How Old Were You When You Started Drawing?

[Twigz0n]

I believe I was around 6 or 7 years old when I just started to get into drawing, but wouldn’t become as consistent with it until I was around 10-11 years old. I’d say I was about 12 to 13 years old when I decided to take art more “seriously” by watching a lot of YouTube tutorials videos breaking down certain subjects or fundamentals of art. Although I would typically just do my own thing most of the time anyway so idk lol. By that point I had fully decided that art was what I wanted to do in life and so I’ve drawn almost everyday since then. However when I say this don’t think I’m like, on the grind always as most days this means doodling/sketching for about five minutes a day lol.

Ever since I made that decision arts been a very rocky journey of self doubt and self loathing, mostly during my insecure and unwell teenage years. These days I’ve come to be more at peace with my art skills, although that’s not to say I never have art downer days or months (as I’m currently experiencing the WORST art block/burn out atm due to my college art course). But overall I’ve had considerably less “oh my art is so bad and I’ll never be as good as these other people who are younger and better than me”, and a large part of that was me learning to enioy the process of making art regardless of where my skill set was at, and to stop comparing myself to others as well. (As well as improving my own mental health too obviously)

It was a long and difficult process to get to where I am with how I feel about my art now though. As much as I hated my art back then, I kept going because art is just a part of who I am at this point, and to not make art is to not be myself. And well, wouldn’t you know, I got better because I kept at it, kept learning, studying, and having fun. Even if I am a slow learner and a serial procrastinator, my art still got better, slowly, but surely, and now I’m at a point where I can enjoy looking at my own creations despite all of their many flaws. There will always be time to improve upon your skills, and there’s never a stage where you stop learning either. I always find it the most motivating to look back at some of my older artworks and compare them to my newer ones to see how far I’ve come, but also to see where I might still be struggling too, but without the harsh and unfair judgment.


I wholeheartedly agree with the reply left by Hikatamika that it is never too late to start learning art and that this idea that you have to be at a certain skill level depending on your age is a stupid social construct that doesn’t even reflect reality anyway. Saying this as someone who, at 13-16 years old, was definitely not the best artist of her age, but who still made art that I was proud and happy of regardless.

[Limette]

Art has always been part of my life, I think. I still have drawings I made from when I was three years old. Apparently I really liked drawing pandas back then, but you wouldn't have recognized them as such if my caretakers hadn't labelled the art. My mother used to be a professional artist, but she never taught me how to draw.

When I was 9 years old, I really got into Pokemon, a fixation that would last for six whole years. That's when drawing became a proper hobby for me. I copied the artworks on Pokemon cards I collected and dreamed of sending my fanart to be featured in a Pokemon magazine. My mother never did send in any of my drawings, but I have a folder of them somewhere. I became known as "the artist" classmate in elementary school and had something of a rivalry with a boy in my class who also drew a lot.

I became a bit more "serious" about art when I was around 13, looking up art tutorials online, reading books and trying to practice drawing more than just Pokemon. I discovered webcomics at this age, and became inspired to create my own stories. At 15, during the lockdown, I launched my own webcomic. My art wasn't amazing back then, but just the act of creating something that required so much variation, different expressions and backgrounds every panel, helped push my art development forwards at a quick speed. In the year in which I was working on that webcomic, I improved faster and I learned more than I did all the years prior.

Unfortunately, that's also when I burned out. I was pushing myself way too hard. Since then, I haven't been able to draw nearly as much, not due to a lack of time, but a lack of enjoyment. In a lot of ways, my art got better over time, but sometimes it also got worse. Progress wasn't linear, it wasn't a constant upwards stream of improvement, and I often found myself wondering: "Why is this not coming out the way I wanted it to? I was able to do this a year ago, but now everything looks worse!"

In the end, drawing became a chore.

I'm 20 now, and I never truly stopped making art, but I had my low points. It's only in these last three months or so that it's starting to feel like I'm regaining the passion I had for it as a young teen. I don't put as much effort into it anymore, and let myself make "bad" art that's below my standards, on purpose. It's more fun when I'm not pushing myself to go above and beyond on every drawing and just let something be lazy. Yesterday, I found myself looking at one of those low effort drawings, got inspired, and started polishing it. And for once, I had fun doing it! Finally, I wasn't forcing myself to do it, and so it felt easier.

2021

This is an older drawing, I'm still very proud of it but it has a level of polish in the lineart that I find frustrating to maintain nowadays.

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2025

This is a redraw of that lofi anime girl artwork that's all over the internet. It's mostly traced, and the lining is way messier. If I wasn't redrawing an existing artwork I wouldn't bother putting together a complex background like that. I stopped working on this when I realized it wasn't fun anymore. One day, I might come back to it.


