bad art advice

[Anonitolia]

references are a crutch and make you not creative

Having the "right tools" makes your art look more professional

"Just find your own style!"

“Always use Adobe Photoshop, Paint Tool SAI or Clip Studio!!!”

All of the above, I've heard them numerous times and they drive me nuts lol
That Clip Studio thing almost got me earlier this year, until I did a free trial and realized what little benefits it offered in comparison to my current program (Medibang) were minimal at best. From then on have learned not to trust hype around specific tools/programs, mainly in relation to them "making your art better".

photocopy a few pages of drawn out panels and used it for all your subsequent pages

I actually heard this one a lot back when I was experimenting with making comics when I was just starting out with digital art 6ish years ago. I deduced myself that it'd make pages look like shit so I didn't do it, but something like half my peers at the time did that to "meet their schedules" (which were usually crazy intensive, like 3 full pages a week or something) and told me it'd save me so much time.

Flip your image to make sure there's no asymmetry in human or animal bodies

This also isn't really bad advice... in a SPECIFIC CONTEXT. "Flip your image to make sure there's no asymmetry" is dogshit advice because asymmetry is by no means inherently bad, and it can actually add a lot to an otherwise-forgettable drawing in many circumstances, but "flip your image to make sure nothing is LOPSIDED" is actually very very good. Helped me loads when I finally realized that people were only saying a half-truth.
Funniest part is that this advice always came from the same people who abused the Mirror tool like there was no tomorrow.

I'd argue that beginners shouldn't even be doing commissions at all. Until your technique is good enough to be considered good, if not amazing, by almost anyone, you shouldn't be wasting the time of others by suggesting that they should pay you to create art. No-one wants to pay someone for an abomination made with sub-standard technical skill, and you're setting yourself up for disappointment by doing that.

Totally going to agree with this btw. I was pressured into doing commissions something like three separate times and every single time it

• destroyed my creativity for upwards of a year afterwards because commissions always took priority and I was typically too stressed about those to draw on my own time without feeling guilty that I wasn't doing a commission instead
• further exacerbated my own rampant insecurities about my art because now it had a price tag on it and I needed to compare what I offered to other (much, MUCH better) artists if I wanted to see what people would pay for
• forced me to stop experimenting for extended periods of time due to most comms requesting specific poses, angles, etc- most of which I'd done many times over
• generally stressed me the hell out lmao

It almost seems like offering commissions is obligatory at this point. Every single online artist i've met offers commissions, even if they're TOTAL dogshit, every artist who doesn't gets repeatedly asked "why" and told that they should do it, every artist who doesn't anyways often has that fact publicly lamented. Nobody ever shuts up about them. At its worst, people use a lack of commissions as an indictment against the artist's skills, talking about how if they were "actually good" then they'd be offering their art up for cash. It's horrid.
I realize a lot of how I reacted to doing commissions was personal fault on my end and not a "please think of the children" kind of thing where it's something everyone will experience and that should be accounted for, though I felt it was pertinent to include since I was giving my opinion.

hating tutorials OUTRIGHT because they have the be the most "original"

"There is no wrong way to draw."

"Just practice."

This shit crippled my progress for ages, holy shit. Never thought i'd see discussion of it outside of my own head. Excuse me for a moment, I've gotta mope and PL for a little:

Spoiler: anon whines about how deviantart furries crippled her progress

When I was little and I just doodled for fun, I didn't give a shit about much. I hardly cared about how "artists" did things, didn't have a clue about technique- I mostly just drew what I wanted, which was usually different-colored dragons and dogs and maybe really shitty people with no necks and huge anime eyes.

Then when I got online and started drawing digitally, I was almost instantly thrust into DA's "ARPG" (art role playing game) scene because I really liked RPGs and I really liked drawing. So my baby brain went "oh wow, a game where you draw a bunch of stuff to win! this is going to be great for me and it sounds really fun! I'll join!" Haha, I wish.

Immediately upon joining and beginning to submit some character designs I was really proud of I got flagged and rejected for "copying". Was told I was unoriginal and stealing someone else's shit. Over and over and over again, despite only having had a DA account for maybe a month and using the site for about as long. I hardly watched anyone, hardly saw any other art, and yet I was being told I was stealing from these people.
So I changed my shit, and eventually, when I was using only the most generic colors and designs out there, I was accepted into some of these groups.

