Art Tips

by *Bobbie-the-Jean

I am writing this for a friend and for anyone else who may find it useful. The following treatise is by no means law or the only way to do things. It's only what I know or believe so far and it's probably not applicable to most styles except those similar to my own. Take from it what you will. 

1.) Gesture drawings: Yeah, I know, it's one of the most annoying criticisms you'll get "you need to do more gesture drawings!" Stifle your reflex to kick them into a volcano and do it. Your art will be better for it. Try to set aside at least 15 minutes a day for gesture drawing.

2.) Draw from life: If you've been drawing or painting for any significant amount of time, you've probably heard this one too. Second verse, same as the first. Do it, your art will be better for it. Observational skills are KEY to representational art and the more you hone them, the more skilled you will become. Try to imprint on things you see around you; think of life as like a big How To catalog. 

3.) Variation: Very, very few things in life are perfectly smooth and uni-textured. Variation is a major aspect of realism. Take fur for example: there is a fair amount of variation in one single strand of fur and even more from strand to strand. If you observe the world around you, you will see this to be true. However, don't just start throwing in random noise, variation is most often dictated by rules. Try to discern what those rules are. Variation is key but so is the logic behind it. 

4.) Anatomy: Anatomy is one of the easiest things to get wrong and one of the hardest things to get right. We are preprogrammed as humans to recognize anatomy and our eyes often shoot straight towards the anatomy mistakes in a painting with sniper-like precision. Conversely, if you're an artist who has been slaving over a painting for 50 hours, you may become blind to anatomy mistakes or you may even convince yourself a mistake is not really so bad and continue working around it. DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT. The longer you work around a mistake, the more glaring it will become and the harder it will be to fix later on. Make sure the anatomy is as correct as you can get it before you start advancing too far. I recommend keeping a few good anatomy guides on hand including photographic, artistic, medical, and any combination thereof.  

5.) Inspiration and motivation: Yet another great difficulty is getting up the inspiration and motivation to do art. Different things work for different people. I like perusing other artists' work; that rarely fails to get me motivated and inspired but if it does, that usually means I've burned out and need a vacation from art for a few days. You need to find something that works consistently and adequately for you. Some artists listen to music, play video games, hike, dive, read, fap, read while fapping; whatever. Getting properly inspired and motivated is very important because exactly how inspired and motivated you are will reflect in your work. Ideally, you should refrain from tackling an artistic endeavor without the proper motivation and inspiration. However, practically, there are deadlines to contend with. This is why it is important to find things that work consistently and adequately to motivate and inspire you. This is not just some cheesy self-help suggestion, it is an absolute must, in my opinion. 

6.) Strive to be multi-disciplined and experiment: Always, always, always, always, always, try new things and avoid pigeonholing yourself. The day you stop experimenting and trying new things is the day you cease to be an artist and become a copy-machine. It is not at all a bad idea to specialize and become skilled at one discipline, but don't limit yourself to that. Practice cartooning, try 3D, get into traditional media, try different programs, experiment with dramatically different approaches. Dabbling in various media will affect and possibly improve your main discipline in ways you can't foresee. 

7.) Don't force it: Hopelessly naïve idealists will say stupid crap like "never give up!" To which I say "bullshit." Recognize your limitations and be practical. If you've been trying and failing miserably at something for a significant period of time, take a break from it, try a different approach, or just move on. As an artist, you will have to square with the fact that you can't do everything. I'm not saying hang up your hat on a whim, no; give it your all and develop a "back to the lab again," attitude but be prepared to admit defeat because it will happen sometimes. You have your strengths and your weaknesses; try to capitalize on the former, try to minimize the latter, and learn when to throw in the towel because the fact is, there ARE subjects out there that will kick your ass in like a steel-toed boot conveyor belt. Besides, you can always come back to whatever it is at a later date. I totally bombed things a year ago that I've got down pat today. 

8.) Hard lessons: Buffer your ass because there will be many of them. One of the first things I learned the hard way is that no one owes me anything; I am not owed pageviews, I am not owed comments, and I am not owed favorites no matter how much time or effort I put into something. A 13 year old Pixiestick-addict can slap together a piece of  MS Paint cocksmut that will get more love and attention than the Rembrandtean masterpiece you spent 50 hours slaving over; deal with it, it is a fact of life. Most people won't give a shit about your "artistic breakthrough" piece or your "new style experiment" and if you expect them to, you will be thoroughly disappointed. In fact, don't expect anything of anyone. There are a slew of artists infinitely better than you and at least one of them will be some punkass little 19 year old; fact. People don't like change, they will gripe at you if you try something different; ignore them as hard as you can. Graciously thank the complements you get, heed the critiques, and ignore the trolls. If you figure out how to do that last one there, let me know. 

