Disability in learning to draw?

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I've been trying to learn to draw for over 6 years now; I tried out resources like Andrew Loomis books, internet tutorials and videos, etc. I spent a lot of effort, and used things that others spent much effort to become good.

However, considering all the time I spent, I've improved in very insignificant ways. There are very few things I can draw decently well, and I've been persecuted for my difficulties in drawing (if only because I vented a bit about how I couldnt even access art classes and such).

Is there a disability for those who completely and utterly lack the aptitude to learn to draw? I know it has a lot to do with perceiving lines, edges, and more, but that skill of mine hasn't really progressed beyond "terrible".

I'm still putting in the effort, but it might make me feel better just to figure out why despite my efforts and resources, I still suck so bad. Loomis is worshipped like a god over at conceptart.org, but if everyone had as hard of a time with his books as I have, he'd be considered a hack instead...

6+ years should definitely show some notable improvements.
What are you trying to draw, and what are you using?

Have you considered trying a different art style, art type, or artistic media?

I'm very good at technical drawing and pixel art, but only somewhat decent at free-hand drawing with pens/pencils and really not very good at drawing with my pen tablet at the moment (but I haven't practiced much).

I personally find other people's tutorials/guides to be completely useless most of the time (aside from anatomy books and diagrams), so I think you shouldn't feel bad for not being able to learn from a book.
It seems like you're being a bit too harsh on yourself.

Also, I wanted to note, there are some people who are only really good at drawing one type of thing: animals, humans, objects, scenery, etc.

I've been trying to draw the human figure (in anime style). Most of what I use as of recent are just nude photos, some deviantart tutorials, myself posing in the mirror, and not much else. I also used to do drawing from life, but since I never really had a guide to make sure I'm on the right track, I didn't see much point to continue.

As for other media, I'm just looking to be able to draw things accurately, so I don't see how trying another style or medium would help. If you could explain how, I might be able to try (though I can't promise anything; my life circumstances are unreasonably restrictive).

There are the rare times i can draw something that looks decent (though still very flawed), but that's just the exception. My comfort zone is extremely small...

As for mediums, I use tablet, this software called Paint Tool Sai, sketchbook paper, drawing pencils, and big erasers.

Though, how does all that help answer why I'm struggling so much?

Have you checked out Mark Crilley's channel on Youtube?
I actually think he has some pretty good videos that might possibly help a bit.


I just thought maybe if you had only tried traditional media it might be worth trying digital media and vice-versa, since they can both produce similar results but each have a different "feel". It looks like you've tried both already though.


I don't think I can judge that really; I've never seen your art or how it's progressed.
It seemed like, from your first post, that you think your visual-spatial ability is not adequate.
I think there are ways to improve that, but I'm not sure. You might want to try googling it.

Yeah, before I lost faith in videos, I checked out Mark Crilley's. Though I'm sure his would be helpful, they probably aren't for me due to my lack of understanding of anatomy. I did find a site that teaches theory in a way that makes sense to me, but college made it so I can't go back to learning from it for at least another month or two.


It turns out that my perception abilities (like to see lines, shapes, value, etc) was very lacking, yes.

As for my art progression, you can check out my deviantart here. My comfort zone hasn't improved much over the years, though the overall aesthetic has improved somewhat. I know I'd have a large comfort zone (and thus far better overall skill) if I could learn normally from books and tutorials, but my brain and its wiring doesn't quite like those.

I hope that helps figure out the source of my problem; I'm certain I know what to do to finally make real improvements, but it as I am, what I assume to be a disability distresses me.

Well I think your art is fairly good, and much better than what I imagined based on what you'd said.

There are definitely huge improvements in your pictures from 2014 compared to the one from 2012. For having a "lack of understanding of anatomy", there really aren't too many mistakes.

I definitely think you shouldn't give up.

The aesthetics have improved, but my repertoire...not so much. You wouldn't believe how often I try things out of my comfort zone and have the results look nowhere near as good as what I have on my deviantart. I really wouldn't consider an artist who can only draw a few things well to be anywhere near a good one, especially when they've spent over 6 years on the craft. Were I to upload those, you'd see my lack of anatomical understanding at its worst.

