Hi folks anyone mind sharing or give advice on what level of skill and speed one should attain before thinking about starting their first commission?
I think I need a goal to push myself towards
I still have my one illustration to do for this year but I do feel like I don't have any actual direction in terms of improving my art
Hi folks anyone mind sharing or give advice on what level of skill and speed one should attain before thinking about starting their first commission?
I think I need a goal to push myself towards
The needs of every commission are different. The important thing is to know yourself. Anyone who would commission you for art has presumably seen examples of your work. You should know how long it would take you to achieve the same level of quality as your portfolio pieces and set expectations accordingly.
It's always going to important to get both better and faster, in order to stay competitive, but skill is a difficult thing to quantify. It's this incremental build-up of knowledge and techniques, occasionally culminating into work that is clearly better than what came before. Sometimes you'll get better at one aspect and it'll reveal that you weren't as strong in another aspect as you thought you were. It's generally true that the better you get, the more you realize there is to learn. Eventually, you'll have more things you want to study than hours in the day to do so, which forces you to be faster and practice smarter.
This is only tangentially related, but it's an experience I wanted to share. I come from a comics background, influenced by the era of the Image studios and creator owned comics. Back when I was trying to get into comics I would do everything alone; pencil, ink and coloring. The keyword there is coloring, because what I was doing couldn't be categorized as painting. I looked up to the new crop of digital painters and wanted to be able do the same kind of work, but didn't have regular access to a strong enough pc to do any kind serious digital work, nor did I have enough money to practice with traditional media.
My solution was to stick to graphite, focus on value and try to emulate the painerly brush strokes that the digital folks were doing with what I had. More than a decade later, I've gotten pretty good with a pencil. There were a lot of points when a personal crisis or depression made me take a break from art and halt/reverse my progress, but I've always managed to come back stronger. The start of this year has been especially good for growth, with daily, focused practice, and learning new styles and media. I found a set of color pencils I had picked up at some point and did a couple of pieces with them. They came out alright, thanks to all my time with value, but it was apparent that I needed to improve my understanding of color.
Just yesterday, I did my first experiments with verdaccio, an underpainting method for skin that uses green tones. Granted, I was doing it over some old graphite drawings, using the color pencils I found, instead of the higher quality set I bought afterwards, so the result wasn't the best. The point wasn't to make something that looked good, but to quickly test if the technique was viable and worth using with my current materials. Aside from the weirdness of the graphite, the results were promising and I now feel more confident doing it on a fresh drawing where the shadow block-in will be done with the umbers and siennas that I see traditional painters use. I consider that smart practice.
I really appreciate your super insightful reply! I think a big issue for me is that I still have not attained the fundamental skills necessary to actually produce commission work or portfolio stuff sadly so I was wondering if there is like a measurable set of standards I could try to strive towards to, like I have to produce at least this kind of drawing or painting quality within this amount of time frame. I don't really have a sense or feel of what producing an actual piece of work is like too.
Get involved in some regular challenges, something that'll give a prompt and a deadline. On IG, there's CharacterDesignChallenge, Proko does one under the hashtag prokochallenge, and Even Andmunsen does one with his patrons. I don't participate, but I'll often check out his Twitch VODs while I'm working on my own stuff. Watching him critique others' work can be very insightful. There are probably many more I'm unaware of.
I know it's anime style but I really like the advice on practicing how to draw the figure by dividing into 4 areas: Head, head & ribcage, half body and full body. I have never thought about doing it like that
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
I'm not sure we as a community talk enough about the ergonomics of art. I stopped doing my practice October 2018 due to shoulder pain. Six months later the problem cleared up, but its hard to want to restart something in the face of potentially reinjuring yourself.
Fast forward to this spring, and I decide to try again with a heavy focus on fixing posture. Discover that I am leaving my drawing board too steep, not resting my hand enough, not relaxing my drawing hand enough...
