Just wanna know;
How long has it taken some of you to get where you are with your art?
And I know that "My Entire Life" is the proper answer, but what I mean is at what point did you really start improving?
Well, I'm a 3d artist (but it's still art. xD) and I started improving most about the beginning of the year when I learned about Ben and Chris Tate, and racer445.
some totally final fantasy inspired dude.
mostly tactics in the outfit, really, a bit of thirteen in the bad sheathe placement, and some 7-8 in the weapon design.
erm, sort of.
(work in progress, some color possiblities)
a bad joke I thought of while reading tvTropes. It was funnier at the time.
a man.
and a minotaur. he has christmas lights strung up to his horns. labyrinths are MAD dark, my friend. he has a balloon to generate electricity to power then, and luckily the labyrinth has some carpet. and such.
this started out as a drawing of a person but I quickly realized everything but the arms sucked, so I drew more.
guy pointing to the distance, but the arm foreshortening makes it look like he has a baby arm, lolol
IMAGES ARE BIG WITH LOTS OF WHITE SPACE, BUT THIS IS MY SKETCHBOOK.
Is it strange that I want to draw more since my cat died?
I am drawing a thing type thing and it isn't looking like as good of a thing as the type of thing i would like it to..
I am rather poor at giving objects depth, and actual spatial.. uh
mass. I can't make it LOOK actually 3 dimensional. It's tough, and i'm working on it.
Tip?
The hair is a result of too much Final Fantasy 7 and watching my friend play dragon ball z or whatever
:O also i got sick of trying to find a suitably pale skin tone so I just left it white.
and then a mintaur axing some poor chump
Thanks. I've been attempting to draw more lately.
One of the remaining human type people, reduced to a stupid sack of flesh and basic animal instinct, with a hint of linguistic ability. Clothes found and worn (The apocalypse doesn't have to be gray, right?) and the cleaver is used to butcher the various creatures (full animal, part human, or otherwise) wandering the world, for sustenance. He is easily frightened, amazed by bright lights, and generally lacking in the brains department.
I want to have more to post but came to realize today;
I have far too many ideas in my head, with very limited skill with which to represent them, and it's frustrating. This frustration is made worse by what I can only attribute to some sort of learning disability or something. I cannot focus long enough to do anything to improve my artistic ability. Many days are wasted sitting and attempting improvement, practicing, for hours on end with no improvement. And I use the word "practice" as an act of mercy on myself, because it is hardly practice. I sit, and attempt a few anatomical drawings, and then descend into a state of inability to focus, and scratch out horrible, broken little sketches that have no shape, no form, no skill. I flunked out of school for a very similar reason, that being that I could, at best, grasp the subject matter but fumble stupidly when it came to applying it in a practical way, and simply shut down, staring at my paper blankly. I'm not sure if there really is anything wrong in my head, but I guess what I'm wondering is if anyone else here has similar sorts of issues? Especially wishing to know if there are any that have managed to get themselves out of such a slump.
Hey there dude, it's not always about drawing 100 hands or heads to improve. 90% of the learning is all up here (pretend I'm pointing to my noggin), at least from my experiences. The work is proof of your learning, but the learning is all up top. And you can learn from anywhere, sometimes from the work itself, but also while daydreaming, while sleeping, while driving to your day job. You talk about losing your focus? Some of my best ideas, or things I've realized, have come from losing my focus and thinking about something else.
Everything can be tied back to art. Every time you walk down some stairs or play a new game, there's a lot there you can utilize in your art, to fuel your understanding.
I think you've already got a neat style going - perhaps it would help to know, what are you going for, really? Long term, what would you like to be doing, what type of art? Are there any artists who's work you admire and view as a sort of personal goal, for yourself? It's difficult to decipher from your sketchbook so far.
Oh, also, drawing is really really hard. Like most artistic endeavors. You're going to be spending a lot of time being humble about your abilities if you're going to move forward. But also note, that's not the same thing as feeling like crap and being down on yourself all the time. If it's not fun or at least resembling something you enjoy doing, it's not worth it.