9.) Nuance: People like nuance. They like things that keep their eyes traveling around the composition. People especially like to see hands, eyes, water, reflections, ornature, and anything hinting at complexity of the universe contained within a painting. To depict nuance, one must understand the subject. Take a baseball for example; 'round, white, and red braided seams' are the first things that come to mind. Nuance; a faint, smudged, brown finger print, dimples, a few stray threads from the braiding, uneven wear on the surface, uneven specularity consistent with the aforementioned, a slight dent. 'Round, white, and red braided seams' may suffice in many instances, but if you're looking for realism, nuance is vital. 

10.) Nobody owns you except you: If you've been producing art pro bono for any community long enough, some idiots will inevitably develop the mistaken idea that they own you or that you owe them something. They will make demands, try to shove you in a specific direction, and condescend you if you fail to meet their mightily fucking important expectations. Unless they are paying customers, nobody has a right to expect anything of you. Do what you are going to do and if they don't like it, they can fuck off. 

11.) Bacon.

12.) Autopilot is bad: It can be really easy to drift into autopilot mode when painting; don't. If you drift into a lull of passively watching yourself paint, this is when you are most likely to make mistakes.  

13.) Eyes: The whites of your eyes are NOT made out of some kind of magic, ambient material. Eyes should be spherically shaded and rarely, except under bright light, is the eye-white pure white. Don't over-vein up the whites unless you're going for zombie-chic. If the eyes are large enough, try to draw in some reflected lashes. That can be REALLY hard to do but if you do it right, it will significantly increase the realism. Eyes are not flat but spherical. The corners will tend to be slightly darker because they are receding.

14.) Don't hide things: I have seen this many a time; "I don't know how to draw such and such so I will cleverly hide it behind (insert obvious attempt to avoid drawing difficult thing-hider here). Don't do it. It's usually obvious and you will be called out for it. Even if you get it wrong, at least try; you'll probably be called out for that too but at least it's a step towards getting it right.   

15.) Gold: Gold metal picks up a significant amount of color from its environment and thus will rarely ever be the bright yellow people often depict it as. If you want to paint realistic gold, you're going to have to reconcile with the fact that there will usually be less of the metal's namesake color involved than colors from the environment.   

16.) Mind v reality: When we draw or paint, we have a tendency to rely way too heavily on what we think something should look like and not on what it actually looks like. Don't guess when there is an abundance of answers all around you. The only time you should guess is when the thing you're depicting can't be captured with a photo or referenced from reality.  

17.) Big to small: Don't start noodling early on. Work from big to small. A lot of people have a tendency to noodle the eyes in before everything else is even beyond the block in stage. DON'T. Try to bring everything up at a fairly consistent level. Otherwise, your painting might turn out with uneven patches of detail and the overall quality will suffer. Consistency usually breeds consistency; work from big to small and bring everything up evenly.  

18.) Torso first: (CONTROVERSY! I would like to remind everyone reading this that these are just my opinions and if you don't like one, feel free to ignore it but don't FUCKING LECTURE me on how you think I'm wrong because you don't do it the same way I do. Different strokes for different folks.... OH GOD PUNNNNNN. Terrible. I deserve to be flogged. Anyway.... back to the show.  

When drawing figures, a lot of people make the mistake of drawing the head first. Instead, draw the torso first. The torso dictates the direction of all the limbs and the head. To put it simply, starting with the head is like building a pyramid in reverse… except that the results in the latter would be a bit more catastrophic. XD The torso is the hub and if you draw anything else but the hub first, you risk wrongtastic looking anatomy issues later down the line. 

19.) Don't be an asshole when critiquing: There is a difference between critiquing someone because you want to help them and being an asshole. Unless someone specifically ASKS you to tear their work apart, be polite, be positive, and be encouraging. Point out flaws as well as success so the artist knows both what they did right and wrong. Be careful when criticizing stylistic choices because those ARE opinion based whereas assessments of technical issues are not. 

20.) Plan: It's annoying, I know, but the more you plan, the better the outcome will be, usually. You might think "oh, I don't need to plan," believe me I know, I used to think the same way. But since I've started planning things out, my art has improved dramatically. Even if you don't sketch or thumbnail, at least try to have a clear idea of where you want the piece to go and what you want the final result to look like. Otherwise, you may find yourself stuck midstream with no direction and a lot of confusion about what to do next. 