A long art session has similar stress to a workout. If you're like me and work a computer-based job, its entirely possible to overstress your arm just by spending all day typing + mousing and then trying to do a big drawing that night. You need to schedule rest days, to monitor the impact to your muscles, to pay attention when things start to ache...
I watch people on Twitch doing pictures on tiny tablets, and I wonder how they keep their wrists from exploding after a year of daily streams.
I am not sure if my arms are too weak and I need to work out or something because I always find it really hard and tiring to lift my arms for drawing
I thought if I draw more it would get easier but yea it doesn't lol
.... I don't really have a sense or feel of what producing an actual piece of work is like too.
Peas, with kindness, I have seen your stated goal of creating one digital illustration this year. I am unsure what you mean by that, and when you say things like this, I'm wondering if you are sure what you mean by it either!
Maybe it would be helpful to redefine your 'actual piece of work' hurdle to 'finished piece at my best effort where I am today' or similar. You've posted some very cool stuff in your thread, especially the ones you've spent several hours on. But I haven't seen a piece you've defined as complete.
I'd consider the digital work I posted in my thread a 'finished' piece, which represents my best effort at my current skill set. I am not embarrassed to say that it's kinda crap. But it is representative of my full attention and ability as it stands now. I really think the only way to get a feel for creating 'good' finished pieces is to keep making kinda shitty finished pieces until you get the drawing mileage to get better.
You don't have to post them, or even show them to anyone at all. But maybe try taking a piece from start to finish, inducing finalized line work and coloring, even if you think the result isn't good.
I couldn't get past the construction phase to continue further but I guess the main issue is with my mental self, it's kinda ironic that I've developed a fear of creation even though it's what I claimed that I wanted to do.
I am really glad you like my recent stuff and I've learnt and relearnt a bunch of new techniques and workflow while doing them, reason why I don't call them an illustration is that I am still copying from a photo so it's more of a study I suppose. If you take those away from me I would be reduced to drawing scribbles again
I seem to remember you attempting the draw a box course a while back. Did you finish it? If not, maybe you might find it helpful? It's very focused on construction and developing an intuitive sense of 3D space.
I'm early in it, but I'll say that even now I'm noticing improvements in my spatial awareness and line confidence.
This is the review that convinced me to try it. Fair warning, she likes to make liberal use of silly GIFS in her videos, so just be aware of that. :P
SPEAKING OF, I've attained box 185 as of last night. I'm closing in on the finish line, and trying to keep myself from rushing. Got to force myself to take 'fun' drawing days instead of resisting the siren call of making the box tally go up, ha.
Edit: I should also add that the DAB community has a pretty active Discord, with people sharing their stuff and generally being encouraging. I haven't posted there much, but it seems like a nice group. There's also a thread specifically for people to post their stuff that went horribly wrong, which is always fun.
Best advice I ever heard was that "the world doesn't reward perfect people it rewards people who can get things done."
So essentially, you're never going to make a "perfect" piece. It's just not going to happen. What's important is that you finish it and start something new. Even if you fucking hate it finish it. 98% of people will never notice the things you do in your own work.
I'm not always as good about this as I should be, either so it's something you have to work at.
Also, eat your babies. If you think you have an idea for a phenomenal piece but you're waiting for the time when you think you'll be good enough to do it justice, well, you never will be. Go Nike on that thing and Just Do It™️. The great thing about being creative is you can never run out of ideas.
Been a while folks, how's everyone doing?
Btw what are your thoughts on having an artist name? Also do you have an artist who you really love for his/her knowledge and portrayal of anatomy?
My job is to help small companies get onto the cloud so that they can more easily work remotely.
I have never in my life been busier.
I grew up when internet anonymity was still kind of a given, so my handle (acadia) was my chosen 'artist name' for a while. After Facebook and Twitter kind of made using ones real name the norm, I've been going by ohmanitsdave. There are a ton of Dave Olsons out there. There are also a bunch of Dave Olsons who are/were artists or musicians, so my real actual name has very little value in terms of SEO.
