[AndyT]

Ok I'm really depressed right now. Somehow it seems the more I know the more I suck. I've never been able to draw/paint anything from scratch anyway. But now I can't even copy the easiest mannekin figures from "Figure Drawing For All It's Worth" with a pencil.

I thought maybe some of you remember any revelations ... did you notice you improved after reading a book? Or maybe when you got a tablet? Any exercices in art class ...?
Anything?
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[Drew]

I noticed that I improved after many, many drawings. If you can, go back through your oldest drawings and see how bad you used to be. Progress is slow at times, but if you keep eliminating your mistakes you will get better. I know because I've seen some of your work get better as well. The main problem I see right now is a lack of contrast and undefined forms, IIRC. Just keep working from reference and draw draw draw.

Something that gives some folks a lot of confidence is doing a drawing using the grid method. It makes it pretty easy to copy a drawing accurately, you might want to give it a try just for fun. Good luck, don't give up.

[Periadam]

The only thing I can really tell you is to draw from life. Always always draw from life. If you can get people to pose for you, great. Pose naked, even better (though we can't expect too much). I found my drawing improved immeasurably with only one semester of drawing classes. That was three hours twice a week simply working from a nude model.

If you do it enough, you stand to improve. Good luck
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[oDD]

I think youre letting your emotions take control over your thinking.

The more you know the more you are aware o things that should be done in a painting/drawing, you see more mistakes, you see errors that preciosly you didn't know about. That's a good thing because it means your improving your art knowledge, its the hand that is behind in progress.

If youre trying to acomplish (sp!) something with one method, and the final result is a failure, and youre trying again and again with no succes it's a good idea to change the method. Try aproching a paiting in a different way than usual, check out how other artist work and adopt their techniques you find useful

Maybe if you got a scanner try to scann a sketch and use it as a fundament for a paiting, it's easier to draw with a pencil than with a mouse, so a solid start of a painting (a scanned sketch) might bring a better final result.

As for the drawing sooner or later you have to star drawing from life.

I have days when i can't paint anything good, everything i do just sucks. But i now can see that those days are always a prophet of improvement, after few days I m alway happy too see that thing seem easier.

And finally the most important thing that you forgot about, there are no secrets so just draw draw draw .....
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[AndyT]

Thanks for your replies!

[Novacaptain]

Andy, we all have our ups and downs. I usually have periods of artistic satisfaction and dissatisfaction almost as regularly spaced as a sin wave has peaks and valleys. Improvement does come with time if you keep challenging yourself. Find new things to draw/paint...people, landscapes, man-made things, interiors, exteriors, animals. Experiment with different light situations. Observe things around you...you're bound to find something interesting out there.
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[eyewoo]

Well... here's an intersting POV... Over the last 40 or so years, I have moved in and out of the visual arts through several careers. Visual arts has always been the point in my life, but not always the focus. However, whenever I've left it - the longest time was about 12 years - I was always immediately better when I got back to it.

What's the point? Practice is very important, but gaining a broad knowledge of other things can be equally important.

Just thought I'd mention that...
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[spooge demon]

Learning or being exposed to a lot of new info will make your head spin for a while. You will find lack of patience that feeds on itself. You have to give yourself time to digest new info.

I remember having two drawing classes that taught exactly opposite ideas about drawing. "Oh, it's Tues., draw like so and so..." It took a long time to figure out how it all fit together and how they were talking about similar things. Until then, red and green, gray, mud. Not delicate vibrating complementaries.

Work on specific things, pare down what your goals are for the time being. Learn all the muscles of the shoulder and the order of them. Or copy some masterworks. I always got a lot out of that one.

[MikeyS]

hi

The more you know ,the more you want to achieve. But that is not possible without practise. I think the best way to get better is starting from the bascis. I have recently drawn , i think 300 to 400 circles(free hand) , just for practise. and i have to say it has helped a lot. Drawing cubes ,cones and cylinders is also a big step forward. Copying masterdrawings is also a very good way to improve skills.But you should know what you are drawing. Just copying without any clues is not sensible. I think to draw from imagination is still The best way . "The better you are able draw without a model, the better you can draw with one" ------Gary Faigin

Good luck

[acidcrys]

