Yeah, that's been part of the problem: so far, the artists I've worked with really don't understand how technically difficult that style is until they've invested 20 hours and it's not right. I've looked online without much success and am hunting around a couple of diffent ways, but there is some really amazing talent in this forum and hopefully I'll get a lead to someone who's interested.
If you want the real Vargas style then you are going to have to pay for a professional.
Expect to pay $1000 or more. That would be my minimum at least.
I second Iruka's suggestion; check out the doodle thread or check through the forum for artists who definitely have the chops and then approach them directly. Also our members come and go sporadically so a PM or email will probably be a better contact method, because posts in here could be missed.
Yeah, that's been part of the problem: so far, the artists I've worked with really don't understand how technically difficult that style is until they've invested 20 hours and it's not right. I've looked online without much success and am hunting around a couple of diffent ways, but there is some really amazing talent in this forum and hopefully I'll get a lead to someone who's interested.
If you want the real Vargas style then you are going to have to pay for a professional.
Expect to pay $1000 or more. That would be my minimum at least.
Compensation is negotiable and reasonable for someone who can deliver. It's for a professional business owned by someone who just happens to like PA.
Of course the lights go out for 30 minutes at the big game when it's in New Orleans. You've always got to screw it up for yourself, don't you Louisiana?
Looking over some of new people's stuff and the stuff in the 'draw erryday' thread, it occurs to me that for all the books and tutorials and shit that we can throw at people to help them, a critical missing element that is really hard to get across in text is just how long it takes to produce something solid and worthwhile. Not in the 'artistic development' sense, but in the 'how long should I be spending drawing this thing?' sense.
It's hard because there's no one right answer (other than, 'spend as long as it takes to make it look right'); but until you see someone really good draw yourself, it's hard to grasp a sense of the pacing an artist uses to get their results. So without a sense of how long they should be spending, beginners just rush to get the results as fast as possible, barreling past opportunities to apply the critical thinking needed to make the results really work.
I'm bringing this up in case anybody has any better ideas of how to bring that idea across other than just saying, "SLOW THE FUCK DOWN!!!", which really isn't that informative.
MustangArbiter of Unpopular OpinionsRegistered Userregular
That's a big reason I don't dig the draw everyday thread. Drawing all the time isn't going to make a lick of difference if your not busting your ass trying to improve on your last drawing. A lot of my learning is studying why other people's art looks better than mine, figuring out where the differences lie and then injecting a crude facsimile of it to my own art.
That being said, I have been doing way less of that than I should have lately.
I was under the impression that there were no rules, only a bottomless well of why-didn't I-draw-today self-guilt and arbitrary forum-related motivation
Well I don't want this to become a conversation about just dogging on that thread specifically (maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it so as not to get sidetracked), since drawing every day is an admirable goal after all and is to be encouraged.
It's just not a panacea for drawing problems, not at all- and the problem is that it's easy to give that impression to people starting off, who have no reason to know any better at their stage of development. So saying 'draw every day' and leaving it at that is kinda like an infomercial for some gimmicky exercise equipment- it looks impressive and it seems to make sense on the face of it (and in truth there is almost certainly going to be some exercise benefit), but it leaves out the important bits of diet, of all the other shit you need to do to look like that totally ripped fucker in the commercials that everyone buying that product wants to look like.
Truth is that dude probably has to put in more effort into maintaining his low percentage abdominal body fat alone than most people put into raising their kids.
Truth is drawing is hard. Takes a lot of time. Takes a lot of thought and study and diligence and patience. It's frustrating to learn- and if you're not frustrated, you're probably not learning.
The problem is how to express that adequately in a text format, without making everyone run for the hills. Doing a lot of hard work -which may or may not show any immediate signs of progress- at the behest of a bunch of strangers on the internet -who may or may not respond at all to those efforts- is a pretty daunting, not very fun sounding proposition.
It's easier in a classroom or in person, because you can lead people through it, and demonstrate how long it actually takes to make a piece of decent art, and it's easier to be a bit more obviously empathetic to people's struggling (after all, we've all struggled, we all know what it feels like), and you've got a peer group in the same position. It's a lot more difficult- maybe impossible- to give the same level of meaningful encouragement over a forum, that will help people through the hard work, past the necessary frustrations so they can really make significant progress.
I don't even know what I'm on about any more and I've stayed up way too late already here. Kinda slipped into a stream on consciousness ramble there.
