tuxs-art-guidance

[tuxs-art-guidance]

Hi, I'm certain this is a question answered on like a million places on the internet but i really couldn't find one, how does one start to learn to draw

Like sure practice is good but i do not know a single thing about drawing, like, kindergarten level

So what resources should i use to actually get to a point where practicing has any sense

All practice makes sense, the value of the practice just depends on what skills you hope to develop!

And when I teach art, I typically go one of two ways: Art for fun, and art for mastery.

Art for fun is easy, but limited. You can learn what looks pretty and how to imitate pretty things, and enjoy yourself and have a good time. Art for fun focuses on techniques and materials and step-by-step recipes, I'd say, more than cognition.

Art for mastery is hard, and slow, but far more versatile. It's less about your hands and more about your brain, and how you perceive visual input. You have to break down and understand the assumptions you make when you see things so you can rebuild your understanding of what you see in a way that translates to paper.

I made a longass post with examples of exercises you can try here

And the funny thing is, those "kindergarden" skills will REMAIN valuable- once you CAN draw photorealistic images, doing loose and simple doodles is a fantastic exercise, too!

But for now, a few small tips:

Draw real objects from real life. It will hone your skills better and faster than copying 2d images.

When you draw, try not to look at your hands. Glancing is fine, but try to reduce how often you do it.

Dont draw the object, draw what you SEE. This will make sense the more you practice.

Use references, don't just draw from your imagination. If you draw from enough references, eventually your understanding of things will get to the point where your imagination will have enough grounding in realistic concepts to be believable. It'll fill in gaps you aren't yet aware of and teach you how to research what you need on your own. This is how you develop an eye to identify and correct flaws in your own work, and be your own teacher.

Do the boring ass practice shit. Just do it. It sucks and most folks hate it but it will help

Hold onto the first shitty awful attempts you hate to look at because they will make you feel so good when you feel discouraged later and need a reminder of how far you've come

[tuxs-art-guidance]

Because a few have asked

Teaboot's Super Okay Guide To Developing A Brain That Makes Art Work

Or: How to get your eyes to talk directly to your hands without your brain micromanaging you

Or: How to draw better

⚠️ Warning for super fast gifs cause they all gotta be 5 seconds or less or else my phone shits the bed ⚠️

1. Do the following exercises. Don't just think about doing them or figure out a clever way to not do them, just do them. Yes even the boring ones and the ones that look ugly

2. If you have any pride, crush it. Kill it. Crunch it up into itty bitty bits and feed it to the ducks at the park. You have no talent and don't know anything and everything you make is hot garbage. Believe that. Make yourself believe that. That is where you live now. Surrender any indignation or shame you have to the void and embrace rock bottom.

3. Read step 2 again and actually do it this time. My methods will not work if you try to make this process pretty. Don't.

4. No drawing from your imagination on these. Actually draw from real life. If it's boring like eating day old oatmeal in in beige room but your usual art still feels wonky then I'm talking to you specifically. You can't write poetry until you learn words and yes learning words is as dull as horseshit sometimes but do you wanna be Robert Frost or not

5. Pick up some cheap paper and a ballpoint pen. Grab a small object, between the size of your hand and the size of a microwave. Set a timer for fifteen minutes. Put the tip of your pen to the paper and press "start".

Now without looking at your paper, only looking at the object, draw the object in as much detail as you can. Do not break contact between the paper and the pen tip until the timer goes off.

This is a continuous line drawing, and you're doing it in pen because you need to know what rock bottom looks like and rock bottom looks like no eyes no erasers no shading no do-overs.

6. Sit down in a public place. As someone walks by, draw their their body in as much accuracy as you can before they are no longer in view. Once you can't see them anymore, the drawing is done. No adding details. Pick someone else and do it again. No "base sketch". Just them. If it barely looks human you're doing great

7. Get a black pen. Put a small object on a dark, flat surface. Now draw the surface without drawing the object. Don't draw the outline of the object. Don't do a sketch. Just draw the surface that is visible around the object until only a silhouette remains. No time limit just do it.

