How do you develop artistic taste? Is it even possible?
polycounter lvl 9
I work as a level designer, and the longer I work in the industry, the more skill is expected from me, obviously. Lately I've been seeing that I clearly don't have good enough sense for aethetics and design. A number of level designers I work with and of course concept artists seem to have some natural talent to this: they see how colors work together better than me, they set up better compositions in environments, they have more interesting shapes and rhythm in their work, they seem to have much easier time finding solutions to creative problems at hand. Of course, a lot of it comes from experience, and I don't want to downplay all that time spent practicing, but it still feels like they have something I don't.
My technical knowledge is solid for senior level designer; in fact I work as one. Finding solutions to technical issues was always easier for me and I totally deliver everything that is expected from me and even more. However I am having really hard time at my job at a top gamedev corp in my country, because I can't solve creative problems fast enough and good enough without asking way too much input from our art director.
I often get told something along the lines of "this color doesn't really work in the environment". But how am I supposed to fix this if I just can't see that it doesn't work! When the art director comes and does overpaint, for instance, the image clearly looks better, but I still can't understand why and how can I come with solution to such problems myself. Same goes with composition and the worst of all - rhytm, which is sooo abstract.
Undeveloped artistic taste cripples my career, and it is extremely frustrating. Is there a way I can improve on it? I've been thinking about learning to draw / concept environments. I know it will be time consuming, and I am ready to put hours into it, but I have serious doubts it will work. What if I spend 5,000 hours, and won't really improve in my initial goal? Does anyone have advice on this?
My technical knowledge is solid for senior level designer; in fact I work as one. Finding solutions to technical issues was always easier for me and I totally deliver everything that is expected from me and even more. However I am having really hard time at my job at a top gamedev corp in my country, because I can't solve creative problems fast enough and good enough without asking way too much input from our art director.
I often get told something along the lines of "this color doesn't really work in the environment". But how am I supposed to fix this if I just can't see that it doesn't work! When the art director comes and does overpaint, for instance, the image clearly looks better, but I still can't understand why and how can I come with solution to such problems myself. Same goes with composition and the worst of all - rhytm, which is sooo abstract.
Undeveloped artistic taste cripples my career, and it is extremely frustrating. Is there a way I can improve on it? I've been thinking about learning to draw / concept environments. I know it will be time consuming, and I am ready to put hours into it, but I have serious doubts it will work. What if I spend 5,000 hours, and won't really improve in my initial goal? Does anyone have advice on this?
Replies
I personally would recommend the great courses "how to draw" I found this to be hugely comprehensive of the basics, its by no means something you will never stop learning, but its soemthing that needs study to progress, composition, color theory form & shape, all ties into it.
Tons of r free resources in the 2D tutorial art world too
Just need to search, observe and study only way to improve, there is nothing magical about it really.
If I were you I would switch from your image to the overpaint over and over again, seeing how exactly do they differ. Like ticking the visibility of a layer in Photoshop. It's easier to spot differences this way.
I was gonna post that "Quantifying Beauty" article from Andrew Maximov if it helps, and it happens that he made a thread around here and the discussion is pretty interesting, besides the article itself:
http://polycount.com/discussion/128303/quantifying-beauty-in-representative-art
There's also these threads focusing on composition. Even if you don't agree with what's being said it at least gives you something to think about:
http://polycount.com/discussion/177913/improving-readability-in-composition-01
http://polycount.com/discussion/180491/improving-a-readability-in-composition-02
Colour seems to be your biggest concern. You've been told you choose colours poorly. So you don't understand colour palettes.
I would suggest you start doing some colour mixing with oil paint (oil paint stays wet for a long time so you can blend it easily). Start out with the Zorn palette. Make colour wheels and mixing charts with that limited palette. It is very easy to find many examples and tutorials on this palette. You'll see immediately what can be done with only a few colours and white.
If you learn to do this (it's easy) then you will realize that this is all most people do when they apply colours.
Repeat for different subjects, like environment pieces, even regular paintings (you're spending a couple of hundreds on a new painting, in this style, what do you buy and why?)
This should open a critical eye, you will sort what you find in different quality levels, and you may start to think on the lines of "this looks great, but if that part was another color like in the other one I found, and this part would look a little bit different, it would be awesome"
Developing an artistic eye takes a lot of time though, the good part though, you have to look at loads of good art!