Maybe you jerks should just hire me for a couple thousand bucks to come to your house personally so I can Mr.Miyagi your drawing asses into shape, I guess is the point I didn't start out trying to make but I guess somehow I'm making it now fuck it I'm going to bed agghhhhhh
No, I agree totally. And also, I would pay for that.
I guess when the draw every day thread started I didn't think of it as a learners thread, more of a way to remind ourselves to actually put the time in. I used to post my warmup doodles in it, back when I actually had time to draw at all. But yeah, obviously 'draw often' is just one part of the whole exercise.
Is it ever actually easy to make a student slow down though? Certainly, if you have a 5-6 hour studio you can coach and demo within a longer time frame, but once it comes to homework and personal work, some people will simply choose to rush it.
I see the draw everyday thread as an exercise of equal importance. Its similar to what the 30 pages in 30 days was for me, which is an exercise in commitment. My problem isnt convincing myself to draw everyday, so the daily thread isn't for me. My problem is committing to my projects, which is a constant fight against laziness, being easily distracted, and a lack of confidence. So the 30 layouts I did weren't great, but I did get it done, and then when I looked back, most of it was salvageable. That put me from having no pages to having a rough draft.
If you want to teach people over the internet to slow down, I would convince them to watch live streams of artists, rather than the usually sped up demo videos. Convincing people to study simple objects also helps. If a person draws something as simple as a cube, and when they come back to critiques they get "Nope, It doesn't look right" the hope is that they will become incrementally more careful as they keep trying. Somewhere, there is probably an hour long demo of a dude just drawing the 12 simple lines that make a transparent cube, and I think if you find that, and truly emphasize the time, you could probably get the point across.
Now that I've started classes and shit I've got very little time to actually draw and I'm seriously kicking myself for not dedicating way more drawing hours back when I had ample amounts of free time. Don't make the same mistake I made, kids.
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
How many creators of long-form webcomics are resident on the forum? I know there's maritzac who writes Powernap, and Squidbunny who I think writes and draws NTO? Anyone else?
How many creators of long-form webcomics are resident on the forum? I know there's maritzac who writes Powernap, and Squidbunny who I think writes and draws NTO? Anyone else?
I like this video for that song a lot, @F87
There are really cool costumes and implementation of said costumes in the dancing. nsfw, some almost nudity?
How many creators of long-form webcomics are resident on the forum? I know there's maritzac who writes Powernap, and Squidbunny who I think writes and draws NTO? Anyone else?
I do The Vac.
It just started but I've got like 10 pages in the can already. It's not as good as the ones listed earlier but it's long form.
are YOU on the beer list?
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Cool. Basically I am planning to do a long form comic at some point and am looking for potential victims who I might in future grill for advice on producing a long comic as I have never done it before.
I'd like to start working on it as soon as I get my story hammered out. I was going to wait a while until my art was good, but I think I'd like to use it as a project for improving my art rather than wait for some day when I'm 'good enough' which will probably never come. Gotta start somewhere, and I guess I can always redo the first bits if they come out really shitty.
Having trouble with the story at the moment though so it will probably take a while. Just sat down and typed out a plan and, well, it's basically Mass Effect. Which is annoying, because I like some of my ideas, but I need to figure out how to rework things so it doesn't seem so derivative.
I like this video for that song a lot, @F87
There are really cool costumes and implementation of said costumes in the dancing. nsfw, some almost nudity?
So it was pointed out to me that there are no young caricature artists in my city. I'm the youngest at 27, and I make up maybe 7% of the total CA's in the area who are all over 40.
Is there an aversion to the craft in art school? Does it not pay enough? Or is it just hard to learn without an instructor?
(When I learned about it at 17 I thought it was to hard for me to like doing)
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amateurhourOne day I'll be professionalhourThe woods somewhere in TennesseeRegistered Userregular
Cool. Basically I am planning to do a long form comic at some point and am looking for potential victims who I might in future grill for advice on producing a long comic as I have never done it before.
I'd like to start working on it as soon as I get my story hammered out. I was going to wait a while until my art was good, but I think I'd like to use it as a project for improving my art rather than wait for some day when I'm 'good enough' which will probably never come. Gotta start somewhere, and I guess I can always redo the first bits if they come out really shitty.
Having trouble with the story at the moment though so it will probably take a while. Just sat down and typed out a plan and, well, it's basically Mass Effect. Which is annoying, because I like some of my ideas, but I need to figure out how to rework things so it doesn't seem so derivative.
