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If you've ever read articles about how to improve your art, you're sure to have heard one thing over and over - practice, practice, practice! While this is most definitely correct and undeniably crucial, I find that a big part of my improvement actually comes from the things I do outside of drawing.
What are these "things", you say?
First off, before you try to improve your art, you need to...
Have the right mindset
Understand and acknowledge these points:- Improvement is hard work. You will need to put in a lot of effort to achieve good results.
- Improvement takes time - and it comes in small steps. You cannot fly to excellence in a week - nor a month.
- There will always be people better than you and you will inevitably fail once in a while. Don't dwell on this - instead, learn as much as you can from it.
- You will need to take advice with an open mind. Learn from critiques and do not be offended if they are harsh - the more mistakes people point out, the better!
- Lastly, you need to decide that you don't just want to improve, but that you will improve.
Alright! Now that you got that determined face on, try to...
Observe:
- the world around you. I often find myself staring at random things - how intense the red bounce light is from my Gensing Royal Jelly box on the table in the afternoon,
or how my hand looks at different perspectives and angles when I'm lying in my bed in the morning, procrastinating on getting up, or the differences of eye shapes of strangers on the bus. And even right now I just looked up and noticed how harsh the shadows my curtains now cast because it's night time and there is only one source of light.
The room or office or whatever environment you're in right now can give you so much artistic insight - you just have to look. - other people's artworks. Look at artwork you wish you had the skill to paint. And then analyze it. Analyze it like hell . Would you be able to replicate this painting? Which parts would you be able to? Which would you not? Why can you not? Is it because you don't know how to do something? Don't know how to blend that well? Don't know how to draw such fantastic anatomy? Don't know how to do lineless? Don't know which brush they used? Search up tutorials or just ask the artist about it. AND GAIN ALL THE KNOWLEDGE , until you can look at that painting again, and be like - I could replicate this! Of course, the end goal is not just to be able to replicate a painting, but to be able to make your own creation with the skill level of that painting. That, though, comes with practice.
Also...
Gather information
- Take pictures of interesting observations - If you find something interesting you don't think you'll be using in your next few paintings, take pictures of them so you don't forget about them. Put them in a references folder and have organized subfolders so you can find them when you need them.
- Read/watch tutorials
- Request critiques - if you are not a premium member, simply ask for it in the description of your art. And don't just press the 'request critiques' button or put 'pls critique' in your description box, note artists you look up to to critique your work (very politely and do not bother them afterwards if they say no), ask for it in the forums, or join critique chat events. When you get a critique, take the advice and try to apply it to your next painting.
If you take each of the tips mentioned above and apply it to a painting, you will improve greatly with every painting that you do! It will take a lot of hard work, but just keep pushing and you'll break through!
,
i spent time hoping it wouldn't break i spent time taping all the pieces thousands of pieces i hope you feel this pain i hope you die and pick up your own ashes speck by speck with your bare hands evil is shattering the vase, evil is taping the vase, evil is telling you to fill in the cracks with gold and make something brand new better blood is on my hands and i'll leave this be broken you did it, so watch i did it, so ill watch too sit still no fumbling look you idiot you thought you could unbreak something? some mistakes can't be made learn a lesson but you can't unmurder someone so what good does the lesson do? bring them back from the dead? people die that's how it goes look look harder look at it this is the kind of thing you wish you would never write
my tablet of 8 years is dying :(
I got this tablet when I was 13, and I've used it up til now (technically a little less because I ended up sending in the first one with a warranty for a replacement). It's a smol little Wacom Bamboo Create I got for $60, but it's served me so well and I'm so used to it now. I'm pretty sure most people professionally use the larger screen ones but I planned on never parting with this boi until it died. :( I suppose it is now finally time. The pressure is getting weaker and weaker, and I'm basically drawing on 100% opacity all the time and it's sometimes still not enough. I'll be given a new one from school when I start this fall anyway, and I'm sure I'll adapt to it in time (it's one of the large screen ones). But I've always said drawing materials don't matter because I've drawn basically everything with this $60 small thing. I had a sort of pride with it XD. If Bamboo wasn't discontinued I'd literally get a new one of the same thing; why not, it works well enough for everything I
The Benefits of being an Artist During Zoom School
Creating custom zoom backgrounds XDXDXD So a bit of context for people not using Zoom/use it but don't know this-- you can set a custom background, and Zoom will automatically cut out your face so it looks like you're in front of the background. (Go to the arrow next to 'start video' and click 'choose virtual background'.) So this is how my room normally looks: But I get to change it up whenever I want :'). I think next week I'm gonna have a battleship crash through my room. Unfortunately no one commented on the pepes.. I wonder if they think those might be real pictures in the background and don't want to comment in fear of insulting my room decorations LMAO. for those also in zoom university/high school show me your custom virtual backgrounds (side note I'm not trying to hide my face particularly-- I know you can find it pretty easily like on my artstation.. just felt like it today though xd)
Thank you for the DD
I never thought I'd be writing this journal because ???
me? DD? ~ohstopityouplz (https://www.deviantart.com/ohstopityouplz)
Haha it was just a really nice surprise since I'd just "returned" to dA after a somewhat 3 year dry spell, and I was browsing my old journals and artworks and being all nostalgic for all the fun times I had on dA in elementary-early highschool, and just being excited to have time to draw again and be back here... and I was just thinking I'm hoping I can keep making art and being in this community and make new memories for years to come - yenno, cheesy stuff. And then I get a DD for basically the first artwork I posted since last year... and I'm not one for
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Great advice! Thank you for the step by step. A while back I wrote a piece about practicing better that had a similar feel. It feels like we all get in a rut where we wind up practicing things that will never let us grow. This is great!