@@yoavjacoby8246 yep. Havn't had thst problem yet as i use something like half a water bottle i cut up or something else i don't drink out of, but its something that happens. And this is coming from a guy thst paints my warhammer and D&D figures
If both are cups, I would recommend putting, say, your drinking cup to your left and your paint water cup to your right on the other side of your table XD. Or vice versa. That way your hand sorta gets used to reaching only to the right when you have a brush in your hand so there's a smaller chance you'll mix them up XD
"Let hobbyists live." As a writer, I DEEPLY appreciate your ability to recognize and separate hobby artists from those trying to get better/more well-rounded/professional. Whenever people come to me for writing advice, I first ask them which group they fall under. Do you write for fun, and want advice to make this hobby more enjoyable? Or are you aiming to write professionally on some level? The amount of critique I give, and sometimes even the advice itself, changes depending on the answer.
I drew something that I really liked, and then I flipped the canvas _And then I hated it._ What do you mean I had the art set as my pfp that never happened
Yes!! its so useful for figuring out whats wrong also, accidentally flipping it *too* much can make your brain get used to both sides (and that defeats the whole purpose because your brain wont see it as a fresh new image anymore & will just gloss over things (edit for clarity cause word vomit isnt fun to read)
@@galacticpotato607 you know how, before computers and acrylics/pencils/etc, people had to paint using slow-drying oils to create their visions? I feel like that's the problem that comes with that habit. 😂 Like, at that point, that just means it's time to take a break and rest your eyes from the piece and come back to it later... but not everyone has the luxury of taking their time on their pieces/or feel impatient and that causes the initial advice to fall apart. It's this very reason (constantly flipping my canvas and getting used to both axes,) that I'm an incredibly slow drawer. It's phenomenal advice but at the sacrifice of time management and speed. It becomes a "choose your battles" sort of deal.
@@EEErmineThe good news is, for the most part, not everybody is going to be mirroring your produce, so you can probably get away with making something look skewed anyway! Mirroring and finding imperfections and fixing them could cause the final product to look uncanny. Not worth hating, imo 😊
@@jewelxiat i actually still liked it, i was just a little upset it ended up looking so wonky flipped it's not like i was intending on it to look good in the first place, it was just something i thought about drawing :p
Getting "just practice" "learn rules first before drawing ANYTHING" and "draw every day" put me in such a hellscape mind palace thanks to my OCD that now I have to ween myself from constantly drawing nothing but boxes, circles and cylinders every day to actually draw something I have fun drawing.
@@muffinconsumer4431yeah, that's better. I always got frustrated cause I practiced wrong and wound up just reinforcing bad habits/technique, and I just felt like I was getting worse. So "Just practice!!" made me wanna give up
Another thing to add with the "learn the rules before you break them" is the fact that having a strong knowledge in realism doesn't magically translate to being good at making stylized works. You being able to draw one hell of a photo-realistic fruit bowl doesn't also mean you are going to automatically be a great comic artist, they are both skills that need their own time and effort to develop. Being able to stylize and create your own visual shorthand is a skill in itself, that's why I always recommend to new artists to do both. Study basic fundamentals and draw from life, but also observe and learn from the professionals in your field of interest.
The original concept of: "Hey, figuring out the layout of a real thing lets you see where, how, and why exaggerating and altering parts works stylistically," being boiled down to: "Know the rules before you break them," was a mistake of colossal proportions. Do you tell someone trying to write that unless they've broken down sonnets and iambic pentameter, they'll never write a short story? No. That would be the dumbest of takes. What you tell someone trying to write a short is more like: "Hey, punctuation and a feel for the anatomy of a paragraph will help people understand your writing and not forget important details," and we don't even touch on poetry. Not until/unless the writer expresses interest or needs it for their work. Why are we telling people to learn ALL the rules of reality, when 90% of us don't even really like to look at photo realistic drawings all that much? Most we do is go: "wow, that took a lot of technical skill, sure I'll give this a like/fav/reblog/updoodlement/whatever for the algorithm," and that's the end of our engagement with it. We freak out over three lines that end up looking like a squishmellow puppy mixed with a really fat songbird and gush about how adorable it is for a solid three minutes straight while we try to compose a sentence that both conveys that freak out and is coherent at the same time. We shouldn't be relying on such a reduced catch phrase to explain how to do something like that for people who enjoy that kind of art. Because the take-away _does not in any capacity_ make the potential artists ready to give it a go.
"Know the rules before you break them" isn't supposed to be about learning things photorealistic (as I understand it) but just learning proportions and colors and stuff. Like, I understand anatomy and all that, but the only time I've drawn anatomically correct humans was in my anatomy class. Understanding the basic shapes, though, is really useful for posing work without good references.
There is nothing more complicated than realism, sorry. If you start with it you just need to learn to simplify to move to any other style. Mangakas actually CAN draw realistically, some of them use semi-realistic, or realistic style in their works, like Ito, Isayama or Shirow.
@@YourWaywardDestiny if you are not a professional you can draw as inaccurately and stylistically off-putting way as you want. But since professionals need to jump from style to style building the foundations of realism and then putting new styles on top of that is undeniably helpful. Even Disney animators drew from life and then stylise. Disney kept a small zoo for animators to study movements and anatomy, even though everything was later exaggerated. If you know the basics - you know what, how and when to exaggerate.
@@anticlaws4105 Yea yea! Absolutely! Gratefully I will draw hundred of them if I come across something that I can't draw, also inspired by Kim Jung Gi that can literally draw everything
Yeah but not everyone wants to improve. Sometimes its better to just let an artist explore and have fun. If someone doesn't want to draw hands than don't force them. If they want to learn how to than they will when they're ready, and if they don't want to learn than they don't have to. I think putting it into A teir is fine because not everyone can benefit from that advice, and it may actually frustrate someone into not wanting to draw that feature even more.
I think it’s good if what you want to draw involves that weak point, but if you know you’re never gonna draw something related to it, you don’t need to. Like someone who exclusively drew heads and nothing else got a high end job creating icons for games
14:20 For me, the pen stabilizer tool has the opposite effect. It drives my perfectionist mind ABSOLUTELY INSANE because the lines never land exactly where I want them.
yes, my line work improved so much when I turned it off. But it was definitely helpful when I didn't have a screen tablet and used a small one, but that what the only time I really ever used it lol. But that was just due to size restriction.
i only use the stabilise setting for animation, to keep the lines as smooth as possible between frames. otherwise it just makes everything feel stiff lmao
saaammeee, if i turn on stabilization i go nuts. it feels so gunky to me. if i absolutely cant freehand the lines then im just gonna pop into sai and use the vector
As guilty as tracing makes me feel, it honestly saves so much time when I draw. I trace poses and then alter limbs and body builds to suit the characters I’m drawing, and as someone who just likes having fun with art and draws horribly slowly, I’d rather trace and alter than try and make my own poses when it can since it saves me hours on pieces and it already takes me hours to do a single character without a background or fancy lighting. It lets me keep a hobby a hobby without wanting to tear my hair out
I only trace feet and hands, 7 of 10 times (usually photos of my own). That way I get the essential gesture, then I'll adjust the proportions to the character.
Yeah I get how you feel, I also used to trace a lot. But when I traced, I felt like I did not improve at all (which was something I really wanted and I still do) so I decided to stop tracing, and instead use references and try to copy exactly what I see! This method works out SO much for me! I think you should definitely try it, not that I’m forcing you or anything, but it can really help you improve. Just know that you might have to draw that thing a few times in order to draw it very well but
Tracing is how I got my start, just doing my characters for my own enjoyment. Been pushing myself to expand and learn lately just because i want to get better overall and expand what I can do.
Personally, I’d put using black and white to check values in A tier. Yes, it’s absolutely a great tool, but I find that doing this often fails to account for the way our eyes perceive color. For example, the exact same bright yellow, if hue-shifted to purple, would register as a darker to our eyes, because yellow registers as an inherently ‘bright’ color. I’d love to see this as a public tierlist!
I think some drawing softwares have different ways that this works. I use ibis paint x and using the "colour" blending, it gives the brightness of each colour but turning it to black and white does account for the "inherent value" of each colour
A lot of the drawing programs I've used have had a brightness blending mode, so a lot of the time when I'm doing art with really bright colours I check the values in greyscale, but I also check how it looks if I turn the layers to a brigness blending mode, just to make sure the focus is the same for both of them!
Problem for me is not everyone uses an art program with that feature so it isn’t the most accessible advice. I’d love to follow it if, Y’know, my art program let me.
@@scootermcpeanuts6699 I've also seen it on quite a few free programs I've used, like Ibis paint, (and I think medibang too?), just under different names. I should have put that in my original comment too, it is a really useful trick!
@@scootermcpeanuts6699 There are free resources online that allow you to upload a pic and have it convert to grey scale~ Even many img viewers have a feature to "convert to grey scale" in their options menu; if your program can't do it there's lots of ways you can still get to swapped~!
My favorite price of advice (for traditional art) is: Make a mark on the first page of your sketchbook. Any mark, even if it's just a line. Why? So that the stress of "it has to be pretty cause this sketchbook is new/aesthetic/ect." Is removed. If the first (or last) page, then at least one page is already "ruined" I'm bad at explaining things, apologies. But seriously. Just marking through the first page has decreased my anxiety around art SO much lower 😂
Sounds similar to a tip I got that has been helping me immensely: "Don't be precious." You have your good sketchbook or your good pens or markers and don't use them because they're your good ones? Then why have them? I get if there's a reason, like 'I don't want to use my good paints today since I'm out of the good canvas until payday,' which is a solid reason. But if you have that super awesome sketchbook and are scared to use it because it's super awesome, then just throw it away since its a waste of space and will be forever empty. Don't be precious, use the cool thing.
"Don't start with digital" is not really about the skills you learn. Its about aspiring artists wasting 500+ dollars on an expensive tablet that they will use for a month and then never again because it turned out that they didn't like drawing all that much, or got frustrating at trying to learn art AND every component of their software of choice at the same time instead of tackling each individually.
The “learn rules first” always made me so upset as a kid. I hated the idea that I needed to learn how to draw realism, that I needed to perfect a realistic art style before even thinking about going to a stylized art style. I haven’t drawn in a while and as much as I want to get back into it the idea of having to learn everything again makes me want to cry when this was just supposed to be a fun hobby to begin with.
For me I'd say the bare minimum if you want to get good at drawing stylized stuff is just to at least learn basic anatomy, which can be done by doing a little life drawing every day (or just taking pictures of yourself in cool poses and drawing those poses if you don't want to). You don't need to know how shading works, you don't need to learn perspective (though, that one helps if you do landscape backgrounds), and you certainly don't need to learn colour theory. Just learn how a body/thing looks from every angle, and everything will make sense Lastly, the best advice I can give you that helped me become a better artist is: don't stop yourself from drawing the things you want. Who cares if you're not ready, just do it anyways. You learn from your mistakes right? Better to plow yourself in a huge pile of mistakes than to just tackle them one by one. The worst that could happen is you get a bad drawing, but you can use that bad drawing to make better drawings. You never lose!
You definitely don't need to learn photorealistic human anatomy in order to be good at drawing cartoons or anime. You definitely do need to know things like good line quality and how to draw basic shapes and rotate them in perspective, though. Those are things that are grounded in realism, cartoons, and pretty much anything that's representative in some way and isn't just modernist "blobs of paint thrown on a bunch of recycled bottles in a modern art museum". So in that sense learning rules first is important if only because it saves you so much pain later on. I do agree that that rule is easy to misinterpret and a lot of people who should know better do try to use it as an opportunity to be smarmy towards beginners though.
Well, only few people can really go from zero to a style without knowing the rules. Also, if drawing makes you cry - maybe just go into abstract art: no rule, no boring solids drawing, no values, shadows etc. You can also leave the canvas blank and pretend it's your art style. The point of my sarcasm is - nothing is easy. Butt If you don't learn the rules - they will bite you some day. How do I know? Because many artists admitted that at some point in their professional careers had to go back to basics, to, for example, learn a new style.
That very same principle in music was what killed it for me. I loved playing piano, but having to repeatedly play the Flinstones opening theme until I got it ABSOLUTELY PERFECT made me never want to play again. I just wanted to try something new, and it resulted in me never touching music after that.