I got a bunch of toned paper, to further my color study, but haven't gotten around to using it yet. My current sketchbook is just about full, so I'll use the smaller pad(9x12) as my new everyday book. Also got some 12x18 paper and the materials to apply a tone to my larger surfaces. The past couple of weeks have been too distracting for me to work on a large piece, but I'll get back to it. Until then, the daily sketching continues.
+2
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
I guess I'm the resident Watts fanboy around here, so I'll point out: the spring 2020 term is going to be entirely online. A good opportunity for some of the classes that have never had a streaming presence.
I guess I'm the resident Watts fanboy around here, so I'll point out: the spring 2020 term is going to be entirely online. A good opportunity for some of the classes that have never had a streaming presence.
Would you recommend it for a beginner, or is it more of a resource for intermediate and higher artists? Watts looks pretty intimidating.
0
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
I guess I'm the resident Watts fanboy around here, so I'll point out: the spring 2020 term is going to be entirely online. A good opportunity for some of the classes that have never had a streaming presence.
Would you recommend it for a beginner, or is it more of a resource for intermediate and higher artists? Watts looks pretty intimidating.
The instructors are all quite nice. There is no skill requirement at all to take the classes. They will literally accept you off the street. Looking at your art thread, you may have some adjustment to get used to the drawing style.
Look at the watts youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/wattsatelier They have example classes and example critiques. These are pretty representative of what you'll get. Don't let a sense of newness stop you. If you think the style of instruction and content is interesting, dive in.
(Meanwhile, I decided to sign up for the still life painting class last night at 11 PM. The hell kind of drugs am I on that I committed to that?! well, may be an interesting disaster...)
Thanks gavindel! I'll consider it, definitely. It's a good chunk of change, but my local figure drawing class that I was going to take got cancelled due to current events soooo... I may have that money back to try it out? I definitely would want the version with feedback, I don't really like trying to learn in a vacuum.
I signed up for a month of their $99 Drawing Access option and it was good.
I didn't submit drawings for any lessons. I think maybe one of the script blockers installed in my browser short circuited Watts site, because above every video there was a YOU MUST SUBMIT SUCHANDSUCHLESSON FOR APPROVAL BEFORE VIEWING THIS VIDEO. But I didn't have to, what're you gonna do, art video cop??
Knox's classes were pretty solid and easy to draw along with.
+6
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
All right, my local figure drawing class which was slated for end of April has officially postponed indefinitely (I kinda thought they might try an online version, but no), so I'm gonna give the figure drawing Watts class a try. Signed up for the full critique option started April 27th.
In the meantime, I finally slogged through all 250 boxes over at Draw A Box, and am waiting on the homework feedback. It felt like I wasn't making any progress at all while I was in the thick of it, but looking back at my first boxes, well... I'm still not very good, but I'm definitely better than I was! So that's something!
No clue if this would be helpful to anyone but I found a website called kissthemgoodbye that's basically just HD screengrabs of every single frame of a movie. Might be good for compositional studies.
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
Dick Blick seems to operate on JC Penny rules for sales. That is, I got everything for my painting class "80% off". I shudder to think of the poor sod only getting 50% off. Like the time freshman year of college I went to the local art supply store and spent $200 on $40 dollars worth of supplies in blissful 17 year old ignorance.
My cats are less than thrilled by the addition of all these oil paints and paint thinners to the corner of my room, but we have confirmed at least they won't be eating any paint chips.
Thinking the best bet is to limit myself to the Zorn palette given the fact I have no idea what I'm doing.
Just found out I'm getting furloughed for (hopefully just the one) week so I'm thinking about buying a few dozen packs of blank bandanas and trying to finally break out and use my screen printing kit.
Might try and make a cool design and maybe find a way to sell or, hell, hand em out for free to use as facemasks.
Aaron Blaise (concept artist for The Lion King, Aladdin, Mulan, Brother Bear) has made his 9.5 hour long figure drawing course $1 during this whole Covid-19 dealio.
In this comprehensive 9.5 Hour video course, animator, director and concept artist Aaron Blaise takes you through the fundamentals of drawing, illustrating and capturing the essence of the human form. Watch as Aaron creates new original images right in front of you and explains his process for rendering believable human anatomy. You’ll get 16 HD Tutorial Videos covering:
How to Draw the human skeleton
Understanding Head Proportions
Muscles & Anatomy
Body Proportions & Scale
Gesture Drawing
How to Draw Eyes
Drawing Noses & Ears
How to draw legs and arms
Drawing Hands
How to draw feet
Drawing Tips & Techniques
Human Locomotion and movement.
Original Animation and Video breaking down the body in motion as only an expert animator can offer.
PLUS you’ll also get bonus material including:
Original animated videos
High-Res Copies of the images that Aaron creates in the videos. (Plus, more detailed renderings)
Layered Photoshop files of his animation so you can break down each pose
I need to work more on my anatomy. I have a pretty solid understanding of certain things and then I completely breakdown on others.
I'm downloading and saving all the vids for when I finally finish Draw a Box because at one buckaroo I'd be kinda nuts not to. If I never get around to it, eh.
I also found his digital art tutorial super helpful, so why the heck not!
Each video is about 30 minutes long so I figure two a day for an hours worth of study is pretty good all things considered.
I really want to get to the portions dedicated to the hips and legs and foreshortening. For some reason the upper good I'm like, a good 75-80% on. Once I hit the hips it's like lol maybe 45% if that.
I already am getting more than a dollar's worth out of these videos so thanks a lot for the sic mate!
I still can't remember 10% of what I drew to fully utilize the lessons unfortunately haha...
Right on I'm glad you're getting something out of it.
I'm having some super serious art block right now. My favorite artist is doing a curated art collaboration on instagram where he supplied a base image and anybody can take it and draw whatever they want with it. I was pumped and then I saw all the killer pieces everybody was doing and now I've got absolutely no idea what to draw at all. Nothing I can think of is feeling right with me and it sucks.
Posts
I think I need a goal to push myself towards
I still have my one illustration to do for this year but I do feel like I don't have any actual direction in terms of improving my art
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
The needs of every commission are different. The important thing is to know yourself. Anyone who would commission you for art has presumably seen examples of your work. You should know how long it would take you to achieve the same level of quality as your portfolio pieces and set expectations accordingly.
It's always going to important to get both better and faster, in order to stay competitive, but skill is a difficult thing to quantify. It's this incremental build-up of knowledge and techniques, occasionally culminating into work that is clearly better than what came before. Sometimes you'll get better at one aspect and it'll reveal that you weren't as strong in another aspect as you thought you were. It's generally true that the better you get, the more you realize there is to learn. Eventually, you'll have more things you want to study than hours in the day to do so, which forces you to be faster and practice smarter.
This is only tangentially related, but it's an experience I wanted to share. I come from a comics background, influenced by the era of the Image studios and creator owned comics. Back when I was trying to get into comics I would do everything alone; pencil, ink and coloring. The keyword there is coloring, because what I was doing couldn't be categorized as painting. I looked up to the new crop of digital painters and wanted to be able do the same kind of work, but didn't have regular access to a strong enough pc to do any kind serious digital work, nor did I have enough money to practice with traditional media.
My solution was to stick to graphite, focus on value and try to emulate the painerly brush strokes that the digital folks were doing with what I had. More than a decade later, I've gotten pretty good with a pencil. There were a lot of points when a personal crisis or depression made me take a break from art and halt/reverse my progress, but I've always managed to come back stronger. The start of this year has been especially good for growth, with daily, focused practice, and learning new styles and media. I found a set of color pencils I had picked up at some point and did a couple of pieces with them. They came out alright, thanks to all my time with value, but it was apparent that I needed to improve my understanding of color.