Thank you for the response, and yes, I am aware that a lot of it is mental. But it's hard to get in the right mindset. Stylistically, I want to be able to paint well, represent people in a realistic manner, etc. Most of the way I draw currently stems from an inability to grasp depth, shading, and various other things that give objects and living things the appearance of life, and realism. I don't hate what I do now. I like it, most of the time, but as is true of anybody who enjoys such things, all I can see is what I should improve upon. Where i'd like to be. I've spent a great deal of time on polycount, from the age of 12-18, and I'd say a large amount of my inspiration comes from a lot of the artists here. Not only that, but a lot. Drawing is, very very hard. I'm aware. I've been drawing since I was about 5, and actually trying to improve ever since about the age of 12. And I've made progress, but I feel as though I've come to a stalemate. That I've stopped progressing. And sometimes, yes, I learn from sitting about and doing other things. But I would like to be able to sit down, and actually see improvement within a small amount of time, and actually be able to make improvements equivalent to the amount of time I put in. And I know, for a fact, that I could not simply sit by and stop drawing, stop improving, or to stop trying just because I get upset. Because It makes me even more upset to not try. So I have to keep working at it. I dunno. It's likely that i'm just upset about other things, and it becomes more obvious when other more apparent frustrations surface, such as drawing, etc. TL;DR I want to improve but am too upset in general to focus on anything, especially something as difficult and time intensive as drawing.
/wall of text
Everyone's style is a direct result of coping with what they're not able to do. Mine is no different.
You should expect to fail more than you succeed. And truthfully, you probably already do - I know so don't feel like you have to defend that, the problem is that you then get bent out of shape when what you expected winds up happening. Odd, yes?
The first post in this thread was...2 years ago, approaching on 3. On the first page there's a post from Slingshot giving you advice because you were feeling down on your work then, too, and his advice still applies. You've obviously been through this feeling before.
Don't worry on it. Find a painting you think is sweet as hell, one from Dave Rapoza or Ruan Jia, or one of the old masters or something. And just paint that, maybe a master study will help get you out of this slump and give you something different to look at. If it looks like shit, analyze why that is, and try again.
I see threads every so often, people thinking always on failure and the like. I can't think of one of them I've ever seen move past that, they usually just stop posting and fade away. It's up to you to break away from that. You've got some neat stuff here. Just keep trying new things and keep posting work.
I recently got a job, so it's a bit of a crunch getting used to my new schedule, which is to say, any at all. I have to make better use of my time. I made my post on a day off that I felt as though I wasted completely. But, that's life. And sometimes you need to waste a day. I bring a small notebook to work and draw during break/lunch time, just to keep the stuff fresh in my mind and get down any ideas I come up while working. Once I get a regular work schedule, i'll likely find a way to draw more, and practice more. Thanks for the advice, and you're pretty much spot on. TL;DR: Adjusting to a work schedule is throwing off my time management, as I can't simply do as I please anymore, so drawing becomes more frustrating. Money is nice though. Thanks for advice. I hope to get over it for real, and start progressing noticeably sometime soon.
for myself i think that you want to go to fast and do final drawing right away. i think that you have to learn the fondation before even starting to do some good thing. Try to learn anatomy, drawing principle like shading and perspective. You will make it if you study the right thing. Just keep drawing!
And for the money part, yes money is a good thing to have, but is it your passion?Sooner or later the sparkle about having money will disapear and you will be left with empty objet that dont really mean something to you!
anyway, im sure that u will make the right choice for yourself :thumbup:
Actually I would really rather not have a job, but I'm attempting to put away some money for school maybe, and a fancier tablet. And yeah, you're right. When I was 15 or so, my motto was "If it takes more than 10 minutes, it's not worth drawing." for whatever reason. I still kind of have that mindset, but I will have to get over that if I want to be able to really work on anything.
Dont worry, and please don't give up man! I think it's funny that in a sense we are striving for opposites. I strive to perfect things and take things slowly and I want to speed up my work. I also do more realism stuff. I would kill to be able to draw stylistic things like you do. Don't worry. Practice and time will help a lot. Rome wasn't built in a day. Good luck on the job front!
really really quick shitty drawing with lots of bad! based off a drawing from work colors are too dark.
hair especially.
ex-child soldier. Childhood from hell. Catatonic/comatose for 9 years after. On her 23rd birthday, she is released from her psyche ward in Russia(inadvertently) which is rapidly falling into chaos, and has been for the past 10 years. TOMMROW, I star with the photoshoop. IF! I am not sufficiently distracted.