That alone imprinted the "you must be original" rule into my head with a red-hot iron for YEARS. I'm only now just starting to get over it, and even then I'm having a hard time breaking out of my comfort zone (where I just draw preestablished characters and species to avoid pissing off some imaginary goblin in my head saying i'm a thief lol).

It is without a doubt some of the worst fucking advice I've ever been given and it destroyed my passion for character design probably one of the only legitimate passions i've ever had for at least half a decade out of fear that i'd accidentally "stolen" my designs. I'm not sure I can say that passion's even returned yet; I still feel sort of guilty whenever I try, and being able to break past the guilt to do it anyways is very rare.

Anyways, when I tried to participate in these groups, I soon realized my drawings didn't look as good as everyone else's. I started asking for advice on how to improve, and- I shit you not- 99% of the advice I got was "just practice". Verbatim.
I had no idea what that meant, and when I asked for more details they just told me to 'draw what you love' and that 'there's no wrong way to draw', so I decided to just draw whatever I felt like whenever I felt like it.

To give you an idea of just how terrible this advice was, I didn't even know what studies were until a few months ago and I'm still not certain I know what they are 100%. The importance of anatomy was never mentioned, posing was an afterthought, colors consisted of "eyedrop everything and then use 40 layer effects to make it look "realistic""- all that anybody ever seemed to even slightly dip their toes into talking about was how important expressions were and that it was bad to draw your character looking straight left or straight right (which, to be fair, sort of helped me branch out since that's all I drew when I was little).
Most of the information I had on "drawing well" also came exclusively from "how to draw manga" books, too, so I didn't really have outside sources to look at aside from those groups and YouTube tutorials that I had no idea even existed for a while lol.

Complaining aside, yeah. Don't ever, and I mean ever give beginners this type of advice. Don't tell them that there's no wrong way to draw- that any mistakes are just "their style" developing. Don't just tell them to "git gud"- point them in the right direction. Give them soft guidance by doing things like pointing out the importance of shifting weight in human poses, helping them think of how light bounces off of surfaces when shading instead of just panicking at the thought and winging it like my dumb ass, bringing up the importance of shape theory and how geometry can help construct skeletons, etc etc
I only half-know what I'm saying here, but I think even my retarded suggestions would be miles better than anything DeviantArt has to offer...

 

[Georgio Cocklord]

Just draw whatever you want- I think thats really bad advice cause you learn at some point in art that you need to have knowledge of figure accuracy, proportions and lighting become almost second nature to produce something which is of reasonable quality. So its a good thing to grind through basics as much as possible before drawing whatever you want.

Any artstyle is good- No, some artstyles are inherently better than others on an aesthetic level and each artstyle tries to push a single aspect of visual communication to enhance the image, be it proportions lighting or color. Kelley Jones, Mike Mignola and Frank Millers Sin city try to push visual communication through lighting and inking choices, Brian Bolland and Moebius try to push visual communication through hatching and textures, Bruce Timm Genndy Tartakovsky and Craig mcCracken try to push visual communication through simplistic design and humor enhancement, Andreas Deja 9 Old men and James Baxter try to push visual communication through expressions and action exaggeration, Ed McMillen Dan Paladin and Krinkels try to push visual communication through minimalism and shitpost humor, Speedoru tries to combine anime and western animation to make stuff funny, Akira Toriyama Eiichiro Oda and Go Nagai push childlike fantasy, Mamoru Oshii Yoshiaki Kawajiri Tetsuo Hara and Masami Obari try to push grit and edge, Kentaro Miura and Yusuke Murata push spectacle. Each person tries to accentuate a specific aspect of visual storytelling in their artstyle. If your artstyle fails in any department, be it color lighting proportion or construction even a lil bit, then its inherently inferior.

Monochrome bad, color good- Monochrome can be better than color provided its used properly. The biggest advantage of monochrome is increased contrast and easy to direct user attention, so its really easy to use monochrome but tough to make it look good.

Digital always better- I personally find it really really difficult to draw digitally. Its too accurate and takes too much effort to produce a single good image while physical art can be completed much quicker and cleaned digitally using scans.

You shouldnt imitate artstyles- Artistic skill is indicated by how versatile an artist is, not by how good they can draw in a specific style. The larger number of artstyles you can imitate perfectly the more skilled you are cause you know whats the pros and cons of each artstyle by intuition. It indicates a better understanding of art in general. Its one of the places AI is beating everybodys ass as AI can mass produce anything in any artstyle with little to no learning. The objective is to be equivalent or better than AI as theyre doing something humans are capable of, theyre just doing it faster and with less effort.

 

[Equal Rights for Androids]

Digital always better

Digital art is almost always better. Greater range of color, any size you want, is practically free to make, accessible for anyone with an internet to see it, view it anytime, anywhere, easy to make changes, will never age/deteriorate, easy to turn into different filetypes, easier to print, not as bulky to carry around to make art. Your argument that it's "too accurate" is just you being an inexperienced artist (or a shitty one. considering you almost trooned out, I'd wager a shitty artist).

Just because you find it hard doesn't mean it's not almost unanimously better than traditional art. I'm a trad fag but I still recognize that digital art is superior in most things.

 

[Georgio Cocklord]

Digital art is almost always better. Greater range of color, any size you want, is practically free to make, accessible for anyone with an internet to see it, view it anytime, anywhere, easy to make changes, easy to turn into different filetypes, easy to print, not as bulky to carry around to make art. Your argument that it's "too accurate" is just you being an inexperienced artist (or a shitty one. considering you almost trooned out, I'd wager a shitty artist).

Just because you find it hard (lol get good scrub) doesn't mean it's not almost unanimously better than traditional art. I'm a trad fag but I still recognize that digital art is superior in most things.

I mean, I almost exclusively draw in monochrome. I can understand Digital art is better and its tough to learn but it still takes more time. My PFP is done on paper and cleaned digitally, its not great but it took 2 hours. If I were to draw it on a tablet it would take 4-6 hours for the same result. Just cause I had a porn addict phase and came close to trooning out doesnt mean i draw cartoon furry faggot art and put bright purple and pink every fucking place.

 

[Equal Rights for Androids]

I mean, I almost exclusively draw in monochrome. I can understand Digital art is better and its tough to learn but it still takes more time. My PFP is done on paper and cleaned digitally, its not great but it took 2 hours. If I were to draw it on a tablet it would take 4-6 hours for the same result.

It doesn't take more time if you're an experienced artist in both fields; trad art 100% takes more time than digital art. An oil painting can take months longer than a digital piece due to the drying times, not including cleanup of brushes with toxic chemicals (oh yeah, I forgot: digital art won't poison you with cadmium, cobalt, manganese, mineral solvents, lead, zinc, titanium, etc). Even acrylics will take longer than digital because you have to mix your colors and work against the clock of your palette drying, You have to wait for your colors to dry. Oftentimes you have to make a mockup on a different sheet of paper (or, as many traditional artists do, in photoshop first!) for your colors instead of just being able to do it on the same canvas and wing your way into a finished piece. Traditional art will always take longer than digital art.
Your PFP would take me five minutes digitally

Ten if I wanted it to be cleaner and better than this doodle

Inexperience is why you take so long to draw it in one medium vs another. It would take me longer to set that up traditionally because have to size a paper, pencil sketch it, ink it, then color it with markers, then get a white pen/marker to draw those lines over the visor. Can't just use a paintbucket to fill it in one second.

 

[Georgio Cocklord]

It doesn't take more time if you're an experienced artist in both fields; trad art 100% takes more time than digital art. An oil painting can take months longer than a digital piece due to the drying times, not including cleanup of brushes with toxic chemicals (oh yeah, I forgot: digital art won't poison you with cadmium, cobalt, manganese, mineral solvents, lead, zinc, titanium, etc). Even acrylics will take longer than digital because you have to mix your colors and work against the clock of your palette drying, You have to wait for your colors to dry. Oftentimes you have to make a mockup on a different sheet of paper (or, as many traditional artists do, in photoshop first!) for your colors instead of just being able to do it on the same canvas and wing your way into a finished piece. Traditional art will always take longer than digital art.
Your PFP would take me five minutes digitally
View attachment 5117107
Ten if I wanted it to be cleaner and better than this doodle

Inexperience is why you take so long to draw it in one medium vs another. It would take me longer to set that up traditionally because have to size a paper, pencil sketch it, ink it, then color it with markers, then get a white pen/marker to draw those lines over the visor. Can't just use a paintbucket to fill it in one second.