Just yesterday, I did my first experiments with verdaccio, an underpainting method for skin that uses green tones. Granted, I was doing it over some old graphite drawings, using the color pencils I found, instead of the higher quality set I bought afterwards, so the result wasn't the best. The point wasn't to make something that looked good, but to quickly test if the technique was viable and worth using with my current materials. Aside from the weirdness of the graphite, the results were promising and I now feel more confident doing it on a fresh drawing where the shadow block-in will be done with the umbers and siennas that I see traditional painters use. I consider that smart practice.
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Unrelated:
#Digital Drawing Correction ★Figure Tutorial PART.8 - Correct Mindset When Drawing Figure｜Pin2D 7:13
I know it's anime style but I really like the advice on practicing how to draw the figure by dividing into 4 areas: Head, head & ribcage, half body and full body. I have never thought about doing it like that
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Fast forward to this spring, and I decide to try again with a heavy focus on fixing posture. Discover that I am leaving my drawing board too steep, not resting my hand enough, not relaxing my drawing hand enough...
A long art session has similar stress to a workout. If you're like me and work a computer-based job, its entirely possible to overstress your arm just by spending all day typing + mousing and then trying to do a big drawing that night. You need to schedule rest days, to monitor the impact to your muscles, to pay attention when things start to ache...
I watch people on Twitch doing pictures on tiny tablets, and I wonder how they keep their wrists from exploding after a year of daily streams.
I thought if I draw more it would get easier but yea it doesn't lol
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Kim Jung Gi streaming
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Peas, with kindness, I have seen your stated goal of creating one digital illustration this year. I am unsure what you mean by that, and when you say things like this, I'm wondering if you are sure what you mean by it either!
Maybe it would be helpful to redefine your 'actual piece of work' hurdle to 'finished piece at my best effort where I am today' or similar. You've posted some very cool stuff in your thread, especially the ones you've spent several hours on. But I haven't seen a piece you've defined as complete.
I'd consider the digital work I posted in my thread a 'finished' piece, which represents my best effort at my current skill set. I am not embarrassed to say that it's kinda crap. But it is representative of my full attention and ability as it stands now. I really think the only way to get a feel for creating 'good' finished pieces is to keep making kinda shitty finished pieces until you get the drawing mileage to get better.
You don't have to post them, or even show them to anyone at all. But maybe try taking a piece from start to finish, inducing finalized line work and coloring, even if you think the result isn't good.
I am really glad you like my recent stuff and I've learnt and relearnt a bunch of new techniques and workflow while doing them, reason why I don't call them an illustration is that I am still copying from a photo so it's more of a study I suppose. If you take those away from me I would be reduced to drawing scribbles again
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
I'm early in it, but I'll say that even now I'm noticing improvements in my spatial awareness and line confidence.
This is the review that convinced me to try it. Fair warning, she likes to make liberal use of silly GIFS in her videos, so just be aware of that. :P
SPEAKING OF, I've attained box 185 as of last night. I'm closing in on the finish line, and trying to keep myself from rushing. Got to force myself to take 'fun' drawing days instead of resisting the siren call of making the box tally go up, ha.
Edit: I should also add that the DAB community has a pretty active Discord, with people sharing their stuff and generally being encouraging. I haven't posted there much, but it seems like a nice group. There's also a thread specifically for people to post their stuff that went horribly wrong, which is always fun.
So essentially, you're never going to make a "perfect" piece. It's just not going to happen. What's important is that you finish it and start something new. Even if you fucking hate it finish it. 98% of people will never notice the things you do in your own work.
I'm not always as good about this as I should be, either so it's something you have to work at.
Also, eat your babies. If you think you have an idea for a phenomenal piece but you're waiting for the time when you think you'll be good enough to do it justice, well, you never will be. Go Nike on that thing and Just Do It™️. The great thing about being creative is you can never run out of ideas.
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
I really enjoy watching this because it reminds me of my short time in class with the reviews and paintover
edit:
[장삐쭈 단편선] PC 1:57
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Btw what are your thoughts on having an artist name? Also do you have an artist who you really love for his/her knowledge and portrayal of anatomy?
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
I have never in my life been busier.