Something underrated I don't hear about often is to train your eyes. Like just observe outside, images and analysing them on shapes, shadows, structures and colors. You can legit do that everyday and it's like you draw with your own eyes. Even If your hand skill don't catch up with your eyes right away , you will be able to auto correct yourself and have a way more objective view on your on art. This is just so useful
This!!! A million times this!!! Legit do that every time I find something interesting, I even take pictures of it if I have my camera around just so I can study it further when I need to.
"Warm up sketches" S Tier! Draw some Doodles that it be some gesture drawings or just some random shapes before you actually work on something more serious/important, it really does help. 10/10 totally recommend! 😊
> Everyone knows they need to practice to get good at anything You'd _think_ this is true, but even though it's a common refrain you hear all the time, I think very few people have actually internalized it! This is advice aimed at complete newbies, and it would be good advice, if it was able to get the message across fully. People will often say stuff like "I can't even draw a stick figure" or "aw man, I envy your skill" and if they had truly internalized this, what they would mean is "I don't have the motivation/time/etc. to practice and learn drawing", but no, what most people mean when they say this is "I don't have the holy blessing of drawing skill, I am but a mortal." Since "Just practice" is such a common thing for people to say, it's just white noise to most who hear it. What they really need is a paradigm shift. You don't just _have_ skill, you _create_ it, you _earn_ it, you _work for_ it. You, too, can be a great artist, if you put in the effort. That's what "just practice" is supposed to mean. People expect the skill to be handed to them, and when they sit down to draw and they don't spout magic from their pen, they just give up. My preferred versions of this advice are "fail fast, fail often" or "everybody's got thousands of bad drawings in them, the good ones come later" or "anyone can learn to draw if they actually try"
Giving this advice to newbies may SEEM helpful, and yes, telling someone "you have to practice to improve" can be motivating, 99% of the time I've been told "Just practice!" it has been wildly unhelpful and comes off as dismissive. Like the default reaction to someone asking how to draw is "umm just practice? Duh?" which doesn't actually give any new information. Even worse, it can feel like a lot of artists forget what it's like to be a beginner, and don't realize we don't know WHAT or HOW to practice, so it comes across like "if you say you're bad at art clearly you just haven't tried/are too lazy to practice" or "if I can do it so can you" (which is annoying bc not everyone has the same skills to begin with, so acting like it should be exactly as easy/difficult for anyone to learn art bc that's how it was for you is not realistic). I've been the "I can't even draw a stick figure!" person before, and now I get how that can seem too flippant, but the sentiment behind it was "I am in awe of your skill and cannot fathom being able to do that." It was meant as a compliment. Often the reply was "anyone can be a good artist if they try" which made young me feel HOPELESS bc I WAS trying, over and over, and not improving. So hearing "just practice" was no help whatsoever. I'd say, "I am." They'd say, "practice more" and "be patient." Which isn't bad advice, but I was doing those things already. Was I stupid? No. I was simply reinforcing my bad habits and technique, because I was practicing them over and over until it was ingrained. But I didn't know that then. I HAVE gotten better now (over the past year I decided to try again), and that's bc I have artist friends who have pointed me in the right direction, certain youtube channels, etc. As a kid, I didn't have much internet access, and had to go by whatever tips I could get from friends or the library. Now, I get to learn and understand HOW to practice and what to do. Like lines, forms, perspective, simplification, etc etc. If you don't know WHAT to practice or how to begin, "Just practice" or "anyone can do it" isn't as encouraging as some seem to think. [edit: I do love your "fail fast, fail often" and "everybody's got thousands of bad drawings in them, the good ones come later" advice! That's WAY more encouraging!]
to clarify, I understand that artists work hard to hone their craft, and I don't mean to diminish that effort and dedication. I simply mean that the idea anyone can draw at any level if they just try isn't accurate. Take singing -- you can improve, work hard, learn the anatomy of voice, study music theory, etc., etc., but you can put in the same effort and see more or less improvement than someone else, and wind up still not "as good" a singer as others. There's natural "talent" at play in a lot of skills, be it genetic athleticism, good hand-eye coordination, timbre of voice, ear for pitch, and so on, and I think it's fair to acknowledge that some people will work just as hard at something and still turn out "worse" at it than someone else. Some people have inclinations and pick up certain things faster/more easily. They can keep working on it, of course, but it just feels heartbreaking to hear "anyone can do this" while trying and failing to do it. (I think the paradigm shift that helped me the most was that a lot of art skill is muscle memory, and that I'll develop it as I practice. That flipped a lightbulb for me somehow. Like, oh, I'm NOT doomed to forever suck at drawing! I can build this up and it'll become easier to make lines go where I want them!)
I'm someone that prefers messy lines, I adore the way they look, smooth lines are honestly boring to me. Messy lines are one of the reasons Wolfwalkers is such a gorgeous movie
I realized that when my art started having a particularly soulless feel too it and I couldn't pinpoint why. That overly clean and vectorized look just doesn't do it for me. Gimme the grittiness!!!
IF YOU forget to take care of your body when drawing, a pomodoro timer can be helpful! It doesn’t help me focus (like it’s supposed to I think?) but does remind me to eat and drink water! Plus, you can flip your canvas during the break and take a step back to look at the whole piece. Or, do some stretches!
I try to draw every day, but I'm disabled and sometimes even leaving the bed or using my hands for anything is hard. On those days i watch youtube and feel guilt because of how much i hear "draw everyday"
You dont need to draw everyday but at the same time, you can by just drawing 10 minutes at the minimum. You’ll most likely improve slower but if you can do it then, that’s better than destroying your passion in the end. Drawing everyday can be a double edged sword honestly. Though, what’s most important is to find a balance on when to draw and stop. If you’re tired and can’t, just stop and do it when you feel better. Don’t overdo it, because you might procrastinate. Im also struggling with this, I know when to stop but i can’t and end up overworking and having no energy to draw for several days. 💀
I choose to interpret it as draw regularly, or center art mentally. There is absolutely no way my disability will allow me to draw every day but in terms of improvement I am always better off drawing less time regularly than trying to draw for like four hours in one day and then being wiped for a couple days. Start slow and don’t feel guilty. I think people have always meant it a little less literally or they just don’t have the intersectional lens to see it objectively
"Don't start digital" is actually some of the best advice IF you want a painterly style. I would've put it in A tier for that but if your someone who doesn't mind your work looking digital the you can ignore it no problem!
@tsumugi9880 yeah I definitely prefer traditional inking. I feel like procreate and photoshop prioritize flow of the line over all else, but I feel like ink is more imperfect in a way that reads more organic.
I'm traditional painter (my artstyle is based on impressionism/expressionism period) and digital artist. Back in middle school I was scared of paint SO BAD, and digital helped me overcome this fear. I learned basic color theory in digital. It's was because in digital i didn't waste materials if I messed up, you don't have to make mess to even start a work. Also they don't change hue midway... (I'm looking at you, acrylic paints) So even someone who wants paintery style it can work!
It makes me happy to see you rank "Draw Every Day" at C tier, because as a person who has focus issues (possibly ADHD), that just isn't possible for me right now. I'm busy trying to stay afloat doing the bare minimum and I don't have the energy for it.
"don't shade with black" is misleading because it comes from the assumption that the artist aim for a colorful look. All the backgrounds in Over The Garden Wall are shaded with blacks and greys on multiply layers (there's a tutorial/walkthrough by the background artist), and those paintings are absolutely gorgeous - because they still used highly saturated colors for the lightened areas. It blew my mind when I found out and it changed my view on certain art advice that just say "dont do X" - because there are cases where doing the "wrong" technique is intentional!
Anyways, there's nothing bad about shading with black/ grey tones, you can always use the color grading tool and change the area you want to any color you want
I always agree with Flip Canvas. One time my sister was drawing and she asked me- "Do you know what's wrong with this picture? Something feels wrong..." I then told her that I often flip the canvas when I feel something is amiss but I can't tell what. She flips her picture and- "Oh, it was the eyes." Flipping your canvas helps massively! It allows you to notice errors that are not immediately obvious.
to be honest, a variation of "draw everyday" actually seemed to kind of work for me. though it was "draw more often", not draw everyday. cause, here's the thing; one of my biggest problems when it comes to art was being afraid to draw things simply becuase I didn't think it would turn out good. I was always telling myself I need to be in the perfect mindset for drawing something or else I will do a bad job at it. And while yes, it is good to be in the right headspace for art... not every piece of art needs to look perfect. if it did, you wouldn't be ABLE to practice or learn at all. once I pushed myself to draw more often despite not being in the "perfect" mindset for it, I was actually surprised to find I learned more that way and was able to improve much quicker. and I found that, even if I didn't start out drawing well in the first few minutes, after a few doodles I would get warmed up and then feel ready to draw whatever it was I had in mind. so yeah, drawing more often actually can be really, REALLY good art advice, but only for people like me who have trouble with perfectionism and being afraid to try/make mistakes. becuase drawing more often allows you more time to make mistakes in your art and improve from them! however, it's important to keep in mind that you should be enjoying art. if you are trying to draw every single day, but aren't enjoying it, then stop. like I said, I only had to draw more often (though I did spend a few months doing a little drawing everyday), but i wouldn't do it if i didn't enjoy drawing. drawing is my passion, and I never really stop enjoying it. so, while drawing more often worked for me to break me out of my perfectionist mindset, it definitely isn't a universally good advice. it depends on what you are struggling with.
i struggled with hands for the longest time. I spent two weeks studying them for two hours a day, every day. now I can draw them like the back of my hand. Absolutely banger final art advice there!
About drawing every day-I always interpreted it as “Draw something every day, even if it’s just a line or a shape.” This really helps me, as a beginner artist with ADHD. Getting into the habit of drawing is often more important than drawing perfectly. But I definitely agree that “Draw a full Piece Of Art™ every day” is C tier advice!
I'm gonna give my own unsolicited advice here since I've been drawing for awhile And thats to try new things! See an elemant of someone else's art that you find stylistically cool? Try it! See something stylistically wou dont like very much? Try that too. Maybe you'll fall in love with it and it'll become a part of your style, maybe you'll learn a new skill even if you dont use it, you'll never know if you dont try! You dont have to force yourself to master something you dont like, but experimentation is key Both to creating an art style and creating further understanding of the art you surround yourself with 💜
I have a bit of art advice myself: Find artists who have quality and an art style you admire and think about how they create, then try to implement it the next time you draw. Another thing is that if you study artists who've studied anatomy themselves, you'll have skipped a step.
Drawing every day is the fastest way to sucking if you don't study right, making the same mistakes every day isn't practice it is just building a bad habit. How you study is so important, I've been drawing since I was like two constantly and I suck because for like 1 through 19 of those years I was just repeating my art every day and making the same mistakes thinking it was enough for me to be better and in reality it made me worse. Now that I am studying properly I have to also unlearn the 19 years of incorrect muscle memory I taught myself and that is honestly the hardest part. also don't use stabilizer is stupid. My lines are wank on digital art because the screen is glossy and it actually hurts my wrist to control it. I can draw perfectly fine lines in my traditional, it has nothing to do with skill or ability to control a line sometimes it's just about peace of mind and taking care of your wrist on a surface with no drag.
Drawing everyday to me isn't much of a bad tip for me, i do short 5-10 minute doodles/sketches and i think that is enough but if i try to do a 3 hour fully rendered piece i get tired and quit. But of course i want the drawing to kept going so this is why i do short sketches, but sometimes its okay to take 1 or 2 day break so you'd be ready for your next piece
practicing on your own won't do anything if you fundamentally don't understand the relationship between the things you're trying to draw from reference. for certain angles no matter how closely i try to follow the reference sometimes I have to trace it once or twice before I understand the relationship/distance btw the nose, eyes etc. tracing is fine... STOPPING at tracing is the problem
She doesn’t mean tracing in the generally thought of capacity of just drawing over an image to copy it. She means using tracing to break down an image and help you understand the shapes used, composition etc. That can be really helpful in getting an understanding of these fundamentals which you can then translate to the choices you make in your own work. Obviously you have to actually apply what you learn alongside tracing so I’m not saying just trace and analyse all the time. You can do the same thing with colour palettes, colour picking either a photo or a piece that you particularly like to see what kind of colour choices have been made and why they work together. It helps with understanding of colour theory as-well as your personal taste. Sorry this was a bit long I just like talking about this stuff I find it really interesting 😅
12:45 Is pretty real, as someone who only uses default brushes with like maybe some modified default brushes, it’s not that hard to make good art if you know what brushes you’re comfortable with. For me, I’m on ibis paint x and my go to is pen fade, calligraphy and airbrush on characters, that’s it. Backgrounds I’ll use some default texture brushes, that’s it. Ibis paint got a wide variety of it.
