You might be thinking, “Wait… I came here for a serious drawing tutorial. What the hell is this scribble nonsense?!” 😅 But that’s the point. This is our 🎨💪 ArtGym. Not for masterpieces. Not for perfection. Just for training the hand to move. 👉 Here’s the hack: - Your hand is like a muscle. If it sits still too long, it resists. - Even 10–20 seconds of random marks tells your brain: “This is easy.” - Do it often enough, and your hand wants to move ... no resistance. 👉 Today’s workout: - Make a box or circle on your page. - Move your pen inside it, make lines, curves, circles, boxes, whatever you like, change directions now and then. - Don’t overthink. Just let your hand wander. 💡Think of it like smoking. The hardest part isn’t the cigarette, it’s the hand movement. The hand gets addicted to moving up and down. Imagine if your hand was addicted to drawing instead. That’s what we’re building here. I actually quit smoking years ago and swapped the habit for drawing. So if you don’t smoke or you’ve quit = 10000 brownie points for you. 🤌 Pen, pencil, even tracing with your finger ... it all counts. Low effort, high result. My scribble unintentionally turned into a little character. I called it Mr. Kite. But maybe you’d call it something else. What name would you give him? 👉 Challenge: Do your 20-second scribble and post it below. And give your scribble a name too. Let’s see who shows up in our 🎨💪 ArtGym today. 🎶✏️

It started as a joke. A friend wanted to enter a singing competition because the winner would perform on stage with Kumar Sanu, the Bollywood legend. I joined just to support him. What I didn’t realise was that the competition was live on the radio. Suddenly, there I was, untrained, facing my lifelong stage fright. My childhood dream of singing resurfaced ... and so did the fear. Round after round, I thought: this must be the end. Yet somehow, I kept being put through. My friend didn’t make it past one of the rounds, and I felt torn ... lucky to still be there, but guilty too. But seeing he was happy for me meant a lot. By the second-to-last round, the nerves nearly broke me. The day before, I’d scored badly with the judges. Then a local friend messaged me, congratulating me ... and admitting they hadn’t even known I could sing. Wait, people I know are listening? That didn’t help. Now I’d chosen a difficult song. Sitting in the studio, waiting my turn, my palms were sweaty. So I pulled out my sketchbook. I began to draw the presenter’s face ... a man I’d been staring at week after week. Just to calm myself. Line by line, the nerves faded. Drawing steadied me, grounded me, gave me courage. And I realised I was doing a certain mindfulness and seeing technique I teach all my students, to bringing attention back to the present moment. It’s simple, but it works. It helped me reframe the fear into focus. Soon it was hard to stop and I drew for almost 45 minutes. When my turn came, I sang with surprising ease. And that day, instead of criticism, I received the best comments of the whole competition. Compliments I’ll never forget. In the final round, I was eliminated. But I didn’t mind. The singers who got through were truly exceptional, and I was glad for them. I had already won something else: courage, a memory, a story, and a piece of art. I gave the sketch to the presenter as a thank-you ... and I’ll remember the look on his face for a long time. 👉 Sometimes courage isn’t about winning. It’s about showing up when you don’t feel ready, daring to take part, and walking away with something far more lasting than a prize. But you won’t know until you try. Until you say yes.

I'm Jeff, and live in Ottawa Canada. I love to draw and pastel paint portraits mixed with symbolism. I recently listened to the Audiobook: Real Artists Don't Starve by Jeff Goins and I'm at a point in life where I want to do more of what I love, so I'm trying to go against my personality and get out there and face my fears. Alright y'all, have a good one!✌️