For me it was learning to see everything, to analyze everything, to familiarize yourself with all senses in order to fully understand your sight.
From what I've seen of your artwork.. you seem to be afraid to really just go at things.. I think your work just needs to be bolder.. you have a lot of white - is anything ever really white? Do darker shading.. and stronger highlights.. it all just seems too soft. And keep a stronger eye for every single detail possible..

edit: damn lot of typos
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[-CCroder-]

being a strictly analog artist, i may not completely understand. However I find when I am without inspiration, if i just let my hands do the thinking and feel my way through the art, I can get back on track very quickly. It's almost like meditation. (Yet im not a portrait artist myself so I may not be able to relate)

Anyway, just my thoughts...
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[AndyT]

Thanks for the replies

Novacaptain

[Drew]

Hmm, as I'm looking at some of your images again I'm thinking that it's both the contrast and the saturation. I think that's part of why your works look so muddy. Spooge uses loose form but great color and saturation. Bengal uses tight form (linework) and pale, muted colors. But if you mix loose form with unsaturated (or perhaps indecisive?) colors then you end up with mud.

This is what I was talking about when I spoke of undefined forms. You have to either define them with color or with tight brush/line work. I believe this is also what acidcrys meant when he said that you seemed "to be afraid to really just go at things". There are no lines that say "The face ends here!" and no big change in saturation or color to say "The edge of the shit is right here!".

Of course, these aren't art laws, they're just my opinion. Examples could be found with loose form and muted color that still look great. But you're not at the point yet where you're able to break the rules. If this helps, great. If not, ignore me. Good luck, don't give up.

[AndyT]

I guess I'm not even at the point where I could understand what you (and acidcrys?) are saying.
Maybe some examples would help: right / wrong.

I'm not saying I don't make those mistakes ... I just think it's not the reason why images like this one happen ... and many others which I didn't even save.
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[acidcrys]

I've overlooked your work even more just to analyze it some more. It just seems that you define the difference between your main subjects/foreground and your background. I think mainly its because of the reference pictures youre using. They just look faded.

As for your other drawings (mainly the wireframe type body forms) are actually pretty good.. I don't understand why you'd be worried about those.

The other drawings I just say the same as before.. show were the the subject seperates from the background.. like its two different subjects (foreground and background) and such
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[R a n d i s]

Sometimes i improved one minute before i was going to fall asleep.
I did stand up again because i had the feeling that i did not do enough this day so i did work the whole night. Having such moments i feel a great load of motivation and do actually improve quiet fast vew times in a year.
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[AliasMoze]

I'm twenty-eight, and, unlike most "visual artist", I never dreamed of being one as a child; I dreamed of making movies. From eighteen and into my twenties, I got sucked into animation and then painting. I was, therefore, forced into harder core training than I'd ever wanted. Now I do very little drawing and painting.

But, like eyewoo said, I've noticed that -across various disciplines, from drawing and painting to writing and directing- I tend to make leaps in improvement during breaks. I think that the mind needs time to get a handle on advanced concepts, and when it does, you reach another plateau.

The problem with training (which I think is the right way to go if you want to be an artist) is that so much of study is intellectual. And creation is emotional. You will never think your way to a good drawing. But you have to keep doing it to "understand" form, treat it intellectually, and one fine day you will find that you just DO certain things without thinking about it. Think of a phone number you know now by heart, and remember that at one point it was just a string of random numbers. Maybe you just dialed it so much that you learned it, or maybe you used a mneumonic device. At any rate, the intellectual thing married with your deeper mind and became knowledge. Same with learning anything else. Hopefully you will get to the point where you can abandon your training and operate on instinct. This, I think, should be the goal while learning any craft.

Focus on learning ideas, not words. When you read tutorial chapters, just remember to forget the specific words you're being told (about plotting perspective, modeling out a head, and so forth), and take the idea, the concept. Run it through your head without the dialogue. It may make more sense. What is it the teacher is trying to communicate to you?

I work as a writer/director now, and I see new writers struggling the way you're struggling to draw. It always comes down to too much intellectualizing. People will "structure" their work into crap, because they think "it's right". Now, I'm not saying principles are bad. They are necessary. But too many craftspeople are too anxious to move from training mode to full-fledged art god. You can't force it. But what you can do is the obvious: do work for your own amusement. Read your Loomis chapters, draw the pictures, measure them and draw them exactly, even trace them. When you're done, do one just for fun, a picture in your mind that delights you. You will likely find the practice you've done creeping in, improving the stuff you do for fun, and after all, isn't that what it's all about?

