Learning to draw, particularly learning to draw from observation, is all about looking and being able to see. It’s the difference between someone who has the skills and someone who doesn’t. When I’m drawing and I’ve finished a drawing, I can’t look at it without thinking about things like accuracy and lines and shape, but really it’s the drawing itself that tells me whether or not I have succeeded or failed as an artist in that moment. A lot of people are caught up in the notion of keeping accurate proportions and making sure everything is properly arranged, so they struggle with the basic task of simply being able to see correctly.
This post and art game are for those people because when you play this game in the background while you are drawing, it helps you get into a mode where you can see more clearly. The focus on seeing is what makes this game good for practicing art.
I’ve been playing Animal Crossing, a Nintendo franchise about living in a village populated by anthropomorphic animals. The game is simple: You pay off your mortgage, meet the neighbors and animals, decorate your house and museum, dig for fossils and bugs, fish, buy clothes and furniture from the store, and visit the island where you can get tattoos or play an arcade game. There’s no real goal other than to live in this world at your own pace.
The whole experience is accessible and low-stress, but it also has some of the in-game incentives that other “life simulation” games do – even though you’re not trying to raise money or level up or finish something you’re working on. I’m learning just to appreciate living inside of this world.
But there’s another way to enjoy Animal Crossing that’s becoming a bigger part of my experience as time goes on: I use it while I draw.
I’m a big fan of Animal Crossing, an old GameCube game where you live your life in a small village populated with anthropomorphic animals. You interact with the other villagers by buying/selling things, planting/harvesting fruit, collecting special items from around town, and catching insects.
Tis the season to get jolly! Now is a wonderful time to play Animal Crossing: New Leaf because of all the holiday cheer going around. I’ve been enjoying it so much that I decided to start a new drawing habit while playing.**
I’ve been using the art game Inkarnate to make drawings out of my own design. Here’s how I’m using it along with Animal Crossing:
I’ve been playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf on the 3DS for a couple months now. I’ve been doing it a little differently from my usual routine, though, and I think it’s worth sharing with you.
I’m often quite busy in the evening, and I do my art practice before going to sleep. But lately I’ve been doing something different: I play Animal Crossing for about 20 minutes, then put the game in sleep mode and do some art for 30 minutes. The game wakes itself up automatically after 30 minutes, at which point I turn the system off (I play on an old-fashioned console rather than one of those fancy new models that keeps track of me when I go to bed).
but here’s the catch. The entire time I’m drawing, the sound effects from Animal Crossing are playing in the background. It helps me get into drawing mode, reminds me that I’m drawing during a time when I’d otherwise be mindlessly looking at Twitter or Reddit or whatever else people do when they’re not drawing. And because of this dual-taskedness — while also making sure no one moves into my town or peeps out at my house — my attention gets divided between two separate tasks that both involve paying close attention to detail. This
I discovered an easy, free way to make art. It turns out that playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf while listening to jazz music is a surprisingly effective combination of background tasks. In Animal Crossing, your character is a mayor who is also a citizen of a little town. As the mayor, you have some administrative responsibilities. You need to pay off your loan to Tom Nook and maintain the town by buying new services and facilities for your townspeople. But as a citizen, you are also responsible for making the town look nice and interesting by planting fruit trees and flowers in public spaces, fishing for insects and fish in the river, paying off your debt to Tom Nook, etc.
To accomplish these tasks, you can go out into the woods and dig holes in the ground or you can dig in public spaces where other people have dug holes. Digging is fun! I enjoy it as much as reading comments on blogs or playing Candy Crush Saga or watching reality TV shows or looking at cats on the Internet. I usually choose to dig while listening to jazz music because it’s easier than putting on headphones. If I want to listen to music with friends or my family, then I just play Animal Crossing without any music. The jazz is kind of like white noise that helps
There’s an amazing art game that you can play on your 3DS called Animal Crossing: New Leaf. I’ve been spending a lot of time with it, and here are some of the things I’ve learned from playing it.
If you’d like to hear more about Animal Crossing, check out this podcast episode**
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It’s surprising how many people don’t know about this. You can take a picture of yourself and your friends, print it out, and then draw over it!
As you complete each drawing, you’ll unlock a new background (or “wallpaper”) in the game. It’s a great way to learn to draw, as well as increase your inventory of nice backgrounds for screenshots.
To do it: