(vent) my art is garbage.

[KhaosKitsune617]

i keep seeing so many artists not that older than me have so much talent and potential than my art. although my artstyle is pretty nice and i dont just half-ass my way, it probably doesnt matter.

i cant draw blood right. certain topics that the best artists use are upsetting to me. i cant draw backgrounds right. i dont know how to draw monsters or surreal stuff without it looking ugly.

i just wish i could draw as good as you guys without looking like an edgelord or a wuss.

[RamenButLeaf]

I looked at your art & I think that you're being a bit too harsh on yourself. But I may know some tips for you to improve [ a bit faster, but it really depends on your way to learn ).

To start to draw surreal / mythical creatures, you need to have a big understanding of anatomy. Surreal is mostly stylised from what I saw, & it's hard to make it in your own style if you aren't a pro in the basics. If it's a hybrid creature, then you need to have a big understanding of both human & animalistic anatomy & to know how you can make both anatomies fuse without making it look awkward.

Then, to fit the the horror / surreal atmosphere, I guess choosing a to draw a background that makes a good contrast with the main drawing & rendering the characters should help. You can watch / look at some tutorials for shading & once you understand the basics of rendering, you can start to play with the colours, maybe even choose your own colour palette.

For the backgrounds, I still struggle with them a bit. If it's a landscape / scenery, I would recommend to watch videos made by art teachers like Marc Brunet ( someone here recommended me his channel before, it helped me a lot ). They will surely explain it better than I can. If it's not a scenery, then using complementary colours or colours that match with the character is the easiest choice.

For blood, I think you should try to practice liquids. Try to draw water by looking at images or by looking at actual water ; observe how it interacts with the environment around it ; understand gravity, speed & movements. Blood isn't exactly like water, but it's similar & a good start. Once you're good at drawing water, you can start to focus on blood. Blood has different shades of colours in general ( depending of how much blood there's in a zone ), but it's easy to understand if you know how to draw liquids.

I hope that I helped & that what I said was understandable. If you learn better with visual demonstrations, watching live tutorials & speedpaints can help too. Good luck with improving, & remember to not give up. Improvement may take time, but you will end up proud of your progress & realise that the efforts were worth it.

[KhaosKitsune617]

At 11/30/23 09:15 AM, RamenButLeaf wrote: I looked at your art & I think that you're being a bit too harsh on yourself. But I may know some tips for you to improve [ a bit faster, but it really depends on your way to learn ).

To start to draw surreal / mythical creatures, you need to have a big understanding of anatomy. Surreal is mostly stylised from what I saw, & it's hard to make it in your own style if you aren't a pro in the basics. If it's a hybrid creature, then you need to have a big understanding of both human & animalistic anatomy & to know how you can make both anatomies fuse without making it look awkward.

Then, to fit the the horror / surreal atmosphere, I guess choosing a to draw a background that makes a good contrast with the main drawing & rendering the characters should help. You can watch / look at some tutorials for shading & once you understand the basics of rendering, you can start to play with the colours, maybe even choose your own colour palette.

For the backgrounds, I still struggle with them a bit. If it's a landscape / scenery, I would recommend to watch videos made by art teachers like Marc Brunet ( someone here recommended me his channel before, it helped me a lot ). They will surely explain it better than I can. If it's not a scenery, then using complementary colours or colours that match with the character is the easiest choice.

For blood, I think you should try to practice liquids. Try to draw water by looking at images or by looking at actual water ; observe how it interacts with the environment around it ; understand gravity, speed & movements. Blood isn't exactly like water, but it's similar & a good start. Once you're good at drawing water, you can start to focus on blood. Blood has different shades of colours in general ( depending of how much blood there's in a zone ), but it's easy to understand if you know how to draw liquids.

I hope that I helped & that what I said was understandable. If you learn better with visual demonstrations, watching live tutorials & speedpaints can help too. Good luck with improving, & remember to not give up. Improvement may take time, but you will end up proud of your progress & realise that the efforts were worth it.

thank you. i dont have lots of time but i hope to be able to improve

[RamenButLeaf]

At 11/30/23 09:45 AM, KhaosKitsune617 wrote:

At 11/30/23 09:15 AM, RamenButLeaf wrote: I looked at your art & I think that you're being a bit too harsh on yourself. But I may know some tips for you to improve [ a bit faster, but it really depends on your way to learn ).

To start to draw surreal / mythical creatures, you need to have a big understanding of anatomy. Surreal is mostly stylised from what I saw, & it's hard to make it in your own style if you aren't a pro in the basics. If it's a hybrid creature, then you need to have a big understanding of both human & animalistic anatomy & to know how you can make both anatomies fuse without making it look awkward.

Then, to fit the the horror / surreal atmosphere, I guess choosing a to draw a background that makes a good contrast with the main drawing & rendering the characters should help. You can watch / look at some tutorials for shading & once you understand the basics of rendering, you can start to play with the colours, maybe even choose your own colour palette.

For the backgrounds, I still struggle with them a bit. If it's a landscape / scenery, I would recommend to watch videos made by art teachers like Marc Brunet ( someone here recommended me his channel before, it helped me a lot ). They will surely explain it better than I can. If it's not a scenery, then using complementary colours or colours that match with the character is the easiest choice.

For blood, I think you should try to practice liquids. Try to draw water by looking at images or by looking at actual water ; observe how it interacts with the environment around it ; understand gravity, speed & movements. Blood isn't exactly like water, but it's similar & a good start. Once you're good at drawing water, you can start to focus on blood. Blood has different shades of colours in general ( depending of how much blood there's in a zone ), but it's easy to understand if you know how to draw liquids.

I hope that I helped & that what I said was understandable. If you learn better with visual demonstrations, watching live tutorials & speedpaints can help too. Good luck with improving, & remember to not give up. Improvement may take time, but you will end up proud of your progress & realise that the efforts were worth it.

thank you. i dont have lots of time but i hope to be able to improve

You welcome. Practice only when you feel like it. It helps to learn faster.

[KhaosKitsune617]

At 11/30/23 09:47 AM, RamenButLeaf wrote:

At 11/30/23 09:45 AM, KhaosKitsune617 wrote:

At 11/30/23 09:15 AM, RamenButLeaf wrote: I looked at your art & I think that you're being a bit too harsh on yourself. But I may know some tips for you to improve [ a bit faster, but it really depends on your way to learn ).

To start to draw surreal / mythical creatures, you need to have a big understanding of anatomy. Surreal is mostly stylised from what I saw, & it's hard to make it in your own style if you aren't a pro in the basics. If it's a hybrid creature, then you need to have a big understanding of both human & animalistic anatomy & to know how you can make both anatomies fuse without making it look awkward.

Then, to fit the the horror / surreal atmosphere, I guess choosing a to draw a background that makes a good contrast with the main drawing & rendering the characters should help. You can watch / look at some tutorials for shading & once you understand the basics of rendering, you can start to play with the colours, maybe even choose your own colour palette.

For the backgrounds, I still struggle with them a bit. If it's a landscape / scenery, I would recommend to watch videos made by art teachers like Marc Brunet ( someone here recommended me his channel before, it helped me a lot ). They will surely explain it better than I can. If it's not a scenery, then using complementary colours or colours that match with the character is the easiest choice.

For blood, I think you should try to practice liquids. Try to draw water by looking at images or by looking at actual water ; observe how it interacts with the environment around it ; understand gravity, speed & movements. Blood isn't exactly like water, but it's similar & a good start. Once you're good at drawing water, you can start to focus on blood. Blood has different shades of colours in general ( depending of how much blood there's in a zone ), but it's easy to understand if you know how to draw liquids.

I hope that I helped & that what I said was understandable. If you learn better with visual demonstrations, watching live tutorials & speedpaints can help too. Good luck with improving, & remember to not give up. Improvement may take time, but you will end up proud of your progress & realise that the efforts were worth it.

thank you. i dont have lots of time but i hope to be able to improve

You welcome. Practice only when you feel like it. It helps to learn faster.

i understand. my self esteem is pretty bad, but i do feel like by my 16th birthday, i’ll be able to achieve my desired talent.

[Drimager]

Very relatable. I've always been bad at drawing people for who knows how long and I've only been satisfied about my skills right about this month. Every time I'd draw a face back then it would take me at least more than 15 minutes and most of the time, I don't even like it. And that doesn't even take full-body into consideration. However, recently, I learned about how I should've approached art and maybe it could help you too.

In short, try to observe more. When I first started music production, it was like becoming a beginner at drawing again. Everything I made sounded really bad and I didn't know how bad it was until I listen to it after a short break. I would learn online on how to improve and practice of course, but there was one advice that I didn't realize was REALLY important, and that was "training your ear". Basically, train your ear to hear sounds as it is. When we listen to songs, we don't observe all the small details, we just enjoy the song. But to train the ear, we are forcing ourselves to listen to everything happening within the song including the small details.

