Castle Sketch of a Pexel Stock Photograph (And a Talk About My High Expectations for My Art)

Hi everyone! Recently, I’ve become more and more pessimistic about my drawing abilities. I know why my sketches are not turning out as nicely as I want them to, but this been really putting me in a pessimistic mindset. I’m normally quite a pessimistic person and, even though I do feel optimistic, I am pessimistic most of the time. This is why I think my sketches are making me so frustrated. They are not matching up with my high expectations for them. Whenever I approach my art, or anything in general, in my normal pessimistic state of mind, I am more concerned about preparing and practicing before I move forward with anything I do or make.

This is the case for a sketch of a castle I did last year. (Maybe the year before?) The castle is copied from a stock photograph from Pexels.com and looked like it would be fun to sketch. Instead of preparing to sketch a building, I began to sketch it freehand.

When I finished the sketch, it looked like this…

Not bad for a free handed sketch of a building. Yet, not good enough.

Even though everyone is their own worst critic, I knew I could do better than this. I didn’t return to sketching or fixing it for a very long time. Yet, I knew if I had prepared and planned out how to sketch the castle better, I know the sketch would’ve turned out better.

I’m sure an art teacher or anyone experienced in art can see what when wrong in the sketch, but for those who can’t, I didn’t use any sort of rules of drawing perspective. (Vanishing points and so on) If I had, it would’ve turned out better.

I considered going back into the sketch and redoing it, but I decided not do. If I am going to continue working on the castle, then I want to do everything from the beginning. That way I can work on the angles and vanishing points better.

That’s all for now! Thank you for reading!