21.) Progress: Artistic progress is never a steady incline. You will have surges, backslides, triumphs, failures, plateaus, bumps, burnouts, washouts, rough patches, winning streaks, blackholes, blocks, highs, lows, and everything in between. Don't expect everything to go smoothly in a progressive upward arc. As you experiment, try new programs, new media, new methods, practice, study, implement newly discovered knowledge, and refine your talents, you will notice backslides, changes, and surges in skill. Inevitably, some little retard will come along and tell you that your older stuff looks better than your newer stuff. This will almost always be some bitter, talentless hack with an axe to grind and a chip on his shoulder. Ignore em. Anyone who expects you to progress in a perfect upward arc is an asshole who knows nothing about artistic growth. Strive to better yourself but don't be discouraged if you do backslide a little. Keep moving forward, don't dwell on failures too much, don't celebrate successes too much either, and pay no heed to the assholes who want to tear you down to satisfy their own ineptitude.  

22.) More bacon.   

23.) Challenge yourself: Paint something against your nature or that you've never done before. If you focus on organic things, paint a cityscape. If you focus on robots and buildings, paint the human figure. Try a colorscheme dramatically different than what you usually do. Paint with your other hand if you're not ambidextrous. Chances are you'll fail, miserably even. However, you may learn something and you never know, you may succeed and surprise yourself. Don't let fear of failure stop you from challenging yourself and trying new things. You won't progress if you don't challenge yourself at least a little bit. 

24.) Fur and cloth: Fur will follow the directionality of form. Don't just draw a bunch of furry strokes going in whatever direction. Cloth will also tend to react to the form beneath it but it is furthermore being acted on by gravity to various degrees, depending on the type of cloth. When inventing cloth folds, try to imagine how the cloth would react to form and gravity. 

25.) READ THE *&^!@#$>?*&%$! TEXT!: I have heard distressingly many people admit that they don't read the text in how to art books and that is just STUPID. If you're not serious enough about art to read the text in the how to art books you've bought… just, fuck, I can't even think of a funny punchline, you're retarded. Go flagellate yourself. It's utter laziness and if you buy how to art books just to stare at the purdy pickturrrs, you might as well not waste your money because there are plenty of purdy pickturrrs online. And if you're too lazy to read the usually quite scant text in how to art books then you SURE AS FUCK are not going to have enough drive to get anywhere as an artist. R-E-A-D the FUCKING TEXT.

Someone: Hey Bobbie, what happened to your desk?

Me: There is a crater. 

Someone: Yes, I see that. But how did it get there?

Me: Like this: *Headdesk headdesk headdesk headdesk headdesk headdesk headdesk headdesk………* 

26.) Eraserophilia: Don't spend more time erasing than drawing. Now of course, sometimes you are going to need to erase, for sure, but don't second guess every single little stroke. Sometimes you just need to trust in yourself and go forward, within reason of course; if you totally bork something the fuck up, erase that shit and pay attention next time.   

27.) Woe is me: Don't denigrate yourself! It's fucking annoying, nonconstructive, and pointless. You may very well suck but advertising it won't bring about ANYTHING good. All you will accomplish is to further perpetuate the misery and make everyone within a 5 mile radius want to kill you. Conversely, don't think you're the greatest thing since vibrators unless you're two strokes short of Boris Vallejo or Raphael Lacotse.

28.) Mode: Sometimes, you need to get into a "mode" to accomplish something that you'd otherwise not want to do. I love working on characters and I HATE doing backgrounds. Thus, I force myself to go into "background mode." It takes some discipline but it has helped me out a great deal. 

29.) On the topic of backgrounds: Don't draw a character then just willy-nilly plop them into a background. The character will almost always look disassociated from the background if you do this. Bring the character up in detail along with the background consistently. Also consider the effects of atmospheric perspective. Things will become less sharp, less saturated, and less contrasted as they recede into the distance. 

30.) Study: You don't know everything and if you think you have all the answers, you are severely deluded. It is necessary for you to look outside yourself for answers to artistic quandaries. You should scrutinously scour other artists' work, read (yes, you heard me, fucking READ OMG WHAT A CONCEPT) how to art books, peruse tutorials, and never become complacent.

31.) Color: Study color theory. It really isn't all that hard and it's kind vital if you want to not suck. Avoid using gray for shadows and white for highlights. Shadows will be cool and highlights will be warm. I'm not saying make the shadows OMG PURPLE and the highlights JESUS LORD HAVE MERCY ORANGE, but you do want there to be some color implied there.  

32.) Murder your darlings: This is actually a bit of advice Stephen King gave on writing which I have adapted to my art. Sometimes you will fall in love with an aspect of a painting that just isn't working or doesn't fit for whatever reason. Kill it. It will not be pleasant but it must be done. I like to keep a file of darlings that I've had to murder. Many of these things end up in my sketch dumps. 

33.) Edge control: There are basically 4 different types of edges: Very soft, soft, firm, and very firm. Make sure the edge you are using is appropriate for the form you are trying to convey. This is very important.