I did just that and I actually made it a habit every time I'd listen to a song. When I first tried it, it gave me a better idea on how people make their songs. I would then compare it to my works and then of course, become disappointed. There was so much going on it felt impossible to get on their level. However, over time, I started to feel less pressured by listening to these better artists, because I started to understand more about what's happening within their songs. I started to understand what they were doing and how they did all of it. I was basically starting to listen to the song as the artist may have heard it themselves. And this is basically what made me a much better music producer, one that had become satisfied with their skills.

I applied this knowledge to my drawing skills and it sure helped me a lot. When I draw a person, I will compare it to others' work. I will observe the differences, and I will fix my mistakes. I repeat this process a couple of times until I feel satisfied. It takes me long to finish, but I notice my improvements. Of course, progress is still slow, but now my goal feels much more achievable to me.

[Waterina]

Nahhh, your art have higher rating than me.

[KingKevzilla]

Years ago, I was in an art gallery. It was a show where "professional artists" showed off their work for the year. The one thing, I saw there that will always stick was a large piece of paper that was torn in half and a single red line scribbled on it. Without the worst piece of "art" I have ever seen in my life and it pissed me off for how the idiot that "made" it was asking for it. Then I realised, that no one would ever buy this or ever see it again after this.

Your art is better than that, it is getting seen by dozens of people from all over the world and is bringing some joy into their lives. That's something to be proud of.

[switzrr]

I don't mean to turn this into a self-deprecation circle-jerk or come across as saying "I have it worse than you so you have no right to complain", but it can be helpful to have a wider perspective by comparing yourself to those worse than you as well; I'm much older than you and my art doesn't come close to yours, but I try to factor in the many people my age who don't draw at all.

[Tenebrare]

At 11/30/23 09:53 AM, KhaosKitsune617 wrote: i understand. my self esteem is pretty bad, but i do feel like by my 16th birthday, i’ll be able to achieve my desired talent.

When I was 16 I did draw stick figures.

[StaticBoxGuy]

i keep seeing so many artists not that older than me have so much talent and potential than my art.

There will always be someone better or worse than you at something. Thats is just how life works.

[SeijiArt]

What specific area do you want to improve in? It's never too late to improve.

[Bundeluxe]

Everyone improves at their own pace. I think that the convenience of viewing other people's work and successes online has created a very widespread and unhealthy mentality of "oh god, 8 months out the womb and I still haven't made it?? It's over for me lads..."

Because of this, people (creatives, especially) are always walking around with the idea that they need to be a smashing success and reach their desired level of skill as early as possible, but it's just not going to be that way for most people, and that's okay. It takes time and practice (in the right areas), but more importantly, it takes a different amount of time and practice for everyone.

Assuming you're 15 years old (you said earlier that you were going to turn 16), you should accept that there are people who are 15 years old, and draw better than you. There are also people who are 15 years old and draw better than me. Finally, there are also other people who are 35 years old and draw worse than you, me, or anyone ITT. I've been at it since either 2011 or 2012, but only in the past few 2-3 years have I felt like I'm making art that could be viewed as objectively decent. There are people who started drawing later than I did, got better than me, and did all of it far quicker. And it's completely okay, because we all learn at our own pace.

But, also - you're always just going to have bad days regardless of skill level. Being "good" is not going to immunize you against the occasional self-deprecative thought that you're bad and should be far better and everyone's doing better than you etc etc.

I really like this image, because it makes something clear that isn't immediately obvious: more often than not, the reason why you start viewing your own work as "garbage" is because your mind is advancing to the next level, and increasing your standards and knowledge - your skill just hasn't caught up yet, and it eventually will.

The important part is that you take your time and don't give up (and that you don't wait an agonizingly long time to start practicing fundamentals like I did). And, more importantly - you're in your teen years, there is no need to pressure yourself this hard. You're doing completely fine and have plenty of time, don't beat yourself up over your peers being slightly farther ahead.

[KhaosKitsune617]

At 11/30/23 10:40 AM, Drimager wrote: Very relatable. I've always been bad at drawing people for who knows how long and I've only been satisfied about my skills right about this month. Every time I'd draw a face back then it would take me at least more than 15 minutes and most of the time, I don't even like it. And that doesn't even take full-body into consideration. However, recently, I learned about how I should've approached art and maybe it could help you too.

