learning to draw people

Oh goodness, thank you so much for your nice words Mary!! That totally made my day!!

"Could you maybe give a word of advice on how to make people feel good? You surely know a lot about that =)"

I like to acknowledge when and how people try hard, because trying is often times more important than actually succeeding. I think acknowledging effort, regardless of the outcome, is very very important. Not all efforts succeed the way they're planned, but they still help us grow and develop and matter a lot! It also encourages the development of coping skills when things don't go as intended.

People who are emotionally invested in something also suffer from discouragement easily because they're overwhelmed by their (sometimes negative) feelings. Focusing on facts, such as the list I suggested, helps to level the field and allows you to tackle a problem with a clear head and purpose that genuinely feels productive, because you now have unbiased information to work from. This is something I picked up in therapy, but it applies to many areas in life! :)

About your most recent drawing: I'm super pleased with the improvement from your previous sketches. You've been incredibly dedicated from what I can tell and it's paying off!

Your listed minuses are very helpful information for your next sketches, it's good that you were able to write those down. I'm uncertain on the first one listed though - which details do you consider unnecessary? Did they feel unnecessary because you got to them too early, or because it wasn't your goal to be so detailed?

Hello Sanne! It feels so good that you actually read the post back and answered! God, it's amazing that you even keep track of this post. Thank you!
It's super encouraging when somebody acknowledges your efforts, especially when things don't go well. A kind word really makes a difference! Writing a list of positive and negative facts makes wonders! It's brilliant! Thank you for sharing this =)

Thank you for your kind words and thank you for asking! I guess I should choose less detailed references, because there's always this temptation to draw pretty jewelery and flowers instead of keeping mind on tricky and dubious things like correct proportions and in which place the shadows should be =) Have you ever had this issue with details? How do you deal with it?

Thank you for everything. It's great to have you here on this forum.

Well I wouldn't be a very good moderator if I didn't check in, would I? :) It's great to talk to people about this stuff!

I've also (and still sometimes do) struggle with wanting to cram in too much detail. I think that's the downside of seeking perfectionism and getting things 'just right'. I actually set a goal for myself to focus on getting rough outlines and to not spend more than x minutes on a drawing. If the time's up, time's up. This ended up showing me that if I focus too much on the small details, I didn't get the overall picture to look right. Basically I trained myself to recognize and draw main focus points first, so that the details I add later fit seamlessly rather than drawing the main focus points around the details.

Does that make sense? It's something that I spent some time to work on and didn't happen overnight, but it was a good habit to develop. I think of it as building on a foundation - if I catch myself focusing on the small details before I got everything else down first, I remind myself that I'm already decorating the house before I got the walls up and a roof over my head. It helps me a lot!

And you're very welcome, thank you for this!! :)