I’ve always assumed that beginers were told to not start on digital is because it’s more affordable for some people to use pencils and paper than to get an expensive display tablet with a computer and sometimes paying softwares. For a long time, artists could only start traditionnal because it was the only possible way they could afford. That said, I also think that as more and more affordable tools for digital art are available, it became easier to start off by drawing digitaly. Therefore I would have put this advice in a low b tier / high c tier because to me, it is more of a « tools don’t make the artist » situation even though this take in particular is clearly outdated.
Thinking about the “don’t make art your career thing” fully agree on your points, im technically still a graphic design/illustration major, but am officially switching to Scientific Illustration, it’s harder to replace, and mixes my interests. Only downside is how niche and intensely competitive it is, even to get the education for it. My dream post-grad certification program only admits 18 students a year 😢
I purposfully chicken scratch the crap out of my lines, lol. I just love the way it looks, gives a sense of dynamic movement and emotion that I feel gets lost if I make my lines too refined. Sometimes, after i've coloured in a traditional piece, I take a black pen to it to rough up the lines.
drawing every day being the number one most hated thing is actually shocking to me, i knew there were people who didnt like it but i genuinely think it’s the best thing you can do as an artist and i want to clarify i don’t mean make a full rendered piece of art every day but just to doodle when you get the chance two years ago i drew every. single. day. and again most of it was just doodling, maybe only one full piece a week, but i have never had my art improve so rapidly, eventually i kinda stopped drawing for a bit and for the past year i would very rarely draw, but whenever it did i would HATE how it looked, which discouraged me from drawing for another few weeks until i eventually tried again, and the same thing would repeat at the beginning of this year i started drawing regularly again it is the happiest ive been with my art in forever, genuinely i think its the fastest way to improve and feel comfortable with your art
Agree. I geniunely think it’s one of the best art advice if done right, and that’s the problem if you can’t. 5-10 minutes is honestly enough if you ahave a busy schedule or not in the mood. (Though if you aren’t, take breaks and try to at least draw for five minutes. If it gets monotous, then a break might be good but do remember to draw at least everyday for 5-10 minutes. Its a slower process but healthier)
Yeah, keeping drawing to a routine is probably the best way to improve in a way. Not making full pieces every day (though, the people who can are freaking insane), but instead just chipping away at a bigger piece, or studying a little every day. Though, I tend to break that routine a little if it gets a little boring and tinker with computers to freshen things up. I'm a computer nerd if you couldn't tell. Another thing to keep your engagement while drawing is to set deadlines for every drawing you do. Makes things more interesting that way because it give-off a challenge. At least it works for me, not sure if that'll work for everyone.
This year i drew every day and my rendering skills became insane and my art looked so good, i was genuinely happy with my art and i developed a set art style that i was also really happy with, and today i stepped out of my comfort zone and tried perspective, and it turned out so well i felt so ecstatic! For me, drawing everyday improved my art drastically and i think it's such a good tip
The problem is that there are people who have focus issues, namely neurodivergent people who have adhd and autism, such as myself, so telling me to draw everyday doesn’t really work for me because I genuinely can’t focus, I have no attention span, I do agree that having a drawing routine probably works though
i think the one thing about flipping your canvas is that it relies on your eyes not being used to the flipped version of the image and so if you do it CONSTANTLY you’ll… get used to the flipped version of the image. and that’s bad. overall, though, it’s good advice as long as you don’t massively overdo it. at least that’s my opinion
I think if you just sketch your piece and once you are done sketching /then/ you flip the canvas and fix anything it wont be as detrimental ? Atleast it's worked for me so far but I can't say for others 🤔
Take the time to learn how to make your own brushes!!!! This has saved me SO much time searching for that "perfect brush" that doesn't seem to actually exist! It took about 2 days of painful trial and error but now that I understand how to make one and how they function, I can save myself even more time by recognizing when I could detail something by hand or just whip up a new brush and do it in 2 strokes instead
the pen stabilizer is a huge saviour of shaky lines and when you flip an eye, you have to alter it depending on the perspective of the head but people sometimes forget to do that
Oh another thing to consider is when using good quality paints some of them have hazardous chemicals. To get the brighter warm colors alot of pigments have cadmium. We are still using chrome, cadmium, and cobalt for some pigments so consider that when handling paints.
On the "use high quality supplies" one, Ive actually "downgraded" in a lot of the supplies I use regularly now. I used to use microns for line art, now I use those ballpoint pens that you can get like 20 of for 1.50 in any stationary section just because I like them better. Same with graphite pencils, instead of the artist sets I just use mechanical plastic ones that my family gets a giant pack of at the beginning of each school year. I now gravitate to water based markers over alcohol ones (tombow markers, which are still fancy but significantly less expensive than alcohol markers) because I like drawing in sketchbooks. I don't buy sketchbooks, I make my own with any decent paper I have laying around, cardboard and fabric. I do acrylic painting on paper instead of canvas because I don't like the texture of canvas, and also regularly use like, craft paint because it's good enough for my purposes, I've run out of a lot of my fancy ones and I don't do acrylic painting enough to justify spending a lot of money. There's still fancy art supplies that I use all the time and am incredibly grateful for (my prismacolor color pencils and my mission gold watercolors) but it's not necessary whatsoever and I've been having so much more fun with art since I stopped thinking I had to use high quality art supplies.
18:25 Most of my art teachers have always been big on telling us to experiment and do different things for the sake of learning, and also were very staunch that we were definitely too young to know what our style was yet. I did have one teacher (who I already really didn't like) who was very insistent that we needed to have our exact style and subject matter and media of choice decided NOW and that we needed to have a really consistent theme in all our art. My art was all over the goddamn place and was spread out across painting, making really ugly sculptures, paper mache, and comics. That class was maybe 7 or 8 years ago and I've only now started to dial in what makes my art "mine". And how to make sculptures that are less ugly, lol.
I started drawing every day not to help my art skills, but to help my discipline and whatnot, before hand I was drawing like, once a month even though I REALLY wanted to, and while it definitely helped my art skills, even as a beginner I have noticed my skill with just this is peaking or capping so I'm now starting to try and incorporate other stuff to help me get better:] all of this to say i basically agree with you, i just personally would put it higher in C tier for its other benefits:D
So glad I watched this vid in it's entirety. Never heard of pen stabilization untill you talked about it. I am both raging and relieved that shaky lines can now be less of an issue now.
I find that I draw with my shoulder more consistently than most artists I know, and the difference seems to me that I stand at an easel, while they sit at computers or with sketchbooks or tablets. From the standing position, the whole body from toe to hip to shoulder to forearm becomes relevant to the body mechanics of your drawing. You can move your body, try drawing with your shoulder while positioned in different ways, leaning your hip in different manners, etc... you may find you get more comfortable lines when you find the positions you feel most comfortable drawing in that day. I often stretch before I draw like this, and sometimes while taking breaks during it. Drawing from the shoulder becomes very natural in my experience when on your feet. This process is especially well suited to large pieces in traditional medium.
Occasionally I see advice that’s just “this is the only way to achieve this outcome you must do it like this (specifically with traditional art forms, like pencil or ink) like yes the technique is great to know and be able to to, but if someone can achieve the same look in a different way, they should
11:37 I’m sorry this one pisses me off to the highest degree because of a recent experience I was showing my mom some plates that I made for my Printmaking college class that I’m taking right now and she legitimately started critiquing my work for being the same character in two different different situations! The composition of these two pieces is vastly different, because one is a headshot in profile, and the other is a zoomed out backgrounded piece where the characters are barely shown! (The two characters that are featured are half covered up by the trees around them)
One Ive run into a lot while trying to learn digital art is 'just play around! Have fun!' And it absolutely leaves me in tears because I want to have fun but I have no idea what any tool does thats why Im here to learn the technical stuff!!! (To be clear its often said without providing any other instructions or clarity.)
I mostly agree with these, and I wouldn't necessarily bump "Always use references" down a tier, but I think it comes with the caveat of using references *thoughtfully*. I've seen artists use references and follow them way too closely to a point that it looked out of place or stiff in their art style. It's kind of similar to the subject of tracing. Tracing and referencing can both be unhelpful when they're not done thoughtfully.
14:20 interesting that you put it in s tier, because every other single TH-cam video I’ve seen talking about pen stabilization always says to turn it off completely, so you can become better at drawing confident lines without having training wheels on.
19:15 i absolutely hate this advice because the people who say it often forget that maybe the artist in question is using 'lesser' quality supplies because they actively enjoy using them (like me with waterbased (not watercolor) markers, swapdoodle, and an old phone with a free drawing program that is my dearly beloved and has been with me for so long). like i've made some of my best drawings with the aforementioned old phone and drawing program even though i do have 'better' supplies to use because i enjoy using those 'lesser' quality art supplies
Starting with Digital vs Traditional comes down to a confidence thing, if you practice primarily with digital art, you have the convenience of ctrl+z which can hamper line confidence
Like all advice it depends on time, person, and context because (surprise) people and their situations are different. If someone was posting art practice every day and was wondering what they could do better and they'd hit a plateau, "just practice" is not helpful. On the other hand, if someone keeps posting that they want to get better and they're not improving but you ask them what they've been doing and it turns out they keep watching a bunch of youtube videos, and reading manga and playing video games for "inspiration", but they've actually drawn like three times in two weeks... ...then yes, "just practice" is probably correct. And unfortunately there are a lot more people who draw less than once a week than people who draw every day.
(Don't mind me, not hating or anything, just here to share my opinion respectfully 👍) I understand why "just practice" was put in the tier it was placed in. Though, in my opinion, I think it could be placed higher, but not S tier necessarily. It's because it's advice I always give in conjunction with other pieces of advice. My frequent go-to if I'm asked is, "I know people hate to hear it, but practice. Art is like a muscle and you need to build it, then exercise it frequently. There are times I went without drawing for a while, and I forgot how to draw things and had to go back and study resources again to relearn. Study what you want to learn, but PRACTICE." The other reason I would place it higher is because some people just don't know or understand that practice *is* important. I've been in/seen situations which people think it's pure born talent and didn't take into consideration the extensive amount of time, effort, and study it takes to improve. I loved seeing your take on the tier list, there are some bits of advice I haven't actually heard before, so it's really cool to learn about what other people have gotten in terms of advice!
4:18 Pewdeipei proved this wright significantly. you don't need 5 hours or even 30 mins 10 or 5 mins (or even less) is fine enough. The fact the man did this while also be a father is enough prof (the guy even managed to piss-off the AI "Artist"). Its not the always the long hours its the build up to it over time. ( or not the end result, but the process to it).
Wow, hearing Chillhop in the background of a video in 2024, and songs I actually recognized?? And I haven't checked in on them in litearlly over a year... That was a blast from the past! I appreciate your perspective on these advice bits - I feel like I get a well-rounded perspective seeing both the good AND bad advice, and seeing them sorted on a spectrum, it's really satisfying. Tier Lists really do that well, huh! :D And your comments section is so great too! So much great advice, and people explaining how and why they use certain advice bits and for what - the personal stories that contextualize sound-bites are invaluable!
I always forget to flip the canvas, there was one time recently where I did it at the end and noticed my characters hair was pretty lopsided, so that was fun to fix... I forgot to do it again on my most recent piece so I flipped it at the end and it just looks perfect. Like I could show you the flipped and regular version and you wouldn’t be able to tell which was which. The joy I felt after flipping it was so insane for something that small.
