Ever since the start of the pandemic (I think), I was so stoked on becoming good at an art form so I could post them online, get a few likes, and hopefully get better that I can get money off of it. Pixel art was the first medium I took. blablabla something clicked in my head and I switched to digital drawing. Something something I started to form a lot of bad habits that really stunted my growth and my mindset to stabilize that growth.
Making new layers to draw more stuff which took a lot of storage, making certain strokes because old me thought it looked great, but limited/prevented the ability to make unique ones, looking at other artists and their work which caused me to blindly copy their techniques and not understanding the point, not rewatching or rereading certain content that could probably improved me in the long run. I don’t know if that’s all of the problems or there’s a lot more due to my brain being not good at remembering things.
Its been like three years now and I don’t feel like I’m progressing. What do I do to do a 180 and get back on track?
You probably heard this before - every artist is different, everyone comes from a different place in life and has different goals, so there will not be one solution and one path that works for everybody. I am usually in the camp that says mileage will heal everything - mileage as in draw hundreds of pages of people to get slightly better at people. There is a big BUT to this though. If you just draw without a set goal, you have nothing to measure your progress against - so no matter what happens, it will feel as if you’re stuck as your taste and critical eye move with you.
So I guess set your goals. What art do you want to make? What is your art about? What do you love to draw? Where do you want to be with it? How do you get there as in what skills to acquire, do you need a portfolio, do you need a commission sheet, what will be the first steps you can take right now?
I would like to say that I feel like this isn’t the most accurate description of my situation, but I can’t improve on it cause I couldn’t think of words to describe it…
“If you just draw without a set goal, you have nothing to measure your progress against - so no matter what happens, it will feel as if you’re stuck as your taste and critical eye move with you.”
Set goals, you say? Yeah, I think that’s one of the factors to help me improve. But whenever I “make” a goal, it’s very not specific like “improve on gesture drawing” or “understand to make figures”. I really try to make it specific, but my mind is really retarded when it comes to that, I guess…
Oh no, most people struggle with this. Rarely will you meet an artist that is like “I draw American racecars from the 1970s in ink and that is all I do and want in life and I’m getting paid to do so, thanks I’m good!”
Maybe instead of disciplines like gesture, what do you intend to use those gestures towards?
I was always interested in storytelling, possibly making comics, so if I say I want to get better at gestures…it’s to use them to tell horror and romance stories. But there’s steps in between like I have to pose my awesome humans in perspective …and get a background going…and get good light and shadow… but the end goal would be the comics.
I have this idea jammed into my head, of using my art skills to tell stories, like you said with your examples. It’s kinda becoming like a leach in my head that won’t go away because I really wanted to tell those stories.
I feel like I’m reaching my limits here, it’s 11:08 pm here and I’m getting a tired. Hopefully I got time tomorrow to continue this. Also, thanks for talking to me. I thought once I expressed something personal to me, I’ll get insulted or mocked due to the current status of the internet right now (the things I’m seeing). Thanks, goodnight
Hm, in that case my opinion would be: tell your stories. Start today, and be okay with the first ones being wonky both in the looks and the storytelling. Writers learn to write by writing stories and reading a lot of other people’s books. I think it works the same with visual storytelling with comics, animation and movies, maybe even some videogames. Take care!
I’ve been reading your comments and really good advice coming from @Styxcolor.
My little contribution is to ask if you might enjoy writing down a few words about the story you want to illustrate before you begin drawing. Doesn’t have to be a full story, sometimes just identifying the key words is enough.
Like: Fog, night, worm, candle.
If the words excite you, it will show in your drawing.
I think if you want to tell your stories in something like little comic strips, then go for it. You can put them on your page on somewhere like DeviantArt, or Facebook, or even this site.
And perhaps for prompts for practice take up some challenges. There’s a monthly art challenge on this site which I like doing because it gets me drawing stuff I might not have thought about usually. Also, there are a lot of other sites, such as Reddit, which post lots of reference pictures with the challenge to draw them in different styles.
This way it feels more like there’s an incentive to practice all the different subjects and there’s also an audience waiting to see the results so you can gain your confidence with the likes and comments.
Heh my friend, you go through the same stages as all of us. When you are an absolute beginner, you progress very quickly because it is easy to grow from scratch. But further progress is very difficult, we all face it.
When I started digital painting I thought I was super talented. In a few years, I realized that I can’t do absolutely anything))) I also learn slowly, I forget everything I learned almost immediately)))
But I can recommend the following: more practice, less theory. When we learn, we are drawn to watch some videos, read more, and never get around to drawing. Get rid of it. Draw more. You saw how to draw hands - immediately fix it with drawing. Do not demand too much from yourself, you will avoid unnecessary disappointments. Try to limit yourself to one topic, such as characters or locations, and work only in this direction. Understand what it is for you. You want to make money with it, so you understand what result you want to achieve.
And the main advice - work on real tasks right now, don’t wait until you become an unsurpassed master. Believe, and there will be a customer for your services. And you will definitely progress on real projects
In these times it’s common to get a little lost. What to do? The ideal is to have a precise direction. If we don’t have that or don’t even know where to go, it’s best not to stay still.
In my case, I have hundreds of references that I’ve been accumulating for years. At the end of last month I selected a few, copied them to a pendrive… and every day I choose one or two to practice.
