scribbles under the watchful eyes of the store attendants. The art world has truly marched on, taking inspirations out of products for model kits and adjacent hobbies. Not just alcohol markers, we now have paint markers, watercolor brush markers. liquid chalk markers... Probably anything you can think of has been converted into pen/marker form factor. They are awesome. They are generally more forgiving to work with. If you make mistake, just paint over it. They tend to produce more consistent color with less effort. Cleanup is a dream. I just have to make sure to cap them tight.
Best of all? They have somehow become ubiquitous! I can now find them in all manners of quality and price point. I think this was driven by the craze for adult coloring books?
Someone will probably tell you that they aren't as good as the "real" thing, that they're not good value for money when compared to actual brush and paint set, that experience in using an actual brush would be better in the long run, but I don't care. Suddenly I'm not afraid of making mistakes. And I actually make fewer now that I can wield my tools comfortably.
Okay, they still bleed through all your notebooks, unless you're lucky enough to get the classy papers. But the classy papers are also easier to get now!
The last "bias" might sound like a no-brainer, but I actually got stuck on this for a long, long time: I was afraid of mixed media. No, listen. I can't tell you why, but somehow I believed that you have to complete your artworks with one media. Watercolor painting is watercolor painting. Colored pencil drawing is its own thing, and using gouache to add details on oil pastel work is cheating. Obviously, with my clumsy brush control, I'm really bad at doing details, and it leads to frustrations that I could have solved just by leaving those areas for fineliners or gel pens1. While many people are adept in their mediums and capable of producing superb artworks with just one medium, there's no shame in working however you want. It sounds ridiculous and obvious2, but....
Now, practicing artists have more considerations if they sell original arts. Mixing substances willy-nilly could lead to smearing, separation of pigments, decrease in artwork durability (especially if not all media you use are artist grade), damaged art supplies, difficulty in getting good scans for prints.... but here's where being a hobbyist gives you space to get away with such transgressions: you're probably not selling your originals, and perhaps you don't even think of scanning them.
To think these all started from a dubious purchase from a home improvement store. I think the cheap art supplies really put my mindset on a freer, devil-may-care vantage point. I use them in such a carefree way partly because I can't really go wrong. The tips are already fraying, I can't damage them further. The colors are smearing, so why not try blending with something else while we're at it.
Oh, and the watercolor problem?
If you rolled your eyes while reading and thought to yourself why didn't you just get a set of water brushes...
Yeah, so. I never looked into 'travel supplies' because I always draw in the confines of my home. Somehow, I never connected the dots until a few days ago. No more water pots to knock over.
Just because something is not marketed as X doesn't mean it can't be used for X... and I have to keep that in mind more often.
Now that I have identified these hangups, I have ways to design workarounds. I probably have more, we'll see. As always, what works for me might not work for you, and I encourage everyone to explore what's the best for you. It's your private pastime, so there is no rule other than the ones you decide for yourself.
1. My absolute favorite white pen of all time is Uni Mitsubishi Signo Broad. ↩
2. Doubly ridiculous because I like a large number of mixed media artists, so it's not like I don't know they exist. ↩