This was a fun video to watch haha. There certainly is a LOT of different means of art advice and definitely can vary on how effective they are from person to person and situation to situation. Loved hearing your perspective on each of these advice tips !! One advice bit I definitely feel even more nuance to is the "don't draw the same things" one because of my own personal growth but it has nuance to that tip as well. There was an old post on twt iirc saying something along the lines of a good way to improve is to find a character/ship you really enjoy and draw them a lot. I've definitely found my biggest growth spurts were linked to having periods I had a pairing/character I wanted to draw a lot since it made art more fun and thus I experimented more. Definitely if you only draw the same subject matter the same it can probably halt/slow down progress a bit but I definitely back the finding a subject matter you want to draw a lot helps. Presently I've been focused strongly on the ship SettPhel and it's been the thing to FINALLY get my butt to learn how to better understand more muscular masculine figures as Sett is quite muscular haha. I actually struggle more with masculine figures than feminine so this has been a challenge but oh so fun for me. Not to mention adding experimentation alongside your focus helps so much too. Truly you NEVER know what'll be what helps you finally understand that artistic subject matter you've struggled over for decades. Today I chuckle how Sett League of Legends finally got me to learn how to draw muscles. Bless that fictional man's heart.
A lot of the controversy around the “don’t shade with black” and “don’t chicken scratch” advices comes from people who don’t know the difference between a stylistic choice and an actual mistake imo, especially because those types of advices are catered to beginners. Yes, professional comic artists using pure black shading and actually making it look good is a stylistic choice, beginner artists airbrushing black paint all over their drawing because they don’t know how else to shade and making it look absolutely horrific is not. On one hand, people shouldn’t be discouraged from trying a more bold approach to shading using black, but on the other, it’s better for complete beginners to steer clear from it
Thank you Duchess, this was so incredibly helpful!! ☺️ I really needed to hear these points as an artist that is constantly being too harsh on myself. I will absolutely subscribe and watch more of your content!
I just stumbled across this video while searching for a helpful tutorial/guide how to color digitally. As I heard your words saying that ones style comes with time I felt that. In my current sketchbook there are drawing and doodles I did from around two years ago and some current drawings and practices. You can clearly see how my style developed over a period of time. Thank you for those comforting words, they brightened up my day
This is a very good tier list. I think with art advice the main thing is that almost none of it is universally applicable. Everything can be bad in one situation and good in another situation. My favorite example is that for drawing long smooth lines from the shoulder -- yes, a great advice for drawing the polished lineart, but a really bad advice when thumbnailing and doing the first rough.
Getting good critique is a great tip. Im a beginner digital artist and I always go to my best friend (who is also a traditional artist) to look for critique and instead of just saying "yeah it looks good" she suggests things that could make it look a bit more alive or detailed.
It's pretty validating watching this as a fairly new artist and agreeing with/understanding all placements. It's nice to see someone else kinda echoing a lot of the things I've learned during my journey. I've been tracing, which was a stereotype I had to unlearn to even try and ended up being a massive boon over the past year of me actively learning. I've also straight up ignored learning to shade, because frankly... I don't wanna x3 I do pixel art, but the way other artists shade has yet to click with me. I understand how to do a little shading on bigger pieces, but there are certain styles that I just can't grasp yet. So, yeah, it's nice to hear 'draw what you want and ignore skills you don't want' as advice.
getting into digital art I've definitely traced and using it to help me see and break down the shapes in my references. I never post them but I trace a couple times to help build muscle memory as well
I just started the "draw everyday 100 days" and i'm really enjoying it, i improove each day and it's soooo satisfying. At the end i'm not gonna require motivation to draw, it's just gonna become a lifestyle.
Subbed the moment you put "Just Practice" in D tier, nice to meet you. I wanted to become an artist when I was younger, but my art friend refused to give me any advice other than "just practice" and that soured me against practicing anything for a few years out of spite because even I knew that was BS advice, especially for a total newbie that didn't know How to practice art. All I wanted was for them to share the tutorials they had bragged about following to get good when they first started, but they refused. I've gotten over it, and I like being a writer a lot now so it worked out.
my one and only quarrel with this video is putting the pen stabilizer in S tier rather than A tier - personally, having the stabilizer enabled held me back a lot because it slowed down my efficiency in general. i always make sure the stabilizer is set to 0 before i do anything, and it's actually helped me a lot with drawing consistent, fast, steady lines. it also motivated me to draw a looot more because it made me So Angry when the line didn't appear as fast as i drew it. this is just in my experience though!! i love watching/listening to your content ! keep it up :D
This was a fantastic watch, I got some really great perspectives from this. It was especially nice to hear you challenge the "draw every day" bit of advice. The idea that I have to draw every day to improve at art has been my #1 demotivator, and honestly, has caused me to draw way less than I would have otherwise. It's not very realistic advice for the majority of people, and on top of that, I have ADHD (among other things) and doing something every single day just isn't something that's been feasible for me. This was the first time I've heard this challenged, and I feel like that's going to help me a lot moving forward. Thank you
The biggest issue with art tips is that artists always think that people are pursuing art with the same goal as theirs, I mean, to become professional artists. And let's be true, 95%+ of people watching art tutorials won't make a penny of drawing in life. They want to learn to satisfy themselves, and developing deep knowledge about some of the fundamentals won't satisfy people as much as drawing their favorite character will.
Another thing about tracing is that it's a skillset on its own and actually a crucial skill for specific techniques and even certain industries, such as tattooing
Learn how to learn, what to learn and how to practice, getting out of your comfort zone, is the best advice for begginers. So many try and draw every day or regularly, but do not evolve as they wanted because they don't know what they need to do in order to attain that goal.
I used to draw every single day, & you know what I got out of it? Callouses & Cubital Tunnel Syndrome. It was so bad, I couldn't draw or even write a shopping list for several years.
I used to flip my canvas (aka turn over my page and hold it up to the light bulb) before I knew that was a thing because I found it was the best way to make my art symmetrical and not leaning to the right
Another benefit to high quality materials (at least with traditional art) is that cheaper supplies are typically not light fast. Pigments that last a long time without fading are expensive, as is the formulation. When you're starting out that won't really be an issue though but if you're working professionally or on an important piece you'll want supplies that makes sure it lasts for years to come.
I feel like sharing this. Recently this new year, I was determined to improve my art and reveal it in posts so people would know my talent. By doing this, I joined several art competitions, unpopular ones (more chance of winning top3) slowly to more popular (less chance of winning 1st). It was actually not that bad, I was using other artstyles and used lighting. But then again, this meant drawing almost everyday while I have schoolworks. At first, it made me tired, but I got used to it and wasnt really burnt out. I guess its how much determiination uou have. In my opinion.
i use the pixel brush on ibspaint for my sketchs bc its messy and i dont have to worry ab it being perfect now obviously i dont use that brush for everything but basically anything but i use it for the majority of a peace and i think that's pretty helpful :3
I hate the "don't draw the same things" one so much. I draw purely for myself, because I love it when a piece turns out great, and it's a form of getting my energy out. People constantly, even one of my friends who is great at art said at one point, to stop drawing "the same stuff", simply because I feel more comfortable drawing women (or female presenting nbys). I am a woman myself, and like the fact that I can use my own body for references on poses and stuff, but I do draw men sometimes, but only when I am fine with failing. Drawing men a lot will only drain my art confidence and love for the thing
I started practicing as a digital, and in my experience, i got often frustrated with my lines, with my results and was stuck without making progress, then i stopped using the tablet and i did notice more "progress" on paper. But that also might be because my tablet feels very slippery.
Few little personal anecdotes for for some of these art advice: >Flip the canvas: I don't know why, but even though doing so is very useful, I just straight-up refuse to flip the canvas. Something about it never felt right, and even now I'm kinda doing it out of spite for no reason >Use pen stabilizers: another one of those rebellious things I don't do. I just like ever so slightly uneven line, makes it more "natural" looking. Though, I do turn on the stabilizer if I absolutely need perfect lines in those rare cases. >Don't avoid weak points: For this one I took it to a whole new level and designed a character that includes nearly everything I hate drawing. Made it so much easier for me to get good at art because I wanted that character to look good >Don't draw the same stuff: For me I hate when someone does that literally, as in literally drawing the same drawing over and over again. What are supposed to learn when you do that? That you're 1% better than the last time you drew it? Actually draw something different when it gets to that point. >Don't flip the eye: I just use construction lines to get the job done. basic shapes are all you need anyways and it's easy to just draw two (or three) horizontal perspective lines with the basic shape of the eyes between them (like a circle, oval, square, triangle, or trapezoid). Never liked using the copy/paste tool for any of my work, but it's probably because I'm more traditional with my digital art. >Don't trace: I never trace my work, but I don't mind if others do it as a studying tool. Basically if you have a hard time imagining stuff (aphasia), tracing is good to learn these shapes, and then you can use this little paper you traced on as a reference for your real drawing. >Draw every day: for someone who's done that for a year straight...don't...not unless you're willing to destroy yourself while racing the clock every day. Even when I took the time to study, I never had enough time to experiment with anything, so to repeat: *DO NOT DRAW EVERY DAY!* Ruining your body for bragging rights is not something to be proud of. >Don't start digital: For this one I have better advice: "Don't invest in digital drawing equipment if you're not sure you like drawing". Good drawing tablets are expensive, while pencil and paper is dirt cheap. If you're not sure drawing is for you, you're better off starting with a simple pencil and paper setup before spending some good dough on a quality drawing tablet. That's just me though.
with the "don't shade with black", sometimes either: a) you want a very specific color and hue shifting it may make it seem like something else (like red accidentally becoming hot pink when hue shifted too much) b) if you to, under using hue shifting can give a grimy feel
There is one piece that I found that does fall under "Tracing", but in a way that can be usefull. Essentially, the piece of advice is "Make a 3D model", and I do know that not everyone can do it, but I can, so I started doing it for backgrounds and perspective(Two things that I really struggle with), and it is really helpfull, just don't do it when you don't need to.
I was always told to change my artstyle at a young age. I never understood that until I practiced anatomy and drew different shapes. “Ah, so this is what they meant.”
To elaborate, Tracing is good as a study mechanic. Breaking down an image into simplified shapes (including the negative space) helps me understand how it connects to the overall image. personally though I would recommend using the simplified tracing as a reference and drawing it from scratch. it should help the line work feel more natural and improve your own skills without becoming overly reliant on tracing. At the end of the day these are all tools to help develop our art skills, what works for one person may not work for the other. The issue with most art advice is their vagueness.
S Tear: remember which is your drink cup and which is you paint water cup
I had to learn that one the hard way xD
@@yoavjacoby8246 yep. Havn't had thst problem yet as i use something like half a water bottle i cut up or something else i don't drink out of, but its something that happens. And this is coming from a guy thst paints my warhammer and D&D figures
If both are cups, I would recommend putting, say, your drinking cup to your left and your paint water cup to your right on the other side of your table XD. Or vice versa. That way your hand sorta gets used to reaching only to the right when you have a brush in your hand so there's a smaller chance you'll mix them up XD
Tier*
@@bozomechanics2531No, their tears are in that paint filled cup…
"Use hue shifting while shading and lighting" is A tier in any media. S tier in pixel art. Hue shifting is the best tip that I ever have.
Once I learned it, my art almost immediately improved x 100 lol
@@PeriluneStar i see airy pfp, i summon
@@smal5504 hello :0
Use B&W for value is S++ for pixel art too cuz of what it does for readability
Now how do I do this In the traditional medium?
"Let hobbyists live."
As a writer, I DEEPLY appreciate your ability to recognize and separate hobby artists from those trying to get better/more well-rounded/professional. Whenever people come to me for writing advice, I first ask them which group they fall under. Do you write for fun, and want advice to make this hobby more enjoyable? Or are you aiming to write professionally on some level? The amount of critique I give, and sometimes even the advice itself, changes depending on the answer.
I appreciate people like you.
Flipping the canvas is such a useful skill but it’s so forgettable at times
I drew something that I really liked, and then I flipped the canvas
_And then I hated it._
What do you mean I had the art set as my pfp that never happened
Yes!! its so useful for figuring out whats wrong
also, accidentally flipping it *too* much can make your brain get used to both sides (and that defeats the whole purpose because your brain wont see it as a fresh new image anymore & will just gloss over things
(edit for clarity cause word vomit isnt fun to read)
@@galacticpotato607 you know how, before computers and acrylics/pencils/etc, people had to paint using slow-drying oils to create their visions? I feel like that's the problem that comes with that habit. 😂 Like, at that point, that just means it's time to take a break and rest your eyes from the piece and come back to it later... but not everyone has the luxury of taking their time on their pieces/or feel impatient and that causes the initial advice to fall apart. It's this very reason (constantly flipping my canvas and getting used to both axes,) that I'm an incredibly slow drawer. It's phenomenal advice but at the sacrifice of time management and speed. It becomes a "choose your battles" sort of deal.
