It’s happened to me. Always take the paper out first.

I used to do that all the time, it can be infuriating. If you would like some suggestions that may help, read on, otherwise disregard. 1. Tracing paper can be used to recover a drawing. Caveat: this is only useful if you have the time>energy>desire or the paper. If its just lack of tracing paper it can be substituted. Cheap printer paper can be thin enough. I started with lined school paper. 2. Tape. Yeah, but here is the actual helpful part. Tape it from the back. If you want to and have access to a “white out”/correction fluid roller, apply the strip to the front of the drawing. This is particularly helpful if you can’t quite line up the tear as easily as you want to. Then you just fill the gaps without having to draw it all over again. 3. Photocopy. If you have access to those common multifunction printers, you can scan and copy the drawing, if it fits on the scanner bed. If so, a color pencil can be use to analog photoshop the tear out. Or just correction fluid or strip. Sometimes you can just erase it, for that I like the rough side of those wedge erasers. Hope this helps bud.

Omg noooo! That's the worst!

1. Always take a picture of your art before making any major changes. If you think something might ruin it, take a picture. Besides just tearing it out of the book, I’d also recommend snapshotting it before adding color, drawing it over with a pen/marker, or shading. 2. If the page is perforated, fold along the perforation 2-3 times before tearing it, and even then be slow & cautious. I put one hand on each side of the perforation, and slowly move my fingies apart. Being slow gives me time to stop if a tear starts to form. 3. If the page is not perforated, don’t tear it. Find some scissors and cut it instead. 4. If it makes you feel any better, my last artsy project failed, too. I didn’t tear the page or amything, but I tried to draw my avatar from Pokémon Sword and it turned out horribly.

This is why I just have sketchbook and a Apple Pencil