Also, I never mentioned giving up, so I don't know where you got the idea that I wanted to.

I'm afraid I haven't advice or help, but there's something I think I noticed in your drawing exercises (namely here). I could be wrong so I apologize in advance. Do you find it far easier to draw the human anatomy when you're copying it from an existing image, but then when you try to draw the human figure from your imagination, it doesn't work out so well? Especially if you're going for a particular pose in your imagination?

I used to be quite good at figure drawing...when I was drawing from an image I was actually looking at. But when I try to draw human poses/anatomy from my imagination alone, the results are less than desirable.

I also have great difficulty with faces. I can identify them, yes. But I can't for the life of me describe them broken down into their individual features; I can imagine the face only as it's "all put together," and can describe it only if I'm looking right at it. Similarly, I can't envision imaginary faces and then draw them. I'm a writer and have hundreds of characters I would love to learn how to draw, something I did some years back on DeviantArt, and I did make progress with the help of a face tutorial, but they all ended up looking alike. I couldn't draw individualized faces from my imagination. And even when I try to describe my characters in words, the best I can do is general impressions like eye color, hair color, height, build...going into detail about what makes one character's face different from another's? I have no idea. Two eyes, a nose, a mouth, it's all the same in my head.

I would be no good to a police sketch artist.

Even when I study the facial differences in, say, Disney characters, or caricatures, I can see those differences while I'm looking at them ("This guy has a long jaw, this woman has a snub nose..."), but I can't picture it in my imagination to draw it later on, and I just can't seem to apply the same to my own work. Even my anthro characters all start to look the same.

If you have any of those same problems, perhaps it's something similar going on? Difficulty breaking the image of something down into its individual parts, and being able to see it only as a whole; inability to conjure such an image straight from the imagination, without some sort of visual aid. Possibly some relation to "face blindness" that I recently read about somewhere?

I apologize profusely if all of this is just pointless rambling to you. Just trying to toss some ideas out there about what might be going on. I do share the frustration, I feel that if I could draw my characters properly perhaps I would actually have readers.

(I like how the little standing spearman turned out.)

Well I am sure there is, your difficulties with it seem to be similar to my difficulties with math and music reading. It's like no matter what I cannot wrap my head around it and trying to only brings frustration. I mean I have two bass guitars, and amp a friend borrowed and not sure where that is right now(will have to ask him about it)..but I can't play a damn thing on bass except maybe a couple of parts here and there of Black Sabbath songs and then I am just reading tabs off the internet because I suck at reading music. I also tried going to college but along with all kinds of other crap could not advance past remedial math as i failed it twice.

Anyways I imagine some people have similar difficulties in other areas including drawing.

@pirateowl:

It's all right. I know what I must do to overcome my drawing issues...it's just that I'm forced to not use the means to do that for any significant amount of time due to college.

Yes, it would be easier if I was looking at a reference, though not much easier if the angle (and amount of foreshortening involved) is too hard for me to understand. That would be the vast majority of angles, with more than slight foreshortening.

The difficulty when drawing from imagination isn't much harder depending on whether the pose/angle is too hard for me. My small repertoire of poses/angles comes mostly from whatever tutorials I've seen on the web...there seem to hardly be any tutorials for angles that aren't frontal for the front, profile, and rear views.

When I ask for advice learning other angles, I tend to get generic advice like ("go read this book" or "use these videos"), yet that doesn't do anything for me since
1) the books read like moon to me, despite being written in good English. Something about how the words are strung together makes my brain go "ugh, what is this?!".
2) The videos don't make sense to my brain either.

But, yeah, I do have a hard time understanding the particular details of real peoples' faces. I might have what you'd call a degree of face-blindness, in terms of being able to remember most of the particular details.

But I'm not too concerned about drawing real faces anyway; I can come up with my own ways of drawing unique faces, and the most I need to learn from real faces is the general structure, foreshortening, and attachment to the body based on whatever angles the body is at.

@Sweetleaf: I see...I guess that shows that art education (on the internet and otherwise) has a long way to go before being accessible to people who lack aptitude for art that badly.

However, issues with visual memory don't explain how I can't make sense of books like Loomis'...does anyone have an answer for that?