@@EEErmineThe good news is, for the most part, not everybody is going to be mirroring your produce, so you can probably get away with making something look skewed anyway! Mirroring and finding imperfections and fixing them could cause the final product to look uncanny. Not worth hating, imo 😊
@@jewelxiat i actually still liked it, i was just a little upset it ended up looking so wonky flipped
it's not like i was intending on it to look good in the first place, it was just something i thought about drawing :p
Getting "just practice" "learn rules first before drawing ANYTHING" and "draw every day" put me in such a hellscape mind palace thanks to my OCD that now I have to ween myself from constantly drawing nothing but boxes, circles and cylinders every day to actually draw something I have fun drawing.
SAME
The way I interpreted it was: Draw what I want to draw, but break down _how_ what I want to draw works
What's the difference when nothing is fun to draw and you hate yourself with whatever you're tryihg to do whether it's a serious artpiece or a box
@@PumpyGT do you never enjoy drawing? Even if it turns out "bad"?
@@muffinconsumer4431yeah, that's better. I always got frustrated cause I practiced wrong and wound up just reinforcing bad habits/technique, and I just felt like I was getting worse. So "Just practice!!" made me wanna give up
Another thing to add with the "learn the rules before you break them" is the fact that having a strong knowledge in realism doesn't magically translate to being good at making stylized works. You being able to draw one hell of a photo-realistic fruit bowl doesn't also mean you are going to automatically be a great comic artist, they are both skills that need their own time and effort to develop. Being able to stylize and create your own visual shorthand is a skill in itself, that's why I always recommend to new artists to do both. Study basic fundamentals and draw from life, but also observe and learn from the professionals in your field of interest.
The original concept of: "Hey, figuring out the layout of a real thing lets you see where, how, and why exaggerating and altering parts works stylistically," being boiled down to: "Know the rules before you break them," was a mistake of colossal proportions. Do you tell someone trying to write that unless they've broken down sonnets and iambic pentameter, they'll never write a short story? No. That would be the dumbest of takes. What you tell someone trying to write a short is more like: "Hey, punctuation and a feel for the anatomy of a paragraph will help people understand your writing and not forget important details," and we don't even touch on poetry. Not until/unless the writer expresses interest or needs it for their work.
Why are we telling people to learn ALL the rules of reality, when 90% of us don't even really like to look at photo realistic drawings all that much? Most we do is go: "wow, that took a lot of technical skill, sure I'll give this a like/fav/reblog/updoodlement/whatever for the algorithm," and that's the end of our engagement with it. We freak out over three lines that end up looking like a squishmellow puppy mixed with a really fat songbird and gush about how adorable it is for a solid three minutes straight while we try to compose a sentence that both conveys that freak out and is coherent at the same time. We shouldn't be relying on such a reduced catch phrase to explain how to do something like that for people who enjoy that kind of art. Because the take-away _does not in any capacity_ make the potential artists ready to give it a go.
"Know the rules before you break them" isn't supposed to be about learning things photorealistic (as I understand it) but just learning proportions and colors and stuff. Like, I understand anatomy and all that, but the only time I've drawn anatomically correct humans was in my anatomy class. Understanding the basic shapes, though, is really useful for posing work without good references.
@@Saga_Anserumexactly you gets it
There is nothing more complicated than realism, sorry. If you start with it you just need to learn to simplify to move to any other style. Mangakas actually CAN draw realistically, some of them use semi-realistic, or realistic style in their works, like Ito, Isayama or Shirow.
@@YourWaywardDestiny if you are not a professional you can draw as inaccurately and stylistically off-putting way as you want. But since professionals need to jump from style to style building the foundations of realism and then putting new styles on top of that is undeniably helpful. Even Disney animators drew from life and then stylise. Disney kept a small zoo for animators to study movements and anatomy, even though everything was later exaggerated. If you know the basics - you know what, how and when to exaggerate.
"Don't avoid weak point" should be S tier, still remember when I don't know how to draw hands, so I always draw something to hide them
I would always use the ‘in the pocket’ or ‘behind the back’ move to avoid drawing hands
@@anticlaws4105 Yea yea! Absolutely! Gratefully I will draw hundred of them if I come across something that I can't draw, also inspired by Kim Jung Gi that can literally draw everything
Yeah but not everyone wants to improve. Sometimes its better to just let an artist explore and have fun. If someone doesn't want to draw hands than don't force them. If they want to learn how to than they will when they're ready, and if they don't want to learn than they don't have to. I think putting it into A teir is fine because not everyone can benefit from that advice, and it may actually frustrate someone into not wanting to draw that feature even more.
I think it’s good if what you want to draw involves that weak point, but if you know you’re never gonna draw something related to it, you don’t need to.
Like someone who exclusively drew heads and nothing else got a high end job creating icons for games
@@springles7775well that are advices for improving your work, if someone doesn't want to improve then why is he even watching it?
14:20 For me, the pen stabilizer tool has the opposite effect. It drives my perfectionist mind ABSOLUTELY INSANE because the lines never land exactly where I want them.
yes, my line work improved so much when I turned it off. But it was definitely helpful when I didn't have a screen tablet and used a small one, but that what the only time I really ever used it lol. But that was just due to size restriction.
i only use the stabilise setting for animation, to keep the lines as smooth as possible between frames. otherwise it just makes everything feel stiff lmao
Oh yeah, I only use it if I’m just blocking out shapes for a lineless drawing, and never any other place
Nah, that's your controlling mind. Most stabilisers have a range that you can change. It's more about working with resistance than perfectionism.
saaammeee, if i turn on stabilization i go nuts. it feels so gunky to me. if i absolutely cant freehand the lines then im just gonna pop into sai and use the vector
As guilty as tracing makes me feel, it honestly saves so much time when I draw. I trace poses and then alter limbs and body builds to suit the characters I’m drawing, and as someone who just likes having fun with art and draws horribly slowly, I’d rather trace and alter than try and make my own poses when it can since it saves me hours on pieces and it already takes me hours to do a single character without a background or fancy lighting. It lets me keep a hobby a hobby without wanting to tear my hair out
Tracing has a bad rep but honestly? unless you’re profiting off of other people’s work, go for it. Have fun, it doesn’t hurt anyone.
I only trace feet and hands, 7 of 10 times (usually photos of my own). That way I get the essential gesture, then I'll adjust the proportions to the character.
Yeah I get how you feel, I also used to trace a lot. But when I traced, I felt like I did not improve at all (which was something I really wanted and I still do) so I decided to stop tracing, and instead use references and try to copy exactly what I see! This method works out SO much for me! I think you should definitely try it, not that I’m forcing you or anything, but it can really help you improve. Just know that you might have to draw that thing a few times in order to draw it very well but
Spent your skill point on gesture/pose and that problem will be history. Good luck!
Tracing is how I got my start, just doing my characters for my own enjoyment. Been pushing myself to expand and learn lately just because i want to get better overall and expand what I can do.
Personally, I’d put using black and white to check values in A tier. Yes, it’s absolutely a great tool, but I find that doing this often fails to account for the way our eyes perceive color. For example, the exact same bright yellow, if hue-shifted to purple, would register as a darker to our eyes, because yellow registers as an inherently ‘bright’ color.
I’d love to see this as a public tierlist!
I think some drawing softwares have different ways that this works. I use ibis paint x and using the "colour" blending, it gives the brightness of each colour but turning it to black and white does account for the "inherent value" of each colour
A lot of the drawing programs I've used have had a brightness blending mode, so a lot of the time when I'm doing art with really bright colours I check the values in greyscale, but I also check how it looks if I turn the layers to a brigness blending mode, just to make sure the focus is the same for both of them!
Problem for me is not everyone uses an art program with that feature so it isn’t the most accessible advice. I’d love to follow it if, Y’know, my art program let me.
@@scootermcpeanuts6699 I've also seen it on quite a few free programs I've used, like Ibis paint, (and I think medibang too?), just under different names. I should have put that in my original comment too, it is a really useful trick!
@@scootermcpeanuts6699 There are free resources online that allow you to upload a pic and have it convert to grey scale~
Even many img viewers have a feature to "convert to grey scale" in their options menu; if your program can't do it there's lots of ways you can still get to swapped~!
My favorite price of advice (for traditional art) is:
Make a mark on the first page of your sketchbook. Any mark, even if it's just a line.
Why? So that the stress of "it has to be pretty cause this sketchbook is new/aesthetic/ect." Is removed. If the first (or last) page, then at least one page is already "ruined"
I'm bad at explaining things, apologies. But seriously. Just marking through the first page has decreased my anxiety around art SO much lower 😂
Sounds similar to a tip I got that has been helping me immensely: "Don't be precious."
You have your good sketchbook or your good pens or markers and don't use them because they're your good ones? Then why have them? I get if there's a reason, like 'I don't want to use my good paints today since I'm out of the good canvas until payday,' which is a solid reason. But if you have that super awesome sketchbook and are scared to use it because it's super awesome, then just throw it away since its a waste of space and will be forever empty. Don't be precious, use the cool thing.
"Don't start with digital" is not really about the skills you learn. Its about aspiring artists wasting 500+ dollars on an expensive tablet that they will use for a month and then never again because it turned out that they didn't like drawing all that much, or got frustrating at trying to learn art AND every component of their software of choice at the same time instead of tackling each individually.
The “learn rules first” always made me so upset as a kid. I hated the idea that I needed to learn how to draw realism, that I needed to perfect a realistic art style before even thinking about going to a stylized art style. I haven’t drawn in a while and as much as I want to get back into it the idea of having to learn everything again makes me want to cry when this was just supposed to be a fun hobby to begin with.
For me I'd say the bare minimum if you want to get good at drawing stylized stuff is just to at least learn basic anatomy, which can be done by doing a little life drawing every day (or just taking pictures of yourself in cool poses and drawing those poses if you don't want to). You don't need to know how shading works, you don't need to learn perspective (though, that one helps if you do landscape backgrounds), and you certainly don't need to learn colour theory. Just learn how a body/thing looks from every angle, and everything will make sense
Lastly, the best advice I can give you that helped me become a better artist is: don't stop yourself from drawing the things you want. Who cares if you're not ready, just do it anyways. You learn from your mistakes right? Better to plow yourself in a huge pile of mistakes than to just tackle them one by one. The worst that could happen is you get a bad drawing, but you can use that bad drawing to make better drawings. You never lose!
You definitely don't need to learn photorealistic human anatomy in order to be good at drawing cartoons or anime.
You definitely do need to know things like good line quality and how to draw basic shapes and rotate them in perspective, though. Those are things that are grounded in realism, cartoons, and pretty much anything that's representative in some way and isn't just modernist "blobs of paint thrown on a bunch of recycled bottles in a modern art museum".
So in that sense learning rules first is important if only because it saves you so much pain later on.
I do agree that that rule is easy to misinterpret and a lot of people who should know better do try to use it as an opportunity to be smarmy towards beginners though.
Well, only few people can really go from zero to a style without knowing the rules. Also, if drawing makes you cry - maybe just go into abstract art: no rule, no boring solids drawing, no values, shadows etc. You can also leave the canvas blank and pretend it's your art style.
The point of my sarcasm is - nothing is easy. Butt If you don't learn the rules - they will bite you some day. How do I know? Because many artists admitted that at some point in their professional careers had to go back to basics, to, for example, learn a new style.
@@bakarogers7146 I totally agree. But nobody would call realistic rendering, or advanced human anatomy basics of the drawing :D
That very same principle in music was what killed it for me. I loved playing piano, but having to repeatedly play the Flinstones opening theme until I got it ABSOLUTELY PERFECT made me never want to play again. I just wanted to try something new, and it resulted in me never touching music after that.
Something underrated I don't hear about often is to train your eyes. Like just observe outside, images and analysing them on shapes, shadows, structures and colors. You can legit do that everyday and it's like you draw with your own eyes. Even If your hand skill don't catch up with your eyes right away , you will be able to auto correct yourself and have a way more objective view on your on art. This is just so useful
This!!! A million times this!!!