PROGRSS
Bullet Wizard.
A literal gunslinger.
EDIT: I guess, at the time, the idea was that this was the quintessential action hero. Based off of Max Payne and Claude from gta 3. He has an absurdly spacious long coat, perhaps even containing another dimension, entirely full of guns. The plan is that he can just pull guns out of his coat and empty the clip, and chuck them away. I got the idea while playing The Darkness, in which Jackie Estecado just chucks away pistols after emptying them, and has a coat FULL of them, as well as shotguns. It just seemed absurd.
I found something that might be of your liking! You said that you want to do things fast eh, so here's a page With a time, that let's you draw anatomy poses with a time limit. So if you want to improve your anatomy, you should take a look at this. And don't worry about them being crap in the end, because if you keep drawing these short sesssions, you'll eventually see a huge difference in a matter of weeks! Enjoy!
Shit, that sounds useful. I always want to sit down and get meaningful practice in, but never feel as though I know where i'm going or what i'm looking for. This should be very helpful.
Thank you! And in the meantime..
Same lady bigger coat better lines no color.
And a NSFW dragon balancing a family sedan on the tip of his erect penis. I drew it with my laptops track pad in mspaint at a friends house. We were talking about dragons having sex with cars, i'm sure you've seen the pictures.
as of now the elf just picks mushrooms and sells them out of a large sack, and has no real knowledge of what mushrooms are not good to eat. He is likely completely out of his head on psychedellic mushrooms. i was throwing together Zelda type NPC's for a "just for fun" Futuristic Zelda update I was thinking of.
3 things
1 Scars=more disfiguring
2 smaller boooobs
3 ah, i remembered. Mouth is a bit off to the side, etc. Looks a bit awkward. ALSO, the lip shine kind of maeks it look like she has big ass buck teeth or something equally as silly.
I gotta re-iterate what others are saying, try working on something different, like classical art from masters.
You obviously love to draw things a certain way, so if doing anatomy studies is too boring for you, simply force yourself to spend half your time your way, and the other half the more traditional art way (anatomy studies, light studies, drawing art from masters etc.)
You obviously want to get better, but you are seriously slowing yourself down by not being disciplined enough to work on the more "boring" traditional type art. Personally, I spend almost no time doing the fun stuff with my drawing practice. I feel only the pro's have put the time in and actually earned the right to spend there time in a less productive manner. Anyway, that's just me.
Good luck, and please humor me with a post of an anatomy study next. :P
I still suffer from my old drawing habits, but I'm kicking them. The previous picture came from doing a couple of mouth/scar studies, which I need to do more of. Anime scars are great and all, but it doesn't work out for what I want. I have a few anatomy studies, but need to invest in a printer yet. Cellphone pictures are not a good way to upload drawings.
Old habits = Drawing during school, which results in a style that thrives on being inattentive. My old, ADD habit of drawing, where I used to believe that anything takes more than ten minutes = not worth drawing. The hours upon hours of mindless sketching in mspaint, with a mouse. Hence the scratchy, unsteady lines with no confidence in them.
lady that throws sewing needles and focuses electricity into them. not happy with the face, or the shitty coloring. want the face to be more like this, kind of tired/hungover/drugged up looking? Bitter maybe. A rougher/more masculine face. current face is completely the wrong shape.
and the quick anatomical thing i used to make sure things didn't look too awkward.
except that the arm totally does and seems to be popping out of the socket,almost as though she is ripping it off
will do rest of cast later, plus don knotts because he was the best guest star. and bat man doesn't count because that movie was shitty and dumb.
probably redo shaggy, he doesn't look quite right somehow (maybe too cartoony. eyes to close, too big? maybe someone that isn't me could point out what they feel is off?) essentially just doing portraits for char sheets for a Cthulhu d20 campaign I might be GM for someday. will require research (aka watching scooby doo)
Replies
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
i rly rly hate trying to paint things and make them look good but i know i'll love myself fot it eventually.
How long has it taken some of you to get where you are with your art?
And I know that "My Entire Life" is the proper answer, but what I mean is at what point did you really start improving?
PROTIP:
Drawing is the only way to improve at drawing.
Much more acceptable size for this image.