In my experience (not that I've got a fantastic eye for things myself), improving your "artistic sense", or your eye, is all about time and study. Not necessarily practice, you can put in thousands of hours for the simple sake of "putting in the work", and if you're not studying, trying to problem solve, working backwards from what works, etc - you may wind up putting in a lot of time for little improvement. You see it all the time online, people keeping sketchbooks going for years and going from the first page to the last page...there's improvement, sure, but not leaps and bounds (obviously there are many people who improve greatly, too, just saying it's certainly possible to put in less valuable hours).
Something I think helped me over the years is really trying to work backwards from works that looked like absolute genius to me. I'd put them in photoshop and just do everything I could to learn from them. Crank them up to pure black/white, focus on what reads after the fact and what doesn't - reflect on the bits that are truly important to the image. Put a mosaic filter on it and turn it into some blown out pixels, a color grid and figure out why those work. Compare the results to other works, see if there's a pattern... how often do they use certain values, where are their focal points, how much visual interest is there and where? Take some existing work, chop it in half and see if you can create that now-missing half to match. If it looks off, why? Take snapshots of what you're working on and look at it from all angles.
Eventually enough time will pass, and you'll look back on those works you thought were genius before and you'll see issues with them. You'll work on a piece, start making decisions for no other reason than pursuing what looks right - you'll know it when you see it, get a better and better feel for how much longer it will take to get there, etc.
I think reading on the matter can help...watching tutorials, etc. But...I don't know if that will be as beneficial as doing your own experimenting. I guess I sort of feel like if you want to obtain something and make it yours, you need to have pursued it in your own way. Failed repeatedly and had to figure out the fix. You want to eventually make your artistic decisions because you know they're the right ones, because you fucked it up in the past and spent a week reworking it until it finally clicked into place... not just because you read it somewhere or saw an infograph, but because you took the time to test that knowledge yourself.
tl;dr - TeriyakiStyle summed up my thoughts, lol
One thing that won't happen overnight is developing good artistic sensibilities. That takes time. An artist who has spent their whole life thinking about art and creating art is going to be at an advantage here. Not from talent, but instead from having puts tons of experience points into art skills over time. Of course, there is no time like the present to get started on this. Just keep your expectations realistic.
That is what troubles me the most. Historically I was doing more technical tasks throughout my career, which means I accumulated more technical, not creative knowledge. But how do you know if you are not really an artistic kind of person or do you simply lack experience? It is often mentioned that "talent" is just countless hours of deliberate practice, but being nearly 30 y.o. person it is hard to justify spending next few years on gaining this experience based only on that theory. I can go head-on practicing art or I can spend time gaining more technical skills, but I can't do both due to limited time constraints. Do artists really do this? Quite interesting, I always thought an artist's thought process more... creative and based on feelings, rather than more technical analysis.
Seems like outstanding method. I always felt like looking at a piece of art and analyzing it "visually", i.e. not doing anything with it, is not that beneficial.
Yes, obviously it is unrealistic to expect becoming great artist without a decade of previous experience. I am just trying to understand if it is possible to improve on art to meet employers' expectations. While I was younger and worked at more junior roles, my artistic sense was good enough to keep me emplyed. Now when I am expected to be more skilled, I cannot meet those requirements due to lack of artistic "talent". It is tough decision whether I can improve on art in timely manner or should I go head-on into technical side of things like scripting and stuff. Or maybe even into production role, who knows.
So I'm always absorbing ideas and my understanding of things.
Go to a museum some time, and see what works and what doesn't. Next time you see a cool concept, or cool environment, ask yourself why it caught your eye. See the colors that catch your eye, the forms that catch your eye, etc. Maybe try to imitate it.
Something that requires more work— if you draw, try copying a painting or concept down to its essence. It might take some work, but I think it's definitely possible.
Everyone in here is making great points and giving great tips.
Like others said, looking at other people's artwork and analyzing it can help and doesn't take much time. After watching the style you like over and over you subconsciously make stuff based on the images you have seen.
I see, most commenters agree that developing artistic sense is totally possible, however it takes a lot of time. I love that there are a couple of people also offer somewhat alternative opinions; would be nice to see more of such thoughts.
Thanks again everyone for advice and opinions. Got to reflect on all information we have here and decide where do I go from here.