Legit do that every time I find something interesting, I even take pictures of it if I have my camera around just so I can study it further when I need to.
"Warm up sketches" S Tier!
Draw some Doodles that it be some gesture drawings or just some random shapes before you actually work on something more serious/important, it really does help.
10/10 totally recommend! 😊
Very true
> Everyone knows they need to practice to get good at anything
You'd _think_ this is true, but even though it's a common refrain you hear all the time, I think very few people have actually internalized it! This is advice aimed at complete newbies, and it would be good advice, if it was able to get the message across fully.
People will often say stuff like "I can't even draw a stick figure" or "aw man, I envy your skill" and if they had truly internalized this, what they would mean is "I don't have the motivation/time/etc. to practice and learn drawing", but no, what most people mean when they say this is "I don't have the holy blessing of drawing skill, I am but a mortal."
Since "Just practice" is such a common thing for people to say, it's just white noise to most who hear it. What they really need is a paradigm shift. You don't just _have_ skill, you _create_ it, you _earn_ it, you _work for_ it. You, too, can be a great artist, if you put in the effort. That's what "just practice" is supposed to mean. People expect the skill to be handed to them, and when they sit down to draw and they don't spout magic from their pen, they just give up.
My preferred versions of this advice are "fail fast, fail often" or "everybody's got thousands of bad drawings in them, the good ones come later" or "anyone can learn to draw if they actually try"
this pretty much.
also i get the "i can't do that" to which i reply "have you tried?"
Giving this advice to newbies may SEEM helpful, and yes, telling someone "you have to practice to improve" can be motivating, 99% of the time I've been told "Just practice!" it has been wildly unhelpful and comes off as dismissive. Like the default reaction to someone asking how to draw is "umm just practice? Duh?" which doesn't actually give any new information.
Even worse, it can feel like a lot of artists forget what it's like to be a beginner, and don't realize we don't know WHAT or HOW to practice, so it comes across like "if you say you're bad at art clearly you just haven't tried/are too lazy to practice" or "if I can do it so can you" (which is annoying bc not everyone has the same skills to begin with, so acting like it should be exactly as easy/difficult for anyone to learn art bc that's how it was for you is not realistic).
I've been the "I can't even draw a stick figure!" person before, and now I get how that can seem too flippant, but the sentiment behind it was "I am in awe of your skill and cannot fathom being able to do that." It was meant as a compliment. Often the reply was "anyone can be a good artist if they try" which made young me feel HOPELESS bc I WAS trying, over and over, and not improving. So hearing "just practice" was no help whatsoever. I'd say, "I am." They'd say, "practice more" and "be patient." Which isn't bad advice, but I was doing those things already. Was I stupid? No. I was simply reinforcing my bad habits and technique, because I was practicing them over and over until it was ingrained. But I didn't know that then.
I HAVE gotten better now (over the past year I decided to try again), and that's bc I have artist friends who have pointed me in the right direction, certain youtube channels, etc. As a kid, I didn't have much internet access, and had to go by whatever tips I could get from friends or the library. Now, I get to learn and understand HOW to practice and what to do. Like lines, forms, perspective, simplification, etc etc. If you don't know WHAT to practice or how to begin, "Just practice" or "anyone can do it" isn't as encouraging as some seem to think.
[edit: I do love your "fail fast, fail often" and "everybody's got thousands of bad drawings in them, the good ones come later" advice! That's WAY more encouraging!]
to clarify, I understand that artists work hard to hone their craft, and I don't mean to diminish that effort and dedication. I simply mean that the idea anyone can draw at any level if they just try isn't accurate. Take singing -- you can improve, work hard, learn the anatomy of voice, study music theory, etc., etc., but you can put in the same effort and see more or less improvement than someone else, and wind up still not "as good" a singer as others.
There's natural "talent" at play in a lot of skills, be it genetic athleticism, good hand-eye coordination, timbre of voice, ear for pitch, and so on, and I think it's fair to acknowledge that some people will work just as hard at something and still turn out "worse" at it than someone else. Some people have inclinations and pick up certain things faster/more easily. They can keep working on it, of course, but it just feels heartbreaking to hear "anyone can do this" while trying and failing to do it.
(I think the paradigm shift that helped me the most was that a lot of art skill is muscle memory, and that I'll develop it as I practice. That flipped a lightbulb for me somehow. Like, oh, I'm NOT doomed to forever suck at drawing! I can build this up and it'll become easier to make lines go where I want them!)
I'm someone that prefers messy lines, I adore the way they look, smooth lines are honestly boring to me. Messy lines are one of the reasons Wolfwalkers is such a gorgeous movie
I realized that when my art started having a particularly soulless feel too it and I couldn't pinpoint why. That overly clean and vectorized look just doesn't do it for me. Gimme the grittiness!!!
IF YOU forget to take care of your body when drawing, a pomodoro timer can be helpful! It doesn’t help me focus (like it’s supposed to I think?) but does remind me to eat and drink water! Plus, you can flip your canvas during the break and take a step back to look at the whole piece. Or, do some stretches!
I try to draw every day, but I'm disabled and sometimes even leaving the bed or using my hands for anything is hard. On those days i watch youtube and feel guilt because of how much i hear "draw everyday"
You dont need to draw everyday but at the same time, you can by just drawing 10 minutes at the minimum. You’ll most likely improve slower but if you can do it then, that’s better than destroying your passion in the end. Drawing everyday can be a double edged sword honestly.
Though, what’s most important is to find a balance on when to draw and stop. If you’re tired and can’t, just stop and do it when you feel better. Don’t overdo it, because you might procrastinate. Im also struggling with this, I know when to stop but i can’t and end up overworking and having no energy to draw for several days. 💀
I choose to interpret it as draw regularly, or center art mentally. There is absolutely no way my disability will allow me to draw every day but in terms of improvement I am always better off drawing less time regularly than trying to draw for like four hours in one day and then being wiped for a couple days. Start slow and don’t feel guilty. I think people have always meant it a little less literally or they just don’t have the intersectional lens to see it objectively
"Don't start digital" is actually some of the best advice IF you want a painterly style. I would've put it in A tier for that but if your someone who doesn't mind your work looking digital the you can ignore it no problem!
ive started in traditional and i suck in digital line art
@tsumugi9880 yeah I definitely prefer traditional inking. I feel like procreate and photoshop prioritize flow of the line over all else, but I feel like ink is more imperfect in a way that reads more organic.
@@chasechapman9302 if you're going for a more traditional look in digital then you need to use different brushes/a different program
I've started un Digital, fixing mistakes is just more easier than traditional
I'm traditional painter (my artstyle is based on impressionism/expressionism period) and digital artist. Back in middle school I was scared of paint SO BAD, and digital helped me overcome this fear. I learned basic color theory in digital. It's was because in digital i didn't waste materials if I messed up, you don't have to make mess to even start a work. Also they don't change hue midway... (I'm looking at you, acrylic paints) So even someone who wants paintery style it can work!
It makes me happy to see you rank "Draw Every Day" at C tier, because as a person who has focus issues (possibly ADHD), that just isn't possible for me right now. I'm busy trying to stay afloat doing the bare minimum and I don't have the energy for it.
"don't shade with black" is misleading because it comes from the assumption that the artist aim for a colorful look. All the backgrounds in Over The Garden Wall are shaded with blacks and greys on multiply layers (there's a tutorial/walkthrough by the background artist), and those paintings are absolutely gorgeous - because they still used highly saturated colors for the lightened areas. It blew my mind when I found out and it changed my view on certain art advice that just say "dont do X" - because there are cases where doing the "wrong" technique is intentional!
Also most manga are shaded with black to a degree. It's a perfectly valid way to shade in general
Anyways, there's nothing bad about shading with black/ grey tones, you can always use the color grading tool and change the area you want to any color you want
I always agree with Flip Canvas.
One time my sister was drawing and she asked me-
"Do you know what's wrong with this picture? Something feels wrong..."
I then told her that I often flip the canvas when I feel something is amiss but I can't tell what.
She flips her picture and-
"Oh, it was the eyes."
Flipping your canvas helps massively! It allows you to notice errors that are not immediately obvious.
to be honest, a variation of "draw everyday" actually seemed to kind of work for me. though it was "draw more often", not draw everyday. cause, here's the thing; one of my biggest problems when it comes to art was being afraid to draw things simply becuase I didn't think it would turn out good. I was always telling myself I need to be in the perfect mindset for drawing something or else I will do a bad job at it. And while yes, it is good to be in the right headspace for art... not every piece of art needs to look perfect. if it did, you wouldn't be ABLE to practice or learn at all. once I pushed myself to draw more often despite not being in the "perfect" mindset for it, I was actually surprised to find I learned more that way and was able to improve much quicker. and I found that, even if I didn't start out drawing well in the first few minutes, after a few doodles I would get warmed up and then feel ready to draw whatever it was I had in mind.
so yeah, drawing more often actually can be really, REALLY good art advice, but only for people like me who have trouble with perfectionism and being afraid to try/make mistakes. becuase drawing more often allows you more time to make mistakes in your art and improve from them!
however, it's important to keep in mind that you should be enjoying art. if you are trying to draw every single day, but aren't enjoying it, then stop. like I said, I only had to draw more often (though I did spend a few months doing a little drawing everyday), but i wouldn't do it if i didn't enjoy drawing. drawing is my passion, and I never really stop enjoying it. so, while drawing more often worked for me to break me out of my perfectionist mindset, it definitely isn't a universally good advice. it depends on what you are struggling with.
i struggled with hands for the longest time. I spent two weeks studying them for two hours a day, every day. now I can draw them like the back of my hand. Absolutely banger final art advice there!
About drawing every day-I always interpreted it as “Draw something every day, even if it’s just a line or a shape.” This really helps me, as a beginner artist with ADHD. Getting into the habit of drawing is often more important than drawing perfectly.
But I definitely agree that “Draw a full Piece Of Art™ every day” is C tier advice!
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I'm gonna give my own unsolicited advice here since I've been drawing for awhile
And thats to try new things!
See an elemant of someone else's art that you find stylistically cool? Try it! See something stylistically wou dont like very much? Try that too.
Maybe you'll fall in love with it and it'll become a part of your style, maybe you'll learn a new skill even if you dont use it, you'll never know if you dont try!
You dont have to force yourself to master something you dont like, but experimentation is key
Both to creating an art style and creating further understanding of the art you surround yourself with
💜
I have a bit of art advice myself: Find artists who have quality and an art style you admire and think about how they create, then try to implement it the next time you draw. Another thing is that if you study artists who've studied anatomy themselves, you'll have skipped a step.
Drawing every day is the fastest way to sucking if you don't study right, making the same mistakes every day isn't practice it is just building a bad habit. How you study is so important, I've been drawing since I was like two constantly and I suck because for like 1 through 19 of those years I was just repeating my art every day and making the same mistakes thinking it was enough for me to be better and in reality it made me worse. Now that I am studying properly I have to also unlearn the 19 years of incorrect muscle memory I taught myself and that is honestly the hardest part.
also don't use stabilizer is stupid. My lines are wank on digital art because the screen is glossy and it actually hurts my wrist to control it. I can draw perfectly fine lines in my traditional, it has nothing to do with skill or ability to control a line sometimes it's just about peace of mind and taking care of your wrist on a surface with no drag.
Drawing everyday to me isn't much of a bad tip for me, i do short 5-10 minute doodles/sketches and i think that is enough but if i try to do a 3 hour fully rendered piece i get tired and quit. But of course i want the drawing to kept going so this is why i do short sketches, but sometimes its okay to take 1 or 2 day break so you'd be ready for your next piece
I used to trace years ago, it never helped me to do anything, i didn’t get good until i stopped tracing and started practicing on my own
It depends on how you trace. Tracing to absorb information rather then to create an image, is extremely useful
I also used to trace, but then I started using references and it really helped me
practicing on your own won't do anything if you fundamentally don't understand the relationship between the things you're trying to draw from reference. for certain angles no matter how closely i try to follow the reference sometimes I have to trace it once or twice before I understand the relationship/distance btw the nose, eyes etc.
tracing is fine... STOPPING at tracing is the problem
She doesn’t mean tracing in the generally thought of capacity of just drawing over an image to copy it. She means using tracing to break down an image and help you understand the shapes used, composition etc.