A thingg
Probably do some anatomy/muscle studies like this ^^
A wizard in some water, maybe?
some totally final fantasy inspired dude.
mostly tactics in the outfit, really, a bit of thirteen in the bad sheathe placement, and some 7-8 in the weapon design.
erm, sort of.
(work in progress, some color possiblities)
this is not anything good
i promise
i apologize for the large images.
wip concept character..
Supposed to look kind of 'trashy', she is not a fan of things
and here is a bald man with a sword being a shithead.
Fuck him.
a bad joke I thought of while reading tvTropes. It was funnier at the time.
a man.
and a minotaur. he has christmas lights strung up to his horns. labyrinths are MAD dark, my friend. he has a balloon to generate electricity to power then, and luckily the labyrinth has some carpet. and such.
I love to draw, but I suck at drawing to improve at drawing.
this started out as a drawing of a person but I quickly realized everything but the arms sucked, so I drew more.
guy pointing to the distance, but the arm foreshortening makes it look like he has a baby arm, lolol
IMAGES ARE BIG WITH LOTS OF WHITE SPACE, BUT THIS IS MY SKETCHBOOK.
Is it strange that I want to draw more since my cat died?
the psp final fantasy 1 remake has been made easierr
sadd
I am drawing a thing type thing and it isn't looking like as good of a thing as the type of thing i would like it to..
I am rather poor at giving objects depth, and actual spatial.. uh
mass. I can't make it LOOK actually 3 dimensional. It's tough, and i'm working on it.
Tip?
The hair is a result of too much Final Fantasy 7 and watching my friend play dragon ball z or whatever
:O also i got sick of trying to find a suitably pale skin tone so I just left it white.
and then a mintaur axing some poor chump
One of the remaining human type people, reduced to a stupid sack of flesh and basic animal instinct, with a hint of linguistic ability. Clothes found and worn (The apocalypse doesn't have to be gray, right?) and the cleaver is used to butcher the various creatures (full animal, part human, or otherwise) wandering the world, for sustenance. He is easily frightened, amazed by bright lights, and generally lacking in the brains department.
I have far too many ideas in my head, with very limited skill with which to represent them, and it's frustrating. This frustration is made worse by what I can only attribute to some sort of learning disability or something. I cannot focus long enough to do anything to improve my artistic ability. Many days are wasted sitting and attempting improvement, practicing, for hours on end with no improvement. And I use the word "practice" as an act of mercy on myself, because it is hardly practice. I sit, and attempt a few anatomical drawings, and then descend into a state of inability to focus, and scratch out horrible, broken little sketches that have no shape, no form, no skill. I flunked out of school for a very similar reason, that being that I could, at best, grasp the subject matter but fumble stupidly when it came to applying it in a practical way, and simply shut down, staring at my paper blankly. I'm not sure if there really is anything wrong in my head, but I guess what I'm wondering is if anyone else here has similar sorts of issues? Especially wishing to know if there are any that have managed to get themselves out of such a slump.
Everything can be tied back to art. Every time you walk down some stairs or play a new game, there's a lot there you can utilize in your art, to fuel your understanding.
I think you've already got a neat style going - perhaps it would help to know, what are you going for, really? Long term, what would you like to be doing, what type of art? Are there any artists who's work you admire and view as a sort of personal goal, for yourself? It's difficult to decipher from your sketchbook so far.
Oh, also, drawing is really really hard. Like most artistic endeavors. You're going to be spending a lot of time being humble about your abilities if you're going to move forward. But also note, that's not the same thing as feeling like crap and being down on yourself all the time. If it's not fun or at least resembling something you enjoy doing, it's not worth it.
TL;DR I want to improve but am too upset in general to focus on anything, especially something as difficult and time intensive as drawing.
/wall of text
You should expect to fail more than you succeed. And truthfully, you probably already do - I know so don't feel like you have to defend that, the problem is that you then get bent out of shape when what you expected winds up happening. Odd, yes?
The first post in this thread was...2 years ago, approaching on 3. On the first page there's a post from Slingshot giving you advice because you were feeling down on your work then, too, and his advice still applies. You've obviously been through this feeling before.
Don't worry on it. Find a painting you think is sweet as hell, one from Dave Rapoza or Ruan Jia, or one of the old masters or something. And just paint that, maybe a master study will help get you out of this slump and give you something different to look at. If it looks like shit, analyze why that is, and try again.
I see threads every so often, people thinking always on failure and the like. I can't think of one of them I've ever seen move past that, they usually just stop posting and fade away. It's up to you to break away from that. You've got some neat stuff here. Just keep trying new things and keep posting work.
TL;DR: Adjusting to a work schedule is throwing off my time management, as I can't simply do as I please anymore, so drawing becomes more frustrating. Money is nice though. Thanks for advice. I hope to get over it for real, and start progressing noticeably sometime soon.
And for the money part, yes money is a good thing to have, but is it your passion?Sooner or later the sparkle about having money will disapear and you will be left with empty objet that dont really mean something to you!
anyway, im sure that u will make the right choice for yourself :thumbup:
Funny, that.
really really quick shitty drawing with lots of bad! based off a drawing from work colors are too dark.
hair especially.
ex-child soldier. Childhood from hell. Catatonic/comatose for 9 years after. On her 23rd birthday, she is released from her psyche ward in Russia(inadvertently) which is rapidly falling into chaos, and has been for the past 10 years. TOMMROW, I star with the photoshoop. IF! I am not sufficiently distracted.
PROGRSS
Bullet Wizard.
A literal gunslinger.
EDIT: I guess, at the time, the idea was that this was the quintessential action hero. Based off of Max Payne and Claude from gta 3. He has an absurdly spacious long coat, perhaps even containing another dimension, entirely full of guns. The plan is that he can just pull guns out of his coat and empty the clip, and chuck them away. I got the idea while playing The Darkness, in which Jackie Estecado just chucks away pistols after emptying them, and has a coat FULL of them, as well as shotguns. It just seemed absurd.
http://posemaniacs.com/
Thank you! And in the meantime..
Same lady bigger coat better lines no color.
And a NSFW dragon balancing a family sedan on the tip of his erect penis. I drew it with my laptops track pad in mspaint at a friends house. We were talking about dragons having sex with cars, i'm sure you've seen the pictures.
Females! In poses. Badly!
A wood elf!
Another elf.
Posemaniac is helpful, thank you for sharing!
3 things
1 Scars=more disfiguring
2 smaller boooobs
3 ah, i remembered. Mouth is a bit off to the side, etc. Looks a bit awkward. ALSO, the lip shine kind of maeks it look like she has big ass buck teeth or something equally as silly.
those who wander out into the woods, seldom come back unchanged.
Working on getting away from the Anime scars, where a characters karma is often worn on their face.
I gotta re-iterate what others are saying, try working on something different, like classical art from masters.
You obviously love to draw things a certain way, so if doing anatomy studies is too boring for you, simply force yourself to spend half your time your way, and the other half the more traditional art way (anatomy studies, light studies, drawing art from masters etc.)
You obviously want to get better, but you are seriously slowing yourself down by not being disciplined enough to work on the more "boring" traditional type art. Personally, I spend almost no time doing the fun stuff with my drawing practice. I feel only the pro's have put the time in and actually earned the right to spend there time in a less productive manner. Anyway, that's just me.
Good luck, and please humor me with a post of an anatomy study next. :P
Old habits = Drawing during school, which results in a style that thrives on being inattentive. My old, ADD habit of drawing, where I used to believe that anything takes more than ten minutes = not worth drawing. The hours upon hours of mindless sketching in mspaint, with a mouse. Hence the scratchy, unsteady lines with no confidence in them.
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
and monty. again.
bird douche
bird with a golden scorpion standard thinger
lady that throws sewing needles and focuses electricity into them. not happy with the face, or the shitty coloring.
and the quick anatomical thing i used to make sure things didn't look too awkward.
except that the arm totally does and seems to be popping out of the socket,almost as though she is ripping it off
Whether you're willing to admit it or not, your improving. :poly142:
oh shit, it's scooby doo.
thanks for the words.
will do rest of cast later, plus don knotts because he was the best guest star. and bat man doesn't count because that movie was shitty and dumb.
probably redo shaggy, he doesn't look quite right somehow (maybe too cartoony. eyes to close, too big? maybe someone that isn't me could point out what they feel is off?) essentially just doing portraits for char sheets for a Cthulhu d20 campaign I might be GM for someday. will require research (aka watching scooby doo)