Definitely start it now, because in 5 years your art will be better than it is today and that will be the case 5 years after that as well. DON'T redo the first pages once you've started. That ends up putting you in a "forever loop" wherein you constantly redraw your first 20 comics and never launch your comic proper. : ) It's vicious...
I tried to have at least 10 comics done before I started mine because I knew that I'd immediately hit a wall and I'd need a buffer to keep me going through the first few months while I scrounged to build a readership (which I'm still doing)
Good luck!
are YOU on the beer list?
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Hmm maybe I will do some mini-stories while I try and get my long arc worked out. At least that way I get to have fun drawing aliens.
I bookmarked your site btw, so you can add one more to your readership tally.
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amateurhourOne day I'll be professionalhourThe woods somewhere in TennesseeRegistered Userregular
Looking over some of new people's stuff and the stuff in the 'draw erryday' thread, it occurs to me that for all the books and tutorials and shit that we can throw at people to help them, a critical missing element that is really hard to get across in text is just how long it takes to produce something solid and worthwhile. Not in the 'artistic development' sense, but in the 'how long should I be spending drawing this thing?' sense.
It's hard because there's no one right answer (other than, 'spend as long as it takes to make it look right'); but until you see someone really good draw yourself, it's hard to grasp a sense of the pacing an artist uses to get their results. So without a sense of how long they should be spending, beginners just rush to get the results as fast as possible, barreling past opportunities to apply the critical thinking needed to make the results really work.
I think it just takes time to realise. I can knock out an average drawing in an hour. It turns out if I spend 4 hours, it is slightly better than average.
it occurs to me that for all the books and tutorials and shit that we can throw at people to help them, a critical missing element that is really hard to get across in text is just how long it takes to produce something solid and worthwhile. Not in the 'artistic development' sense, but in the 'how long should I be spending drawing this thing?' sense.
This is where I'm at. For one thing I don't know how to plan ahead for a longer drawing so it doesn't become a mess later, and another thing, like you said, how long do you spend drawing the thing. I was having this conversation with my teacher this morning. On my first drawing I started off with a tidy, expressive line drawing, and as I worked more it became messy. This might have something to do with the newsprint, my inexperience with charcoal, or the fact that it wasn't very big on the page. But ultimately I have no concept of working longer on something. I have no grasp on that. When you figure it out, I'd love to hear what you have to say
ninjai on
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amateurhourOne day I'll be professionalhourThe woods somewhere in TennesseeRegistered Userregular
That's one of my biggest problems with drawing anything really. I don't want to spend more than 2 hours on a project. Once I get it penciled, maybe inked, I'm done with it and want to move on to something else.
The longer I spend working on something the more I hate it. It's a habit I really need to break.
As one of the newer artists on here who did get told to slow down I'd have to agree with what you're saying. I think there's a delicate balance in how long you spend on stuff. As someone whose starting up drawing again after stopping maybe a half dozen times before over the years keeping myself interested is important. I mean I'm lucky if I get an hour a day to draw so working on shading a cube for the better part of a week can be frustrating. From all I've read though it is necessary to develop your skills, and I understand that. This is why I'm trying a little of both.
@Angel_of_Bacon Guilty as charged, ahah. I get your point - it might be easier to reframe what's bothering you as "What are you hoping to learn from doing this" to "What did you learn from doing that exercise?" because when things look rushed it's incredibly hard to answer those questions from all sides. I personally know the difference between the things I do (get this shit done vs. ok, I think I picked something new up) but you're absolutely right that it's incredibly difficult for beginners to tell the difference.
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
I expect that learning to draw will follow the same general arc as learning higher mathematics. A slow trudge from "what the hell does that even say?!" to "how do i get from that to this?!" in a series of slowing accruing tiny insights.
Daily drawing is basically the equivalent of homework then. You can knock out several thousand derivative problems without learning much more than d(x)/dt = nx^(n-1), but the purpose of the repetitive time is to expose you to a wide variety of problems and situations. Daily drawing is there for mechanically learning the art - how to make the proper line and maintain proportions and such.
At least, that's my theory. You can see my stuff in the draw erryday thread, and I kind of suck.
Unfortunately, that also exposes the issue of critique being based on a common language. We may both be able to see what's wrong with a drawing, but I (the beginner) may well not be able to parse the perfectly good advice you (the expert) has to say.