That can be really helpful in getting an understanding of these fundamentals which you can then translate to the choices you make in your own work.
Obviously you have to actually apply what you learn alongside tracing so I’m not saying just trace and analyse all the time.
You can do the same thing with colour palettes, colour picking either a photo or a piece that you particularly like to see what kind of colour choices have been made and why they work together. It helps with understanding of colour theory as-well as your personal taste.
Sorry this was a bit long I just like talking about this stuff I find it really interesting 😅
12:45 Is pretty real, as someone who only uses default brushes with like maybe some modified default brushes, it’s not that hard to make good art if you know what brushes you’re comfortable with. For me, I’m on ibis paint x and my go to is pen fade, calligraphy and airbrush on characters, that’s it. Backgrounds I’ll use some default texture brushes, that’s it. Ibis paint got a wide variety of it.
I use the basic pen tool and occasionally the air brush or petal brush for texturing/lighting sometimes and that’s about it lmao.
I’ve always assumed that beginers were told to not start on digital is because it’s more affordable for some people to use pencils and paper than to get an expensive display tablet with a computer and sometimes paying softwares. For a long time, artists could only start traditionnal because it was the only possible way they could afford. That said, I also think that as more and more affordable tools for digital art are available, it became easier to start off by drawing digitaly. Therefore I would have put this advice in a low b tier / high c tier because to me, it is more of a « tools don’t make the artist » situation even though this take in particular is clearly outdated.
using my shoulder instead of my wrist changed everything for me, i always struggled with lineart its crazy how much of a difference it makes.
Thinking about the “don’t make art your career thing” fully agree on your points, im technically still a graphic design/illustration major, but am officially switching to Scientific Illustration, it’s harder to replace, and mixes my interests. Only downside is how niche and intensely competitive it is, even to get the education for it. My dream post-grad certification program only admits 18 students a year 😢
I purposfully chicken scratch the crap out of my lines, lol. I just love the way it looks, gives a sense of dynamic movement and emotion that I feel gets lost if I make my lines too refined.
Sometimes, after i've coloured in a traditional piece, I take a black pen to it to rough up the lines.
I’m in a digital art program designed to prepare us for a creative career. This tier list helped give more perspective to my class :)
I’m hoping to go to an arts school someday, I also want to be a full-time artist as well. I’m happy for you!
A tier advice: If you draw using any type of pens, digital or traditional or otherwise, buy artist gloves, trust me in this.
drawing every day being the number one most hated thing is actually shocking to me, i knew there were people who didnt like it but i genuinely think it’s the best thing you can do as an artist
and i want to clarify i don’t mean make a full rendered piece of art every day but just to doodle when you get the chance
two years ago i drew every. single. day. and again most of it was just doodling, maybe only one full piece a week, but i have never had my art improve so rapidly, eventually i kinda stopped drawing for a bit and for the past year i would very rarely draw, but whenever it did i would HATE how it looked, which discouraged me from drawing for another few weeks until i eventually tried again, and the same thing would repeat
at the beginning of this year i started drawing regularly again it is the happiest ive been with my art in forever, genuinely i think its the fastest way to improve and feel comfortable with your art
Agree. I geniunely think it’s one of the best art advice if done right, and that’s the problem if you can’t. 5-10 minutes is honestly enough if you ahave a busy schedule or not in the mood. (Though if you aren’t, take breaks and try to at least draw for five minutes. If it gets monotous, then a break might be good but do remember to draw at least everyday for 5-10 minutes. Its a slower process but healthier)
Yeah, keeping drawing to a routine is probably the best way to improve in a way. Not making full pieces every day (though, the people who can are freaking insane), but instead just chipping away at a bigger piece, or studying a little every day.
Though, I tend to break that routine a little if it gets a little boring and tinker with computers to freshen things up. I'm a computer nerd if you couldn't tell.
Another thing to keep your engagement while drawing is to set deadlines for every drawing you do. Makes things more interesting that way because it give-off a challenge. At least it works for me, not sure if that'll work for everyone.
This year i drew every day and my rendering skills became insane and my art looked so good, i was genuinely happy with my art and i developed a set art style that i was also really happy with, and today i stepped out of my comfort zone and tried perspective, and it turned out so well i felt so ecstatic! For me, drawing everyday improved my art drastically and i think it's such a good tip
The problem is that there are people who have focus issues, namely neurodivergent people who have adhd and autism, such as myself, so telling me to draw everyday doesn’t really work for me because I genuinely can’t focus, I have no attention span, I do agree that having a drawing routine probably works though
i think the one thing about flipping your canvas is that it relies on your eyes not being used to the flipped version of the image and so if you do it CONSTANTLY you’ll… get used to the flipped version of the image. and that’s bad.
overall, though, it’s good advice as long as you don’t massively overdo it. at least that’s my opinion
I think if you just sketch your piece and once you are done sketching /then/ you flip the canvas and fix anything it wont be as detrimental ? Atleast it's worked for me so far but I can't say for others 🤔
Take the time to learn how to make your own brushes!!!!
This has saved me SO much time searching for that "perfect brush" that doesn't seem to actually exist! It took about 2 days of painful trial and error but now that I understand how to make one and how they function, I can save myself even more time by recognizing when I could detail something by hand or just whip up a new brush and do it in 2 strokes instead
the pen stabilizer is a huge saviour of shaky lines and when you flip an eye, you have to alter it depending on the perspective of the head but people sometimes forget to do that
Oh another thing to consider is when using good quality paints some of them have hazardous chemicals. To get the brighter warm colors alot of pigments have cadmium. We are still using chrome, cadmium, and cobalt for some pigments so consider that when handling paints.
On the "use high quality supplies" one, Ive actually "downgraded" in a lot of the supplies I use regularly now. I used to use microns for line art, now I use those ballpoint pens that you can get like 20 of for 1.50 in any stationary section just because I like them better. Same with graphite pencils, instead of the artist sets I just use mechanical plastic ones that my family gets a giant pack of at the beginning of each school year. I now gravitate to water based markers over alcohol ones (tombow markers, which are still fancy but significantly less expensive than alcohol markers) because I like drawing in sketchbooks. I don't buy sketchbooks, I make my own with any decent paper I have laying around, cardboard and fabric. I do acrylic painting on paper instead of canvas because I don't like the texture of canvas, and also regularly use like, craft paint because it's good enough for my purposes, I've run out of a lot of my fancy ones and I don't do acrylic painting enough to justify spending a lot of money. There's still fancy art supplies that I use all the time and am incredibly grateful for (my prismacolor color pencils and my mission gold watercolors) but it's not necessary whatsoever and I've been having so much more fun with art since I stopped thinking I had to use high quality art supplies.
18:25 Most of my art teachers have always been big on telling us to experiment and do different things for the sake of learning, and also were very staunch that we were definitely too young to know what our style was yet. I did have one teacher (who I already really didn't like) who was very insistent that we needed to have our exact style and subject matter and media of choice decided NOW and that we needed to have a really consistent theme in all our art. My art was all over the goddamn place and was spread out across painting, making really ugly sculptures, paper mache, and comics. That class was maybe 7 or 8 years ago and I've only now started to dial in what makes my art "mine". And how to make sculptures that are less ugly, lol.
References are so important, I drew my oc who had a old tv for a head without any knobs on the size for so long since I had no refrence
I started drawing every day not to help my art skills, but to help my discipline and whatnot, before hand I was drawing like, once a month even though I REALLY wanted to, and while it definitely helped my art skills, even as a beginner I have noticed my skill with just this is peaking or capping so I'm now starting to try and incorporate other stuff to help me get better:] all of this to say i basically agree with you, i just personally would put it higher in C tier for its other benefits:D
So glad I watched this vid in it's entirety. Never heard of pen stabilization untill you talked about it. I am both raging and relieved that shaky lines can now be less of an issue now.
Holy crap! Your voice is so awesome and calming! You have to make a podcast!
I find that I draw with my shoulder more consistently than most artists I know, and the difference seems to me that I stand at an easel, while they sit at computers or with sketchbooks or tablets. From the standing position, the whole body from toe to hip to shoulder to forearm becomes relevant to the body mechanics of your drawing. You can move your body, try drawing with your shoulder while positioned in different ways, leaning your hip in different manners, etc... you may find you get more comfortable lines when you find the positions you feel most comfortable drawing in that day. I often stretch before I draw like this, and sometimes while taking breaks during it. Drawing from the shoulder becomes very natural in my experience when on your feet. This process is especially well suited to large pieces in traditional medium.
Occasionally I see advice that’s just “this is the only way to achieve this outcome you must do it like this (specifically with traditional art forms, like pencil or ink) like yes the technique is great to know and be able to to, but if someone can achieve the same look in a different way, they should
11:37 I’m sorry this one pisses me off to the highest degree because of a recent experience I was showing my mom some plates that I made for my Printmaking college class that I’m taking right now and she legitimately started critiquing my work for being the same character in two different different situations! The composition of these two pieces is vastly different, because one is a headshot in profile, and the other is a zoomed out backgrounded piece where the characters are barely shown! (The two characters that are featured are half covered up by the trees around them)
One Ive run into a lot while trying to learn digital art is 'just play around! Have fun!' And it absolutely leaves me in tears because I want to have fun but I have no idea what any tool does thats why Im here to learn the technical stuff!!! (To be clear its often said without providing any other instructions or clarity.)
I mostly agree with these, and I wouldn't necessarily bump "Always use references" down a tier, but I think it comes with the caveat of using references *thoughtfully*. I've seen artists use references and follow them way too closely to a point that it looked out of place or stiff in their art style. It's kind of similar to the subject of tracing. Tracing and referencing can both be unhelpful when they're not done thoughtfully.
14:20 interesting that you put it in s tier, because every other single TH-cam video I’ve seen talking about pen stabilization always says to turn it off completely, so you can become better at drawing confident lines without having training wheels on.
0:40 sorry, but that bottle cap thing looks like an angry chef with a star shaped nose.
19:15 i absolutely hate this advice because the people who say it often forget that maybe the artist in question is using 'lesser' quality supplies because they actively enjoy using them (like me with waterbased (not watercolor) markers, swapdoodle, and an old phone with a free drawing program that is my dearly beloved and has been with me for so long). like i've made some of my best drawings with the aforementioned old phone and drawing program even though i do have 'better' supplies to use because i enjoy using those 'lesser' quality art supplies
I remember when I've heard about flipping canvas for the first time. It was a game changer.
Starting with Digital vs Traditional comes down to a confidence thing, if you practice primarily with digital art, you have the convenience of ctrl+z which can hamper line confidence
BOUNGO STRAY DOGS MENTION!? AAAAA AYAYAYAY
12:35 I only draw with shoulder when I need to draw clean perfect circles and straight lines or a huge poster
Saying “just practice” to an artist is the same as saying a sad person “just don’t be sad”💀
Like all advice it depends on time, person, and context because (surprise) people and their situations are different.
If someone was posting art practice every day and was wondering what they could do better and they'd hit a plateau, "just practice" is not helpful.
On the other hand, if someone keeps posting that they want to get better and they're not improving but you ask them what they've been doing and it turns out they keep watching a bunch of youtube videos, and reading manga and playing video games for "inspiration", but they've actually drawn like three times in two weeks...
...then yes, "just practice" is probably correct.
And unfortunately there are a lot more people who draw less than once a week than people who draw every day.
(Don't mind me, not hating or anything, just here to share my opinion respectfully 👍)
I understand why "just practice" was put in the tier it was placed in. Though, in my opinion, I think it could be placed higher, but not S tier necessarily. It's because it's advice I always give in conjunction with other pieces of advice.
My frequent go-to if I'm asked is, "I know people hate to hear it, but practice. Art is like a muscle and you need to build it, then exercise it frequently. There are times I went without drawing for a while, and I forgot how to draw things and had to go back and study resources again to relearn. Study what you want to learn, but PRACTICE."
The other reason I would place it higher is because some people just don't know or understand that practice *is* important. I've been in/seen situations which people think it's pure born talent and didn't take into consideration the extensive amount of time, effort, and study it takes to improve.
I loved seeing your take on the tier list, there are some bits of advice I haven't actually heard before, so it's really cool to learn about what other people have gotten in terms of advice!