[FONGOOL]

Y'know Andy, when I look at your "the reason why images like this one happen" image, I don't see anything at all wrong with it other than it's not finished. When I look at this I don't see crap, I see the initial blocking-in stage that most painters, digital or otherwise, start with to define forms and volume before moving on to render lighting and texture and detail.

Remember that for most artists, the work doesn't look good right from the first brush stroke, often the thing looks like a hideous mess for a good long while until it's nearly completed!

The composition and gesture look decent, now you just need to learn how to render it to completion.


Another thing I'd suggest is that while it's great to read lots of information about how light works and how colors interact etc. What I've always found is that all these words in your brain don't often tend to lead you to an epiphany of technical improvement. What I generally find is that as I develop my "eye" and learn to see how things were done (or at least formulate theories about how I might reproduce the effects and techniques I see) and as I practice my art and experiment, suddenly those words that previously made so little sense out of context suddenly "snap" into place. So don't worry about being bewildered by theory, just keep studying work you think looks good and keep drawing and the concepts will sink in as you go.

Just keep at it and enjoy the journey, the destination will take care of itself...

That's my perspective on it anyway.

[Gort]

"Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do." -John Wooden
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[-CCroder-]

Heh, I didnt mean to be discouraging. Its just that sometimes it seems that my hands are smarter than the whole of the rest of my body.
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[Steven Stahlberg]

Heh, like so many other times as I scroll down a thread I had something to say only to find that someone said it before I reach the end. This time it was FONGOOL:
Yes I agree, that image is simply not finished yet. It's just a blocking in of the first sketch. In fact it's looking a bit cleaner and clearer than some of mine do at the early stages. Just pick a spot, zoom in and start working it.

And when you've done that all over, if you're not happy, go back over the image. If necessary do big changes - a big brush, cutting and pasting big pieces, major color correction etc... don't be afraid to pound the shit out of it, to ruin your previous hard work, it's the ONLY way to improve - both the image, and you. I've been known to work on the same small image for weeks, and not even very hi-res. Fine work, rough work, fine work, rough etc, in what sometimes feels like a never-ending cycle of doom...

Same thing with the front and side view sketch of a skeleton (problem.jpg) you showed as an example of how your later work is so bad. (I assume that's what you meant.)
But if you yourself can see it's not what you want, just keep hammering at it. Don't give up. Draw on top of it, cut out pieces, rotate/scale/move... (Reversing/flipping it can be a good way of finding errors.)
The point is, at a certain level of complexity I don't know exactly what works until I try it; I have to see it to judge it. The level this happens at is different for everyone and changes with experience. But you have to not be afraid to try something, and then erase it.

Practise is definitely all good, always. Never bad. Nobody ever got worse from practise. Sometimes we experience 'plateaus' where there's no progress, but this always ends sooner or later.
Just my 2 cents.

edit - btw lots of good advice here!

[YVerloc]

Andy,

You asked about revelations. I'm not sure of this will help you, but I know it made a big difference for me: having other artists you repsect to work with and collaborate with. In fact it made the single biggest impact on my image making than anything else, my four years of art school included.

I was really stuck in a rut until I had the opportunity to work on a project with another artist who's skills were really complimentary to my own. Luckily we also formed a really close friendship and worked side by side for many years. Now, when I feel stuck or unispired, I always ask myself "what would Rob do?".

So my point: Many people think of image-making as a really solitary activity. But i've found that to be a really destructive myth. Nothing gets the juices flowing like a good collaboration with artists whose opinions you respect and whose works you admire. Sijun is a good start, but nothing beats having other artists physically there.

Best of luck
YV

[AndyT]

Thanks for all the replies again!

acidcrys

[Drew]

Impossible? I really doubt that. I find that most things that people find impossible are just merely "very difficult". I changed my life when I started thinking of how to do what I want to do instead of why I couldn't do it. That's why in I'm in art school right now. I stopped making excuses and went.

If you really want to work with other artists, you'll find a way. That's all there is to it.

[scr]

art class? someone here actually paying to learn to draw? what morons

anyway have you considered a suicide? helps from depression

[AndyT]

I think I know what your site is
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