Well, I would say just start a drawing with no preconceived notions of how long it will take, and really try to do your best. Spend as much time at any particular stage as it takes to feel like it's as good as you can make it and you're ready to move on. It can take as many sittings/days/weeks as you want. If you can manage to focus on making it good then you'll forget about time, and if you're bored just take a break or search for a new point of interest in what you're doing. I don't know if it varies a lot from person to person, but this attitude seemed pretty easy to fall into. I spent about 40 hours on that green paper drawing because I wanted it to be as good as I could possibly make it, as close to the model as I could possibly make it, and I never worried about how long that would take. Improvement probably comes more readily that way, because you're actively making it your priority.
Spend as much time at any particular stage as it takes to feel like it's as good as you can make it and you're ready to move on.
After my class I got to thinking, and wanted to ask you how long you take on any specific area of the figure. Convenient this came up and you answered already I think I better understand your advice from the other day now.
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
edited February 2013
At some point though I think the time-to-quality ratio levels out and I'm just polishing a turd.
I think it depends on what skill you are working on at a particular time? If I want to improve my gesture I feel like doing 50 quick drawings will be much more helpful than 1 I spend all day on. But lighting I can see being the opposite.
MustangArbiter of Unpopular OpinionsRegistered Userregular
It's definitely a balancing act, the main thing is that you pay attention to what you are doing, why you are doing it and knowing when to call it a day. A lot of beginners think they can use mountains of time and sheer will to produce good art. You can produce art that is technically okay with sheer will, but it's never going to be 'good' art because the effort of it stands out like an erect penis at a feminist convention. I started out like that, and spent 6 months on an image that ended up being okay, but my time spent on it would've been better directed into other areas.
Posts
Marcin Ryczek
If you want the real Vargas style then you are going to have to pay for a professional.
Expect to pay $1000 or more. That would be my minimum at least.
EDIT: this was in response to this:
and I dont feel bad
INSTAGRAM
Compensation is negotiable and reasonable for someone who can deliver. It's for a professional business owned by someone who just happens to like PA.
but did you watch the beyoncebowl
3DS: 0447-9966-6178
It's hard because there's no one right answer (other than, 'spend as long as it takes to make it look right'); but until you see someone really good draw yourself, it's hard to grasp a sense of the pacing an artist uses to get their results. So without a sense of how long they should be spending, beginners just rush to get the results as fast as possible, barreling past opportunities to apply the critical thinking needed to make the results really work.
I'm bringing this up in case anybody has any better ideas of how to bring that idea across other than just saying, "SLOW THE FUCK DOWN!!!", which really isn't that informative.
Twitter
That being said, I have been doing way less of that than I should have lately.
3DS: 0447-9966-6178
It's just not a panacea for drawing problems, not at all- and the problem is that it's easy to give that impression to people starting off, who have no reason to know any better at their stage of development. So saying 'draw every day' and leaving it at that is kinda like an infomercial for some gimmicky exercise equipment- it looks impressive and it seems to make sense on the face of it (and in truth there is almost certainly going to be some exercise benefit), but it leaves out the important bits of diet, of all the other shit you need to do to look like that totally ripped fucker in the commercials that everyone buying that product wants to look like.
Truth is that dude probably has to put in more effort into maintaining his low percentage abdominal body fat alone than most people put into raising their kids.
Truth is drawing is hard. Takes a lot of time. Takes a lot of thought and study and diligence and patience. It's frustrating to learn- and if you're not frustrated, you're probably not learning.
The problem is how to express that adequately in a text format, without making everyone run for the hills. Doing a lot of hard work -which may or may not show any immediate signs of progress- at the behest of a bunch of strangers on the internet -who may or may not respond at all to those efforts- is a pretty daunting, not very fun sounding proposition.
It's easier in a classroom or in person, because you can lead people through it, and demonstrate how long it actually takes to make a piece of decent art, and it's easier to be a bit more obviously empathetic to people's struggling (after all, we've all struggled, we all know what it feels like), and you've got a peer group in the same position. It's a lot more difficult- maybe impossible- to give the same level of meaningful encouragement over a forum, that will help people through the hard work, past the necessary frustrations so they can really make significant progress.
I don't even know what I'm on about any more and I've stayed up way too late already here. Kinda slipped into a stream on consciousness ramble there.