I grew up when internet anonymity was still kind of a given, so my handle (acadia) was my chosen 'artist name' for a while. After Facebook and Twitter kind of made using ones real name the norm, I've been going by ohmanitsdave. There are a ton of Dave Olsons out there. There are also a bunch of Dave Olsons who are/were artists or musicians, so my real actual name has very little value in terms of SEO.
As for anatomy, I dunno. DaVinci is neat.
Pretty good watch.
I got a bunch of toned paper, to further my color study, but haven't gotten around to using it yet. My current sketchbook is just about full, so I'll use the smaller pad(9x12) as my new everyday book. Also got some 12x18 paper and the materials to apply a tone to my larger surfaces. The past couple of weeks have been too distracting for me to work on a large piece, but I'll get back to it. Until then, the daily sketching continues.
Would you recommend it for a beginner, or is it more of a resource for intermediate and higher artists? Watts looks pretty intimidating.
The instructors are all quite nice. There is no skill requirement at all to take the classes. They will literally accept you off the street. Looking at your art thread, you may have some adjustment to get used to the drawing style.
Generally for newcomers the recommendation would be something like https://www.wattsatelier.com/shop/figure-drawing-fundamentals-with-brian-knox-2/ or https://www.wattsatelier.com/shop/head-drawing-fundamentals-with-brian-knox-2/. Knox seems to be doing most the fundamentals classes recently. I haven't had any classes with him personally, though I met and chatted with him at the school.
Look at the watts youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/wattsatelier They have example classes and example critiques. These are pretty representative of what you'll get. Don't let a sense of newness stop you. If you think the style of instruction and content is interesting, dive in.
(Meanwhile, I decided to sign up for the still life painting class last night at 11 PM. The hell kind of drugs am I on that I committed to that?! well, may be an interesting disaster...)
I didn't submit drawings for any lessons. I think maybe one of the script blockers installed in my browser short circuited Watts site, because above every video there was a YOU MUST SUBMIT SUCHANDSUCHLESSON FOR APPROVAL BEFORE VIEWING THIS VIDEO. But I didn't have to, what're you gonna do, art video cop??
Knox's classes were pretty solid and easy to draw along with.
NO RULES ONLY TOOLS
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
In the meantime, I finally slogged through all 250 boxes over at Draw A Box, and am waiting on the homework feedback. It felt like I wasn't making any progress at all while I was in the thick of it, but looking back at my first boxes, well... I'm still not very good, but I'm definitely better than I was! So that's something!
My cats are less than thrilled by the addition of all these oil paints and paint thinners to the corner of my room, but we have confirmed at least they won't be eating any paint chips.
Thinking the best bet is to limit myself to the Zorn palette given the fact I have no idea what I'm doing.
Might try and make a cool design and maybe find a way to sell or, hell, hand em out for free to use as facemasks.
Aaron Blaise (concept artist for The Lion King, Aladdin, Mulan, Brother Bear) has made his 9.5 hour long figure drawing course $1 during this whole Covid-19 dealio.
I need to work more on my anatomy. I have a pretty solid understanding of certain things and then I completely breakdown on others.
... I don't know if I have 9.5 hours.
I'm downloading and saving all the vids for when I finally finish Draw a Box because at one buckaroo I'd be kinda nuts not to. If I never get around to it, eh.
I also found his digital art tutorial super helpful, so why the heck not!
I really want to get to the portions dedicated to the hips and legs and foreshortening. For some reason the upper good I'm like, a good 75-80% on. Once I hit the hips it's like lol maybe 45% if that.
I still can't remember 10% of what I drew to fully utilize the lessons unfortunately haha...
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
I'm having some super serious art block right now. My favorite artist is doing a curated art collaboration on instagram where he supplied a base image and anybody can take it and draw whatever they want with it. I was pumped and then I saw all the killer pieces everybody was doing and now I've got absolutely no idea what to draw at all. Nothing I can think of is feeling right with me and it sucks.
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully