Great Places to Draw.
Being an artist I’ve always spent way too much time sitting indoors. It comes with the territory of being a working professional artist. Sitting down for several hours at a time isn’t always practical for the body or mind. I’ve done so many things to mitigate the potential harm. I’ve had my Apple watch giving me signals to get up every half hour. I’ve scheduled walks by the beach. I’ve taken many different measures to offset the prolonged times of not moving. I’ve tried everything the internet could recommend. But it wasn’t just the physical harm.
There was also another problem creeping in. It was the mental harm of staying inside all day.
Mentally, sitting indoors isn’t great for my well-being. I get this feeling of antsy unused energy if I stay indoors in my home all day. This also had practical downsides. My productivity would go down rapidly. I found that my mind needed some form of change, even if it was just my surroundings. The easy solution was to draw in places other than at home. It would reset my mind and my workflow became so much better. Different sketching spots are good for different reasons. Here are some of the best that I recommend to you.
1) cafe
The cafe is most likely the best place for you too draw, feel social, and get work done. My entire social life revolves around going to cafes with my artist friends and drawings. It is a great location to be social while drawing, or focus when alone. There are very specific kinds of cafes that will give you a better working environment. Some cafes have more of a restaurant environment, where employees are coming by to check on the table you are working which gives you some pressure to leave eventually.
These cafes are often not a great environment to work in. These cafes are meant more to sell drinks and move people through. There were some cafes we went to that made it very clear people were overstaying their welcome. One cafe removed all their electrical outlets so that people couldn’t charge their computers. This ensured the person would eventually have to leave when their battery ran out of energy.
The cafes I prefer are the other kinds that nurture a working environment where people can literally sit all day and work on long-form projects. These are my favorite types of cafes where you can focus on the job that needs to be done and you can take periodic breaks. This can be the most conducive to work. These are the places i like the most.
2) library
The library by far is the best place to go when you need to completely hone your attention into a project. There are times when I have so much stimulation going on in the environment at home or in the coffee shop that I need to silence out everything around me. The library has become a place to forget all other obligations and thoughts and be still on one objective. This is my emergency place, as well as just a great place to go. In my area, there are several different kinds of public libraries that I tend to categorize.
There are the dirty, small loud public libraries normally next to downtown areas. These are terrible places to work. They tend to smell odd and sometimes have levels of noise that are unnatural for the environment. The other is the relatively clean library that goes above and beyond on the comfortable chairs. Some of these libraries almost seem to create environments knowing that some people are going to stay literally all day. You can even rent a private room in order to get even more focus.
3) 200
I had a zoo class before, and it was one of the most fascinating and amazing things I’ve ever taken.
An animal drawing class lets you know how similar animal anatomy is to ours. It’s so amazing to see the evolutionary process from animals and how alike we all are as vertebrates.
This is assuming you have a zoo near your area that you can get to. I have a year pass to my local zoo and I take my small foldable chair to sit in front of about 3 exhibits for the day.
I don’t have time for more than 3 animals. There was chair drama before and they had turned me down when I brought it. It was a normal folding chair. I knew I had to get a little bit more ingenious with my chair. I bought a chair that folds all the way down small enough for it to fit in my backpack. And there was no trouble after that.
The chair is necessary because it provides me with a choice on able to position myself anywhere.
This can really come in handy, especially on slow days at the zoo. Slow days can feel like a paradise.
4) Park/ Nature
When you are looking for a peaceful environment, the outdoors can be an amazing spot. Parks give you the silent and relaxing vibes. I tend to notice that getting sun while drawing can leave me with a better outlook on life. When I’m alone with my general thoughts in nature, I notice I develop motivation to draw things I don’t draw very often, that being trees and flowers.
I hardly draw nature unless I force myself to change my habits. I tend to spend most of my hours in front of the computer doing work or finding a cafe, so this can be a shock to my system in a good way. This has also been a great way to experiment with watercolor and other mediums. Different locations can spur on different creative ways to problem solve. Have a specific sketchbook for this location, to make it easier to let yourself experiment and be free.
5) City
Going to the city to draw, is going to be more for drawing people walking around. Drawing humans as they walk about their day is one of the coolest and most challenging things you can do. Pick a spot that has a good vantage of people constantly walking by. The art of the quick sketch comes in handy for this. When you draw anything in motion, this is more of an exercise in visual memory.
You have to take a mental snapshot that you can pull information from quickly. After you have that mental snapshot, you fill that gap with something that you remember about the subject. You can look back periodically to see things you might not remember, if they are around. I’m sure you can also draw people that are sitting down and waiting. It’s very disappointing when I work on something and they end up getting up and leaving along their way.
Deciding on your company.
Decide on what company you’d like to keep while you sketch. Drawing with a group of other artists can be a fun environment for social interaction. The problem I’ve found is that it’s not conducive to getting things finished. I tend to draw things where I don’t need to fully think on. These items are just for fun. If I have a project I’m needing to finish on a deadline, then I tend to do it completely alone or have an agreement with a close friend.
If I’m on a deadline, I take a friend that also needs to finish something. We go with the express agreement that we will go long stretches not speaking to each other and maybe speak periodically every 45 minutes or so, and then back to work. This allows us to get some serious drawing tasks done, but also not feel completely alone in the pursuit. ive done some semi-large art jobs this way.
You’ll have to decide what method and place works best for you, and get a routine going based on where you are at in life. And obviously, depending on the city you live in, some of these places will be more accessible and some won’t be. You can find your favorite spots and create a mental list.
Create a list of places that you were thinking of checking out in the future. It becomes another factor in planning your progress. You find what helps you work better and makes you a better artist while keeping your mind moving. Burning out after sitting and doing art in one location can be a big deal for many.
