Traditional 2D art is... weird
ngon master
Now that I've been in 3 different art classes at my community college for a month I have a completely different perception of art. My drawing teacher could care less if the perspective is off and just cares about contrast and composition, the first day I was like okay I'm going to be the best kid in the class, then bam, my drawings get torn apart, and a lot of the people that don't have much technical skill quickly learn how to use contrast and composition and their stuff looks great even though the scale is completely off, and that leaves me in a limbo land of what makes art good... technical skill or just doing a great job on a few important aspects of art, or what...
/end random rant.
/end random rant.
Replies
yeah this'll screw you over pretty quick
"technical skill or just doing a great job on a few important aspects of art,"
The more technical skill (including having good ideas!) the better your work will be. If you only are serviceable at one tiny bit of drawing than yeah, everyone who's picked up a handful of skills you dont have is going to do better.
Except gay people.
Seriously though, been working on my 2d skills for awhile now since they were horrible and there is this perception that is in complete contrast with my 3d brain, if I do 2d long enough I almost see it, but as soon as I touch a computer again it's gone
Everything contributes to the end result of a good piece of artwork. However perspective is the framework which a drawing or painting is built upon, if the perspective is bad then as far as realism is concerned then the artwork is flawed. If you neglect perspective you will always struggle to depict anything accurately.
I find it very odd that a drawing instructor doesn't emphasize the importance of good perspective. When I was taking college art courses it was the drawing instructor that emphasized perspective the most while the painting and photography instructors cared more about everything else.
You're not suddenly going to become a master at anything in the time span of a college course so just keep working on your fundamentals and don't worry about it. You will get better one step at a time given enough practice.
So they're starting with understanding contrast and composition, only focusing on that. Once you learn those skills you can then move on to others. The order in which you do that varies a bit from school to school (and to the leanings of your teacher between design/illustration/fine art/etc), but the idea is to try and separate skills so that you're not learning everything at once.
If you know about perspective then that's fantastic, you dont have to throw that knowledge away. If you can focus on keeping a good range of values and having good composition WHILE having correct perspective then you're one step ahead.
By technical I meant getting every line perfect and 100% reproducing what you see.
I just thought it was weird that perspective is normally the first thing all highschool art classes go over, and I haven't heard much about it besides my painting instructor helping people with their preliminary sketches, be he also isn't looking for perfection in that matter.
The obvious answer is... they're all important, tremendously important. But important in different ways to different jobs. My personal opinion is you should be good at all of 'em because they should at all poin't click and become one in the same in a way. All art is emulating reality, and to be good at that you need to be good at all of those things described.
Long story short, find out what you excel at, find a job that requires that. You can be successful doing just one of any of those things
QFT
There are worse things.
How can you design convincing worlds if you cant make an illusion of depth.
There are a lot more bad teachers out there than there are good ones. A good indicator is the quality of their own work (though a lot of bad teachers don't show their own work for this reason... ).
Anyways this is a good quote, slightly unrelated, but also very related at the same time.
EXCEPT HUMAN
I'm not a professional artist but I know what does work the best is to work hard. If you are good with a pencil use it and draw a lot. If painting is your passion do that.
can you tell what I am? draftsman/painter?
http://www.toddplesniak.com/2d_LifePainting.html
ZacD there is always someone better only thing you can do is improve yourself and work hard.
peace.
My cat would disagree... :P
In drawing you are attempting to produce the illusion of depth. With digital imaging, you can create actual depth. No illusion necessary. So someone with exceptional skill at drawing realistic images will always be impressive. But there is far less demand for their skills these days. That manner of artist usually finds their way into concept drawing, or drafting.
Of course, this might just be my natural bias showing itself. I've always been more of a cartoonist, and have mildly resented artists that can draw realistically.
No.
@Sandbag, no to what? its a lengthy post.
Yeah i'll just leave it at that.
From pragmatic standpoint, every sort of art is more or less pointless, except some technical drawings.
Then you've got the people saying that for something to be "Art" it can have no other purpose but to exist. Otherwise it's not art...
I dunno if I agree with that, but I'm not exactly striving to define art.
You'd be amazed how much 2D skills cross over into the 3d world. While most of us aren't composing entire scenes with our 3d, good compositional knowledge applies just as much to individual assets and characters. Same with color, lighting, even perspective.
One of the great things about 2d art relative to 3d in this area is that it's much easier and quicker to practice these principles on a 2d canvas as opposed to a 3d model. You can crank out a really decent color/lighting study in a couple hours in photoshop, whereas a similarly comprehensive color study, done on a 3d model, might take 4x as long. Anatomy studies, thumbnails, etc... having a solid 2d base is like putting a multiplier in front of your 3d skill set.
I level up my 3d skills a lot before I even started seriously working on my 2d, and I've pretty much fallen in love with it. If you're on the fence at all, I recommend diving headfirst into the 2d art dimension. It's a ton of fun and will really round you out as an artist, and your 3d will improve a lot because of it.
QFT to Ferg
That's academia for you.
Anyway, you're not going to impress everyone. Art teachers often grade on what they personally value and on they are the most skilled at, and if its a beginner class, value and composition is the first thing they teach.
@Richard Kain:
In an age of swords and axes who still uses a knife to make his/her sandwich the old king said...
or why do people still walk while they can embed motorized rollerblades to their feet
just saying that 2D is 2D and 3D is 3D and each require their own skills,
there is no shame in combining the two but someone who painted a beautifull realistic painting has other skills than someone who modeled and rendered one.
Even though the results might look the same the process and the experience differs.
anywho i like both of the processes and enjoy doing them for their own reasons ^^
EXCEPT HUMAN AND A CAT
Draw more
its sometimes wired to pass allongside people telling you this is the most important stuff in art or whatever. confuzing confuzing... hmmm , well, neglecting i would never suggest - its great to slip out of your role from time to time, getting experience with this and that to see the importance or impact it will have. take all those "this direction teachers" serious and give your best and make your experiments (why not keeping perspective/proportions out of focus for a while? lets call it for a while working abstract!), never care about if the other person might be stupid or not - all has his importance! & no fear from loosing perspective, you can always go back to it if you want ... afterwards
one day, one day, "this" school is over
Lol, this was a good one, even in jest.
Anyway, the way I see it, when I'm going to a place to be tought stuff, I try to kill my ego and my preconceptions the moment I step foot in the class/gym/whatever so that I can be taught from scratch.
Afterwards (that's not right after the class, but rather after a couple of months of classes) you can analyze the stuff you've been taught in a way as objective as possilbe and see if you think it is an experience that has merrit to it, and thus you should be sticking around, or if you should try something else instead.
[ame]http://www.amazon.com/Perspective-Guide-Artists-Architects-Designers/dp/0713488867[/ame]
There are too many similar books at amazon, but being myself an engineer, i prefer the technical ones
The quality of an artist resides on his stroke, his lines, his perception of volumes and perspective. Poor artists usually do "abstract" art and they have a dirty style with fat brushes... due to their lack of perception. Focus first in learning perspective, master it, then, worry about angles, and compositions, and then, in colors/lighting.
Any person, animal, can be simplified to helpers, primitives, poligons, etc. If you are good in perspective... piece of cake. Once you have enough practice, forms will flow on paper as water. "Be water my friend" haha
You can be very good with composition/colors, but if you fail at the first step.. too bad imho. Composition/colors are something that should come after. When we are modelling, we should not pass the "grey phase" until the model is enough good or better said, "almost perfect".
You can have a work with a good composition... but if the model, scene, is a shit... no way dude.
An example, pencil work only by a japanese artist... and finishing it = total satisfaction. It could be some hours or less.
centered composition? :poly136:
I recomend you to try to represent the world as a real photo camera ^^ but with pencil filter haha.
Learn the technical aspect first, then add the art.
edit: 2D can be different of 3D, but it makes us better with 3D. Generally, all great 3D artists draw very well.
Case in point: that sargent guy, what a hack.
It must be for you, because i only saw spots, and fat brush strokes i fail to identify as real forms. It's worse than to have blindness, or seeing everything blurry. That brown/dark shape under her arm, is supossed to be a hand? and where are the folds of the clothes? what is she carrying?
I think it could be a matter of tastes, but dunno really, maybe of level?. I hate dirty drawings :poly136:. If you are asked to make a concept, for a prototype/model/character, the standard, what it must be done, is to do a clear drawing, as easy to read as to don't need to ask... what's this part? can you explain me? can you draw me a better drawing?. When i'm painting... i'm not seeing blurry things in my brain (my black canvas..), so i don't understand this dirty trend. It's untolerable to look over a dirty concept, and wonder how is designed a part... that kind of concepts, for me are a fail, a total fail, done by someone who don't see things properly.
The drawing i posted is from a manga... so it does not need to offer much ¬¬. Manga is monochrome and with black and white, you can sense all what the author wants to express. Take as example photography, with sepia and WB photos, you get maximum contrast between whites and blacks.
If we should talk about traditional art, let's have as example things like this:
What suppore posted is clearly unfinished for me.
cough cough
Look at the year. 1890. Now all the art artists do.. seems to be worse, except a few ones.
ahh, Picasso didn't know how to draw very well... and you see, abstract art ¬¬
We can love to paint, but we also can not have the skillz. For that reason we see too many levels and styles. Arrogant and Ego artists usually got stucked on a level... they don't evolve as result.
I could put more examples, but if you want to learn, you must start from the basic, and to be good in the understanding of perspective and space, is far important than to be good in composition imho. A house can't be builded starting from the roof... believe me.
Just an advice
Picasso did this when he was 14
If you want something that looks like a photo, take a photo, we see people everyday, I want to see something visually interesting when I look at art.
For the sake of art, it's a very good thing no great artists of the time shared your asinine opinions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Singer_Sargent
Look at some more of his work, there's some variety, he certainly has some more photorealistic pieces, but he clearly understood there was more to a good painting than jerking off to minute details.
The first pic do not need any more contrast or "dirty" strokes. We sense the sunlight and the immobility of the scene.
The Sargent one should have been posted in a smaller size; I can't even see it entirely on my screen. The "dirty" aspect you have here bring motion and dynamism. That's something we can't see in the last painting. The technic is good but all the things are on the same level and I see immobility when I want to see movement.
Plants, people, and cloth were the barrels, crates, and pipes of art before the camera was invented. Just like today everyone has training to make a kick ass barrel, every artist back then new how to paint cloth and skin, it was formulaic and easy. It's ironic because the things easily made in a game engine are hard to paint, whereas the things hard to paint (perspective) are very easy to achieve in 3d engines.
The argument about realism is like trying to convince someone who really likes britney spears to listen to "insert your favorite band here". This isn't a rational argument, it's just one taste vs. another. No ammount of talking is going to make you like this artist or that artist. Just like i couldn't convince you enough to make dog crap taste good. You either have the taste developed or you don't.
Realism is the pizza of art. The masses dig it and it was everyone's favorite food when they were 8, but don't expect a lot of respect from fellow artists for creating it.
I disagree with this. Fine art doesn't share the same deadlines and volume required for game or movie concept artists. You can't paint like Gerome or Bouguereau under an hour or two and come up with the same quality as the originals. Concept art is about multiple iterations and describing mood and setting and not really about making pretty pictures for hanging in museums.
Proof is in the pudding as they say. Couple of successful concept artists.
http://www.flaptraps.blogspot.com/
http://paperblue.net/