This is a sketch drawing, I never cleaned it up or drew more than just draw the character, but it's one of my favorite artworks from this year. It's the perfect blend between a fun drawing process and a decent end result.

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[xx_roryriot_xx]

oh gosh i can hardly remember this one! uhh i think we were probably about 10 or so when we started drawing, but no one's actually LIKED our art until recently n we're 16 now so... it's never too late :3

[moeghost]

For reference, this was my art in 2012 (I was 14), when I got diagnosed:

Spoiler

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woah, i love ur artstyle!!  i especially like this one that i quoted, i like all the funky little guys in the water hehe. thank u for sharing progress with me

Ever since I made that decision arts been a very rocky journey of self doubt and self loathing, mostly during my insecure and unwell teenage years.

i guess it makes me feel a bit better that the self-loathing and doubt part is pretty common heh, i think in my case i just need to push myself to complete my drawings a bit harder and even more often, even if i think they suck. if i just keep going, and let myself make imperfect drawings, ill have something to look back and improve on. even if it takes me a while to truly feel confident in my skills, what matters in the end is that i kept going!

Unfortunately, that's also when I burned out. I was pushing myself way too hard. Since then, I haven't been able to draw nearly as much, not due to a lack of time, but a lack of enjoyment.

speaking of pushing myself, its good to be reminded of burnout... i was in the same boat when i was about 14-15, i drew the same character so much so often that i made myself sick of my own OC for a while lol. eventually sometime in 2023 i ended up with a lot of free-time, and decided to learn how to draw actual faces to give myself something new to draw.

"I was able to do this a year ago, but now everything looks worse!"

i felt this too...i still sort of do, i feel like i cant draw poses the way i could at 14, but that's only because i hadnt drawn for real in a while, and i had to remind myself that it's okay to have to relearn skills

by the way, i like ur lofi girl redraw!! very cosy and cute  my lines are also quite messy...stabilizer is my best friend haha

thank u all for the replies!!!! 

[Kule1Toxic]

I started drawing for as long as I can remember (from the art I made that got thrown out probably since I was like 2), and wanted to make my own comics, games, and animations when I started to go on the internet more, so that meant me drawing a lot in class and being in home all day on the computer messing around in flash 8, and I started to try and actually improve my art and be more "serious" about it when I was 13.

[WhimsicalCookie5]

I started drawing since I learned how to properly hold pencils so I don't remember the specific age, sorry! 

But I started to take it more seriously when I was like 7 or 8 since a classmate of mine received a lot of praise for being able to draw anime and cartoon like characters. They were a great person! (the classmate)

The way I drew humans was often mistaken as demons or evil creatures which got me in a lot of trouble, especially one time I tried to draw a wrench and my parents mistook it for a knife and thought I was a crazy murder kid ｡ﾟ･ o(〒﹏〒)o ･ﾟ｡

I wasn't good at defending myself in a coherent way so I failed at explaining them.

But! Drawing should be fun and it doesn't matter when someone starts but how much fun they are having!
(⊃｡•́‿•̀｡)⊃━✿✿✿✿✿✿

[H0ppin_H00ligan]

Personally, i've been drawing since i was around 8 i think :P though i didn't start doing digital art until i was around 10.

Ngl i wish i still had a lot of my old art saved. As cringe as a lot of my work no doubt WAS, it'd be nice to look back on it and see how far i've come (...and hell, maybe even redraw some of it)

[alienhospital]

I started at 21! You're never too old

[CosmicRot]

I've been drawing all my life, but only got serious about it when I was 14?? but I've taken year long gaps where I don't draw at all, due to plenty of reasons... I've met and talked to plenty of people though who didn't start drawing until their mid twenties or older, and I've even had a friend tell me their relative at a whole 40 something years old just started drawing seriously recently.

It's so interesting learning about how and why people start drawing.. their motivations.. augh!! One of my special interests is just art as a whole so it's endearing learning about drawing and crafting and cosplay and music, and people's inspirations and who they admire, and their reasons for wanting to improve, or not caring about skill and just having fun!

like afaik my friend's relative isn't looking to become very skilled, they just want to be able to express themselves and have fun, so they're only learning the super basics [how to draw shapes and shade and that's.. basically it ahaha at least so I've been told.] which honestly is AWESOME. It's rare you see people outside of younger folks who just want to draw for the fun of it and don't care about skill beyond what is needed for them to have fun and get what they want down on the page.

I feel like the more skill I get the less whimsical and exciting my art gets so I'm trying to get back to that enjoyment I had as a kid, I think my most expressive art was probably from when I was around 16-19, and well I'm about to turn 30 in a couple weeks.