The ability to draw accurate proportions from sight comes from learning to see what exists between a thing and the absence of a thing and if that hurts to think about then you need to do it more

8. Keep doing these until you are Ready.

9. You will know when you are Ready. It will make sense when you are Ready. You will Understand.

10. Unwind with some goofy shit so you don't forget why you wanna improve to begin with

[tuxs-art-guidance]

Compiled some basic information I know about drawing fat characters for beginners since I've been seeing more talk about absence of really basic traits in a lot of art lately.

Morpho Fat and Skin Folds on Archive.org (for free!)

[tuxs-art-guidance]

The BBC is releasing over 16,000 sound effects for free download

[tuxs-art-guidance]

I do find that having a good amount of self-discipline and patience similar to this can be important for making art. I often have issues with being far too impulsive when I draw, and I end up with nonsensical scribbles on my paper that I drew before I even thought about them.

Sometimes what I do is handwrite myself a clear prompt before I begin the drawing. It helps to clarify what I'm going to draw, so that I have something to guide myself with, and it also helps me exercise my patience to individually write each of the letters as clearly as I can. It's very easy to throw patience away and just scribble the words I want to write, but doing that does not help my hand get itself under control.

Please do things to strengthen your attention span. It stresses me out so much when people just accept their small attention spans and cater to them without any acknowledgment that they are making it worse by doing that.

There is a reason attention spans are worse now and it didn’t just happen by chance. Media and the internet designed it that way and we went with it because it was easier.

Some of us with ADHD and brain fog need to meet ourselves where we’re at and exercise our attention span by watching a two minute video instead of a one minute video. Some of us need to sit down and read a novel with our phones turned off.

Wherever you’re at, just realize that not doing things that feel hard will keep making your attention span worse.

[tuxs-art-guidance]

My therapist just told me my problem is that I need to write more fanfiction.

[tuxs-art-guidance]

Very important to have friends who enjoy media you don’t personally enjoy, both because having friends with varying interests can help you understand why someone might enjoy something even if it’s not your cup of tea which can help build empathy skills and also because there’s nothing more fun then being able to explain the plots of your respective obsessions to each other and have the other respond with “what the fuck”

[tuxs-art-guidance]

one of the best fics i've ever read, one that had me addicted to my phone and crying, wasn't even prose. it was a huge, casual, bullet-pointed outline with every detail of an au that the author never got around to writing in full. and it was amazing.

let this be a message to all you who want to write but can't do it "normally": write it! someone out there will eat it up. whether that be poetry, tiny drabbles, or bullet pointed list: your work is always worth it. your art (yes, art!) will alway deserve to have its moment in the spotlight. why? because you made it. even if it wasn't done in a traditional matter, it came from your brain and your creativity and that is amazing.

♡

[tuxs-art-guidance]

if you want to change your life. you may need to change your friends. its almost impossible to live the right life when you have the wrong friends. show me your friends and i’ll show you your future. the bible tells us “when we walk with the wise we will become wise. but a companion of fools will suffer such great harm.” proverbs 13:20.

[tuxs-art-guidance]

Create the Perfect Gallery

It seems kind of hard for me to find art I like anymore. I guess that’s because I’m too dependent on algorithms. Usually, I only see art when I’m just scrolling on Twitter or tumblr in bed, because I don’t have the energy to do anything more at the moment.

When I’m just scrolling, it’s because I lack the energy to do something like go out of my way to search for art I’d like. I suppose I should make some time to actually do that, huh?

Even if it is still possible to search for art, either through social media or a site like Newgrounds, it doesn’t feel like there’s a good place for it anymore after DeviantArt became so terrible. Though, I’ve only been in the online art scene for about six years now, so I guess I don’t really know if things were just always this bad.

Or maybe I only think that art’s so hard to find because I just don’t bother and actually look for it??? That’s obviously possible. I can’t solely rely on reblogs, retweets, and algorithmic suggestions. I have faith that good stuff is out there, and that you can find it if you look in the right places. I used to follow this guy on Twitter who seemed to have done just that. He followed a lot of artists I ended up liking. I loved so much of the stuff he liked and retweeted. Sadly, his account is gone now…

There are benefits of rarely finding art that clicks with me, though. Obviously, it does make it a little more exciting when I finally see a picture I like. But more notably, it’s got me thinking about the idea of “the Perfect Gallery”.