Maybe you jerks should just hire me for a couple thousand bucks to come to your house personally so I can Mr.Miyagi your drawing asses into shape, I guess is the point I didn't start out trying to make but I guess somehow I'm making it now fuck it I'm going to bed agghhhhhh
Twitter
I guess when the draw every day thread started I didn't think of it as a learners thread, more of a way to remind ourselves to actually put the time in. I used to post my warmup doodles in it, back when I actually had time to draw at all. But yeah, obviously 'draw often' is just one part of the whole exercise.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19329905/1862-Civil-War-John-England-letters-Read-in-Fullscreen-Zoom
I see the draw everyday thread as an exercise of equal importance. Its similar to what the 30 pages in 30 days was for me, which is an exercise in commitment. My problem isnt convincing myself to draw everyday, so the daily thread isn't for me. My problem is committing to my projects, which is a constant fight against laziness, being easily distracted, and a lack of confidence. So the 30 layouts I did weren't great, but I did get it done, and then when I looked back, most of it was salvageable. That put me from having no pages to having a rough draft.
If you want to teach people over the internet to slow down, I would convince them to watch live streams of artists, rather than the usually sped up demo videos. Convincing people to study simple objects also helps. If a person draws something as simple as a cube, and when they come back to critiques they get "Nope, It doesn't look right" the hope is that they will become incrementally more careful as they keep trying. Somewhere, there is probably an hour long demo of a dude just drawing the 12 simple lines that make a transparent cube, and I think if you find that, and truly emphasize the time, you could probably get the point across.
Now that I've started classes and shit I've got very little time to actually draw and I'm seriously kicking myself for not dedicating way more drawing hours back when I had ample amounts of free time. Don't make the same mistake I made, kids.
also:
There are really cool costumes and implementation of said costumes in the dancing. nsfw, some almost nudity?
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
I do The Vac.
It just started but I've got like 10 pages in the can already. It's not as good as the ones listed earlier but it's long form.
I'd like to start working on it as soon as I get my story hammered out. I was going to wait a while until my art was good, but I think I'd like to use it as a project for improving my art rather than wait for some day when I'm 'good enough' which will probably never come. Gotta start somewhere, and I guess I can always redo the first bits if they come out really shitty.
Having trouble with the story at the moment though so it will probably take a while. Just sat down and typed out a plan and, well, it's basically Mass Effect. Which is annoying, because I like some of my ideas, but I need to figure out how to rework things so it doesn't seem so derivative.
Some pretty striking shots in that video, cool stuff!
Is there an aversion to the craft in art school? Does it not pay enough? Or is it just hard to learn without an instructor?
(When I learned about it at 17 I thought it was to hard for me to like doing)
Definitely start it now, because in 5 years your art will be better than it is today and that will be the case 5 years after that as well. DON'T redo the first pages once you've started. That ends up putting you in a "forever loop" wherein you constantly redraw your first 20 comics and never launch your comic proper. : ) It's vicious...
I tried to have at least 10 comics done before I started mine because I knew that I'd immediately hit a wall and I'd need a buffer to keep me going through the first few months while I scrounged to build a readership (which I'm still doing)
Good luck!
I bookmarked your site btw, so you can add one more to your readership tally.
Then I'll apologize in advance...
I think it just takes time to realise. I can knock out an average drawing in an hour. It turns out if I spend 4 hours, it is slightly better than average.
This is where I'm at. For one thing I don't know how to plan ahead for a longer drawing so it doesn't become a mess later, and another thing, like you said, how long do you spend drawing the thing. I was having this conversation with my teacher this morning. On my first drawing I started off with a tidy, expressive line drawing, and as I worked more it became messy. This might have something to do with the newsprint, my inexperience with charcoal, or the fact that it wasn't very big on the page. But ultimately I have no concept of working longer on something. I have no grasp on that. When you figure it out, I'd love to hear what you have to say
The longer I spend working on something the more I hate it. It's a habit I really need to break.
Daily drawing is basically the equivalent of homework then. You can knock out several thousand derivative problems without learning much more than d(x)/dt = nx^(n-1), but the purpose of the repetitive time is to expose you to a wide variety of problems and situations. Daily drawing is there for mechanically learning the art - how to make the proper line and maintain proportions and such.
At least, that's my theory. You can see my stuff in the draw erryday thread, and I kind of suck.
Unfortunately, that also exposes the issue of critique being based on a common language. We may both be able to see what's wrong with a drawing, but I (the beginner) may well not be able to parse the perfectly good advice you (the expert) has to say.
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
I think it depends on what skill you are working on at a particular time? If I want to improve my gesture I feel like doing 50 quick drawings will be much more helpful than 1 I spend all day on. But lighting I can see being the opposite.
What have I become
... dutch?
no but seriously I'm worried about your health.