The other day I took an old drawing, where the artist did the shading only with hatches and I copied it. That helped me a lot there, I was able to learn how to better manage the contour tracing.
Yesterday was a disaster. I have problems with shading and two drawings I made, based on references (a photo and a drawing) came out horrible! I wanted to throw the drawings away, I ended up keeping them: another day I’ll pick them up again and redo them…
My problem (I don’t know if it’s yours) is that I’m terribly indecisive. I took the references, chose them, separated them into a folder… and decided to do something else. To resolve this, I forced myself to at least practice one reference. I open a new file in Krita, open the file viewer, choose the image from the pendrive (any one and without allowing myself any delay), drag the image into Krita and… start copying
No excuses, no over-planning. As for copying, I had a very strong prejudice against that. I abandoned that idea, as I realized that I would fail to learn a lot if I didn’t copy. And the copies are just for study, I don’t intend to publish them, of course.
Honestly I really didn’t expect seeing a lot of people replying to this thread. Thanks you all, I’ll be rereading this thread after setting up for drawing today.
Let me give you some tips) First, post everything you do so you can track your progress. Drawing simply “on the table” you will stay in place. Drawing “on the table” is also my problem, that’s why I’m here - to publish everything in general))
Next: when you have copied some work, try to analyze it and then draw it again, but with some changes. For example, you copied a character, try to draw him in a different perspective or in a different pose. This will force you to analyze, and not just copy forms.
Thank you for the tips! As for posting, I prefer not to: among other reasons, because I don’t have the links to the references, nor do I know most of their authors.
I don’t actually copy the reference 100%, I like to add/change details. When the reference is a character on a white background I always add something, even if it’s a pattern or a color applied with a brush in Krita, especially those I haven’t used yet.
In the case of a pencil reference, I changed the rendering, applied the shading to my mode and colorized it. In an AI-generated benchmark, the character and shading were okay. The scenery, however, had perspective errors and I ended up changing it completely.
Even copying, it’s amazing the amount of detail you can see. When I finished copying the drawing of an American superhero, I saw that his hand was out of proportion, almost the size of his head. It was already like this in the original and I had never noticed it!
Yeah, that’s terrible. What helps is employing little “psychological tricks” to get around the problem… like the ones I mentioned. Just the fact that you prepare to do something makes it easier to take the next step.
An old magazine mentioned that hardly anyone would stand still for fifteen minutes in front of a sink, full of dirty dishes, without washing something, even a glass.
Another thing I noticed: I wasted too much time looking at references, sometimes selecting fifteen of them! And, not satisfied, I searched for more on Google. I decided to limit it to a maximum of five references… and only search the internet if I was really sure it was necessary.
You don’t have to worry about violating someone’s rights. Everything you draw is your work. Especially when it comes to education. It is unlikely that any of the authors will take offense at you because you learned from his work) It is another matter when you use someone else’s work for commercial purposes. Therefore, feel free to share, you will receive a lot of feedback and advice, and your progress will inevitably begin)
Personally, I wouldn’t be bothered by copying at all. As long as you’re not trying to misrepresent it as your original work, it’s fine. What’s more, doing a copy usually involves just the same amount of effort and expertise to pull off. It just frees you from the pain of picking a subject and good references in one.
As I try to pivot slightly to more original creations, I noticed that at this point producing a rough draft is the biggest struggle for me. This is probably a weak point of copies, they greatly simplify this step. However, as I’m trying to put together an interesting character pose that also makes for an interesting composition, the problems start. This step requires it all, the composition, anatomy, perspective… But yeah, I guess I just need to keep at it, analyze, iterate, refine
Copying also raises some issues. At first I thought it was totally unethical to copy, even references: I thought I had to get everything out of “my own mind”. Over time, getting informed, reading texts by other artists, I started to abandon this radical concept.
There was an artist who took pictures of the models, already in the right lighting and used the photos as a basis for his paintings. Some people told him that this was cheating and that the old masters wouldn’t act like that.
He didn’t see any problem with that and believed that the old masters would also use photos… if they had that resource in their day.
Yeah, I’m not sure what I think about that. One school of thought is that the only thing that matters is the end result. If after whatever you did you end up with a great painting, then you accomplished your goal. I can totally see this work for “utilitarian” art such as for games/media/socials. If it’s more about the “fine arts” and who painted the picture, then probably the process and flexing the skill matters more.
Another way I see it, is how the artist themself feels about these methods. This can be different for everyone, right. For example, if I used somebody else’s pose and drew over it, I wouldn’t feel good about it personally. One thing I want to get from painting is a sense of accomplishment and self-improvement. By taking such a big shortcut, I would feel internally that I have “cheated”. On the other hand, if I create the model myself and position it, or in other words “put in the effort” of some sort, then I feel more satisfaction from the finished piece.
Studies are OK by me, because you still need to put in the effort to capture the gesture and proportions, or you can mix it up by adding your custom touch. And when you think about it, isn’t painting from real life also copying? (I know, I know. There are so many decisions that go into it, essentially how the artist interprets the reality, but still).
I wanted to throw the drawings away, I ended up keeping them: another day I’ll pick them up again and redo them…
(I know, I know. There are so many decisions that go into it, essentially how the artist interprets the reality, but still).