Have you felt that rare feeling of coming across that one particular picture you just love so much? A picture that stops you from scrolling? One that you save to your phone, and find yourself thinking about here and there for a few days? It’s the most perfect combination of your favorite characters, colors, style, or whatever. You just adore it. Finding art you love this much is a rarity. It feels like finding diamonds in old Minecraft. It just fills your mind with joy when you see it the first time. This rare, perfect, lovable picture is one for the hypothetical Perfect Gallery, a collection of nothing but pictures that you just love.

Imagine a collection of these perfect pictures. This picture of a crossover you love. That picture of your favorite character in a cool outfit. Those pictures may be out there, and you may be able to theoretically find them, to add them to your Gallery, but it’s difficult, because of pictures being untagged, untitled, or otherwise hard to find. Is it worth it to look for the pictures for the Perfect Gallery? To spend all that time searching? Maybe it could be. But I have another idea.

Draw it. Draw the Perfect Gallery. The perfect pictures that stop you in your tracks can only POSSIBLY be found, but they can ASSUREDLY be created by YOU. There is a treasure trove of your favorite art waiting to be created, and you must create it yourself, piece by piece. There is a place where you can see all your favorite characters, beautiful environments, sick cars, even ships you obsess over or whatever else you guys are into, all in ONE PLACE. It’s the Perfect Gallery, and the only one who can make the art in that gallery is you.

You can become the creator of your own treasure trove that others will find and adore. You can be a beacon of That Kind of Art, a place where amid the chaotic waves of algorithms and trends, people can look to for your charming, soulful creations. You can make it just a little easier for other people to find the art they love if you add your own to the world.

The concept of the Perfect Gallery is one that helps me align my creative mind and get me to think about what it is that I’d love to create. What would I love to see? What kind of art, if I stumbled upon it on my feed, would just make my day? Take those ideas, and create them yourself.

Of course, there is a downside to the “perfect” part of the Perfect Gallery, and that is, of course, that if you’re the artist, then you’ll see many more flaws in your own art as you’re making it. This can be demoralizing in the moment of making it. I know it’s hard to get over this, but it’s okay. If you make an imperfect picture, and look back on it a few weeks later, you might see that whatever details you were fretting over aren’t that big a deal. It doesn’t ruin the picture. Literally look at the big picture, the art as a whole, and you’ll see that it, as a whole, is still good art to you, despite whatever your perfectionism might’ve wanted you to worry about while making it.

Alternatively, instead of going through the effort of making the art for the Gallery yourself, you can of course opt to search through the boundless amounts of art on the internet. I’m not saying you can’t. You can go out of your way to search through topics, hashtags, and accounts. You have to put effort into making the Gallery somehow, and you can choose the hardships of making the art, or the hardships of finding the art. But I find that the idea of making the art is what helps me in doing what’s important to me.

[tuxs-art-guidance]

There are moments when you're really inspired that you have to realize it's better to produce than consume. If you're making dinner, and you're coming up with a bunch of cool ideas for something as you prepare your food, then go write it down while you eat it. Even if your usual habit is to go to YouTube and watch ancient Yogscast Minecraft videos while you eat... sometimes you're better off not distracting yourself. Go write down those ideas while you eat. Better to save them than risk forgetting them.

[tuxs-art-guidance]

In this blog, you'll find advice for creating things. You'll find mindsets, ideas, resources, and techniques. I'm Tuxflop. I'm not a professional artist--though I'm working to become one--and so most of what I say here is just personal ideas; new and fresh views on things. A lot of those ideas are experimental, and very subjective. Some of this advice will work for you, and some of it won't. Everyone creates vastly differently.

I'm also primarily an illustrator, so quite a bit of what I say is written with drawing in mind, though I'm sure there'll be plenty of useful info for you even if visual art's not your medium of preference.