4:18 Pewdeipei proved this wright significantly. you don't need 5 hours or even 30 mins 10 or 5 mins (or even less) is fine enough. The fact the man did this while also be a father is enough prof (the guy even managed to piss-off the AI "Artist"). Its not the always the long hours its the build up to it over time. ( or not the end result, but the process to it).
Wow, hearing Chillhop in the background of a video in 2024, and songs I actually recognized?? And I haven't checked in on them in litearlly over a year... That was a blast from the past! I appreciate your perspective on these advice bits - I feel like I get a well-rounded perspective seeing both the good AND bad advice, and seeing them sorted on a spectrum, it's really satisfying. Tier Lists really do that well, huh! :D
And your comments section is so great too! So much great advice, and people explaining how and why they use certain advice bits and for what - the personal stories that contextualize sound-bites are invaluable!
I always forget to flip the canvas, there was one time recently where I did it at the end and noticed my characters hair was pretty lopsided, so that was fun to fix... I forgot to do it again on my most recent piece so I flipped it at the end and it just looks perfect. Like I could show you the flipped and regular version and you wouldn’t be able to tell which was which. The joy I felt after flipping it was so insane for something that small.
I love having your videos playing in the background as I draw so very excited w a new video
I find your voice so soothing! I’ve also learned a lot from you, thank you!
This was a fun video to watch haha. There certainly is a LOT of different means of art advice and definitely can vary on how effective they are from person to person and situation to situation. Loved hearing your perspective on each of these advice tips !!
One advice bit I definitely feel even more nuance to is the "don't draw the same things" one because of my own personal growth but it has nuance to that tip as well. There was an old post on twt iirc saying something along the lines of a good way to improve is to find a character/ship you really enjoy and draw them a lot. I've definitely found my biggest growth spurts were linked to having periods I had a pairing/character I wanted to draw a lot since it made art more fun and thus I experimented more. Definitely if you only draw the same subject matter the same it can probably halt/slow down progress a bit but I definitely back the finding a subject matter you want to draw a lot helps. Presently I've been focused strongly on the ship SettPhel and it's been the thing to FINALLY get my butt to learn how to better understand more muscular masculine figures as Sett is quite muscular haha. I actually struggle more with masculine figures than feminine so this has been a challenge but oh so fun for me. Not to mention adding experimentation alongside your focus helps so much too. Truly you NEVER know what'll be what helps you finally understand that artistic subject matter you've struggled over for decades. Today I chuckle how Sett League of Legends finally got me to learn how to draw muscles. Bless that fictional man's heart.
A lot of the controversy around the “don’t shade with black” and “don’t chicken scratch” advices comes from people who don’t know the difference between a stylistic choice and an actual mistake imo, especially because those types of advices are catered to beginners. Yes, professional comic artists using pure black shading and actually making it look good is a stylistic choice, beginner artists airbrushing black paint all over their drawing because they don’t know how else to shade and making it look absolutely horrific is not. On one hand, people shouldn’t be discouraged from trying a more bold approach to shading using black, but on the other, it’s better for complete beginners to steer clear from it
Thank you Duchess, this was so incredibly helpful!! ☺️ I really needed to hear these points as an artist that is constantly being too harsh on myself. I will absolutely subscribe and watch more of your content!
I just stumbled across this video while searching for a helpful tutorial/guide how to color digitally. As I heard your words saying that ones style comes with time I felt that.
In my current sketchbook there are drawing and doodles I did from around two years ago and some current drawings and practices.
You can clearly see how my style developed over a period of time. Thank you for those comforting words, they brightened up my day
This is a very good tier list. I think with art advice the main thing is that almost none of it is universally applicable. Everything can be bad in one situation and good in another situation. My favorite example is that for drawing long smooth lines from the shoulder -- yes, a great advice for drawing the polished lineart, but a really bad advice when thumbnailing and doing the first rough.
Getting good critique is a great tip. Im a beginner digital artist and I always go to my best friend (who is also a traditional artist) to look for critique and instead of just saying "yeah it looks good" she suggests things that could make it look a bit more alive or detailed.
It's pretty validating watching this as a fairly new artist and agreeing with/understanding all placements. It's nice to see someone else kinda echoing a lot of the things I've learned during my journey. I've been tracing, which was a stereotype I had to unlearn to even try and ended up being a massive boon over the past year of me actively learning. I've also straight up ignored learning to shade, because frankly... I don't wanna x3 I do pixel art, but the way other artists shade has yet to click with me. I understand how to do a little shading on bigger pieces, but there are certain styles that I just can't grasp yet. So, yeah, it's nice to hear 'draw what you want and ignore skills you don't want' as advice.
getting into digital art I've definitely traced and using it to help me see and break down the shapes in my references. I never post them but I trace a couple times to help build muscle memory as well
I just started the "draw everyday 100 days" and i'm really enjoying it, i improove each day and it's soooo satisfying. At the end i'm not gonna require motivation to draw, it's just gonna become a lifestyle.
Subbed the moment you put "Just Practice" in D tier, nice to meet you. I wanted to become an artist when I was younger, but my art friend refused to give me any advice other than "just practice" and that soured me against practicing anything for a few years out of spite because even I knew that was BS advice, especially for a total newbie that didn't know How to practice art. All I wanted was for them to share the tutorials they had bragged about following to get good when they first started, but they refused.
I've gotten over it, and I like being a writer a lot now so it worked out.
my one and only quarrel with this video is putting the pen stabilizer in S tier rather than A tier - personally, having the stabilizer enabled held me back a lot because it slowed down my efficiency in general. i always make sure the stabilizer is set to 0 before i do anything, and it's actually helped me a lot with drawing consistent, fast, steady lines. it also motivated me to draw a looot more because it made me So Angry when the line didn't appear as fast as i drew it. this is just in my experience though!! i love watching/listening to your content ! keep it up :D
This was a fantastic watch, I got some really great perspectives from this. It was especially nice to hear you challenge the "draw every day" bit of advice. The idea that I have to draw every day to improve at art has been my #1 demotivator, and honestly, has caused me to draw way less than I would have otherwise. It's not very realistic advice for the majority of people, and on top of that, I have ADHD (among other things) and doing something every single day just isn't something that's been feasible for me. This was the first time I've heard this challenged, and I feel like that's going to help me a lot moving forward. Thank you
The biggest issue with art tips is that artists always think that people are pursuing art with the same goal as theirs, I mean, to become professional artists. And let's be true, 95%+ of people watching art tutorials won't make a penny of drawing in life. They want to learn to satisfy themselves, and developing deep knowledge about some of the fundamentals won't satisfy people as much as drawing their favorite character will.
Another thing about tracing is that it's a skillset on its own and actually a crucial skill for specific techniques and even certain industries, such as tattooing
Learn how to learn, what to learn and how to practice, getting out of your comfort zone, is the best advice for begginers. So many try and draw every day or regularly,
but do not evolve as they wanted because they don't know what they need to do in order to attain that goal.
I used to draw every single day, & you know what I got out of it? Callouses & Cubital Tunnel Syndrome. It was so bad, I couldn't draw or even write a shopping list for several years.
I used to flip my canvas (aka turn over my page and hold it up to the light bulb) before I knew that was a thing because I found it was the best way to make my art symmetrical and not leaning to the right
Thank you! This was the perfect confidence boost I needed at this point of my artistic journey!
Another benefit to high quality materials (at least with traditional art) is that cheaper supplies are typically not light fast. Pigments that last a long time without fading are expensive, as is the formulation. When you're starting out that won't really be an issue though but if you're working professionally or on an important piece you'll want supplies that makes sure it lasts for years to come.
I feel like sharing this. Recently this new year, I was determined to improve my art and reveal it in posts so people would know my talent. By doing this, I joined several art competitions, unpopular ones (more chance of winning top3) slowly to more popular (less chance of winning 1st). It was actually not that bad, I was using other artstyles and used lighting. But then again, this meant drawing almost everyday while I have schoolworks. At first, it made me tired, but I got used to it and wasnt really burnt out. I guess its how much determiination uou have. In my opinion.
If I want to learn to draw, I would require references, as I cannot visualize things in my head.
i use the pixel brush on ibspaint for my sketchs bc its messy and i dont have to worry ab it being perfect now obviously i dont use that brush for everything but basically anything but i use it for the majority of a peace and i think that's pretty helpful :3
I hate the "don't draw the same things" one so much. I draw purely for myself, because I love it when a piece turns out great, and it's a form of getting my energy out. People constantly, even one of my friends who is great at art said at one point, to stop drawing "the same stuff", simply because I feel more comfortable drawing women (or female presenting nbys). I am a woman myself, and like the fact that I can use my own body for references on poses and stuff, but I do draw men sometimes, but only when I am fine with failing. Drawing men a lot will only drain my art confidence and love for the thing
I started practicing as a digital, and in my experience, i got often frustrated with my lines, with my results and was stuck without making progress, then i stopped using the tablet and i did notice more "progress" on paper. But that also might be because my tablet feels very slippery.
Had never heard the "flip the canvas" advice. I'll be sure to try it out next time!
Few little personal anecdotes for for some of these art advice:
>Flip the canvas: I don't know why, but even though doing so is very useful, I just straight-up refuse to flip the canvas. Something about it never felt right, and even now I'm kinda doing it out of spite for no reason
>Use pen stabilizers: another one of those rebellious things I don't do. I just like ever so slightly uneven line, makes it more "natural" looking. Though, I do turn on the stabilizer if I absolutely need perfect lines in those rare cases.
>Don't avoid weak points: For this one I took it to a whole new level and designed a character that includes nearly everything I hate drawing. Made it so much easier for me to get good at art because I wanted that character to look good
>Don't draw the same stuff: For me I hate when someone does that literally, as in literally drawing the same drawing over and over again. What are supposed to learn when you do that? That you're 1% better than the last time you drew it? Actually draw something different when it gets to that point.
>Don't flip the eye: I just use construction lines to get the job done. basic shapes are all you need anyways and it's easy to just draw two (or three) horizontal perspective lines with the basic shape of the eyes between them (like a circle, oval, square, triangle, or trapezoid). Never liked using the copy/paste tool for any of my work, but it's probably because I'm more traditional with my digital art.
>Don't trace: I never trace my work, but I don't mind if others do it as a studying tool. Basically if you have a hard time imagining stuff (aphasia), tracing is good to learn these shapes, and then you can use this little paper you traced on as a reference for your real drawing.
>Draw every day: for someone who's done that for a year straight...don't...not unless you're willing to destroy yourself while racing the clock every day. Even when I took the time to study, I never had enough time to experiment with anything, so to repeat: *DO NOT DRAW EVERY DAY!* Ruining your body for bragging rights is not something to be proud of.
>Don't start digital: For this one I have better advice: "Don't invest in digital drawing equipment if you're not sure you like drawing". Good drawing tablets are expensive, while pencil and paper is dirt cheap. If you're not sure drawing is for you, you're better off starting with a simple pencil and paper setup before spending some good dough on a quality drawing tablet. That's just me though.
Interestingly when I draw I pet my lines because my main form is clay sculpture. I’m used to roughing in a shape and cleaning it up afterwards.
with the "don't shade with black", sometimes either:
a) you want a very specific color and hue shifting it may make it seem like something else (like red accidentally becoming hot pink when hue shifted too much)
b) if you to, under using hue shifting can give a grimy feel
There is one piece that I found that does fall under "Tracing", but in a way that can be usefull. Essentially, the piece of advice is "Make a 3D model", and I do know that not everyone can do it, but I can, so I started doing it for backgrounds and perspective(Two things that I really struggle with), and it is really helpfull, just don't do it when you don't need to.
tell me why i’ve actually been waiting for this ever since her community post.
I was always told to change my artstyle at a young age. I never understood that until I practiced anatomy and drew different shapes.
“Ah, so this is what they meant.”
To elaborate, Tracing is good as a study mechanic. Breaking down an image into simplified shapes (including the negative space) helps me understand how it connects to the overall image.
personally though I would recommend using the simplified tracing as a reference and drawing it from scratch. it should help the line work feel more natural and improve your own skills without becoming overly reliant on tracing.
At the end of the day these are all tools to help develop our art skills, what works for one person may not work for the other.
The issue with most art advice is their vagueness.
14:46 i flip the eye but i use the mesh tool to change it