In short, try to observe more. When I first started music production, it was like becoming a beginner at drawing again. Everything I made sounded really bad and I didn't know how bad it was until I listen to it after a short break. I would learn online on how to improve and practice of course, but there was one advice that I didn't realize was REALLY important, and that was "training your ear". Basically, train your ear to hear sounds as it is. When we listen to songs, we don't observe all the small details, we just enjoy the song. But to train the ear, we are forcing ourselves to listen to everything happening within the song including the small details.

I did just that and I actually made it a habit every time I'd listen to a song. When I first tried it, it gave me a better idea on how people make their songs. I would then compare it to my works and then of course, become disappointed. There was so much going on it felt impossible to get on their level. However, over time, I started to feel less pressured by listening to these better artists, because I started to understand more about what's happening within their songs. I started to understand what they were doing and how they did all of it. I was basically starting to listen to the song as the artist may have heard it themselves. And this is basically what made me a much better music producer, one that had become satisfied with their skills.

I applied this knowledge to my drawing skills and it sure helped me a lot. When I draw a person, I will compare it to others' work. I will observe the differences, and I will fix my mistakes. I repeat this process a couple of times until I feel satisfied. It takes me long to finish, but I notice my improvements. Of course, progress is still slow, but now my goal feels much more achievable to me.

i usually take around a few days to finish art

[KhaosKitsune617]

well at least my art has more soul than that stick and paper shit

[KhaosKitsune617]

At 11/30/23 01:18 PM, Tenebrare wrote:

At 11/30/23 09:53 AM, KhaosKitsune617 wrote: i understand. my self esteem is pretty bad, but i do feel like by my 16th birthday, i’ll be able to achieve my desired talent.

When I was 16 I did draw stick figures.

i understand.

[PerKGrok]

At 11/30/23 08:14 AM, KhaosKitsune617 wrote: i keep seeing so many artists not that older than me have so much talent and potential than my art. although my artstyle is pretty nice and i dont just half-ass my way, it probably doesnt matter.

i cant draw blood right. certain topics that the best artists use are upsetting to me. i cant draw backgrounds right. i dont know how to draw monsters or surreal stuff without it looking ugly.

i just wish i could draw as good as you guys without looking like an edgelord or a wuss.

Don't start with what you feel you are are not good enough on. Start with what you think works for you and build on that.

Start simple and build up to the more complex.

Blood? Like blood splatter? A time honored way is to use a stiff brush, could be a discarded toothbrush, dip the brush in ink and flicker it onto a paper. You can test different angles and distances to get different effects. Can be good fun.

Off course nowadays you can just google it, but that is not as much fun as getting ink all over your hands, drawing board, table, floor ... pretty much everything.

A good start making background is starting with setting the horizon. Having a basic grasp of perspective will help.

Look at backgrounds that other people make with that in mind.

Monsters and surrealism; start with the ordinary stuff. When you feel comfortable with that, start twisting it up.

[EmsDeLaRoZ]

Doesn't matter if you're a master artist or an amateur, the learning path of an artist is a never ending road.

There's one bondage pose I've always struggled to achieve, but I had an idea for a pic that involved that pose, so I spent a whole afternoon and a bit of evening to find out what was wrong, until I managed the correct design. The art it's in my profile, but I can't point out which one since it's rated A.

What i'm trying to say is, we all have our inner demons, some are less confident, some more perfectionist, some more basic, but at the end we are all artists, and in many different ways, are in search of the same objective: Surpass the limits our hands and minds are capable of.

To finish this response, I wanna reference a quote from a guy in a song made by Lothyde:

[blakenator9872]

At 11/30/23 03:48 PM, KhaosKitsune617 wrote: well at least my art has more soul than that stick and paper shit

ELABORATE......?

[Skoops]

I was 26 when I really started taking my art seriously, and when I went to rebuild my fundamentals and learn how to make industry standard work, I was doing it alongside 18 year olds that were already miles ahead of me. I learned a ton and yet there are still 18 year olds that are better than me. It never stops. I had to learn that, if I'm going to compare myself to others, it's has to be from a position of "what can I learn from this person's work?" instead of the usual "I'll never get there" doomerism that most people default to. I'll catch up. If you're serious about it, you'll catch up too.

What I find works best to manage the anxiety is just a sense of progress, and the good news is that, when you haven't really started getting into learning fundamentals, progress can come pretty easy if you're doing the right things.

[SomeDoodles]

I don't know about you, but when I was in low points, I just accepted that my art is bad and kept making art despite that.

I'm not an expert, so don't take what I said as genuinely helpful information (unless you want).