Fair I was talking exclusively when it comes to black and white. I can understand paintings are easier to do in digital. Usually when I see 90s and 2000s manga or 2000ad stuff, they dont seem that bad for being done traditionally, in fact sometimes better than generic digital stuff. So I tend to stick to traditional, I find it easier to do and I think it looks good. I still work with digital but its too much effort to produce something.

I will say this though, Inking is almost always better traditionally than digitally. Digital inking especially for shadows and shit is absolute crap.

 

[CrazyRandomZyn]

@Anonitolia
>DeviantArt
there's the cancerous tumor masquerading as an art community; I too am in the process of cutting it off manually even if I lose blood and I never gave a fuck about the popularity factor.

 

[CrazyRandomZyn]

Sorry for double posting will merge later:
>rips your doodle and proudly demands, "I heard that you draw. Draw me now!"
Variant of this: bully is morbidly obese ">MAKE SURE I LOOK HOT AND SEXY!"
(can you tell these are from middle school?)
"when are you going to gift me a painting?!"
"oh a traditional painting is the same as <insert copied classical piece sold in a cheap frame and sold overpriced>"

 

[one(1)jingleberry]

Commissions can kill the motivation for art quicker than everything. One has to have the right mindset to offer commissions. I was asked for commissions in the past, but was smart enough to decline, until I decided to give it a try.

Spoiler: autistic ranting & first commission experience

My first commissioner was a Furry with no visual reference, only text. First red flag was that they didn't want to pay my normal, already low prices- 70$ for fullbody shaded sketch), but I didn't want to be a dick, because I know them from a mutual friend and know they can't draw too well. And I wanted to have it over with. Sketch was easy enough, but I think they wanted at least 4 color changes on the fur. The markings were never perfect. It was shit like "the dots should be more in the middle" "stripes should be closer together/more!" - I think in the end they payed half price upfront and I probably spend double the time as I usually would, because of all the changes.
While the commissioner were nice and all, this killed my motivation to draw anything for a month. Will never open commissions again.

Also when people see you sketch in public (I like to study architecture, as we have a lot of gothic buildings in the city), they ask "Can you draw me?!" (What is it with people that they love to have themselves drawn so much?)

Or what's also annoying when acquaintances ask you for an artwork and you ask what they want. "I don't know, you're the artist."

Or, real bad advice: "An artist has to be able to do all artforms!" or "When you paint/draw x you have to be able to draw y." (comes from a non-artist ex-colleague after I declined to design her a caligraphy style tattoo, because of lack of skills)
As long as you don't want to monetize your art, you don't need to be able to draw everything or be able to adapt to different styles.

"If your artworks don't make money, it's not good art and you should stop wasting your time." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist's_Shit

 

[Equal Rights for Androids]

Commissions can kill the motivation for art quicker than everything. One has to have the right mindset to offer commissions. I was asked for commissions in the past, but was smart enough to decline, until I decided to give it a try.

Spoiler: autistic ranting & first commission experience

My first commissioner was a Furry with no visual reference, only text. Sketch was easy enough, but I think they wanted at least 4 color changes on the fur. The markings were never perfect. It was shit like "the dots should be more in the middle" "stripes should be closer together/more!"
While the commissioner were nice and all, this killed my motivation to draw anything for a month. Will never open commissions again.

Also when people see you sketch in public (I like to study architecture, as we have a lot of gothic buildings in the city), they ask "Can you draw me?!" (What is it with people that they love to have themselves drawn so much?)

Or what's also annoying when acquaintances ask you for an artwork and you ask what they want. "I don't know, you're the artist."

Or, real bad advice: "An artist has to be able to do all artforms!" or "When you paint/draw x you have to be able to draw y." (comes from a non-artist ex-colleague after I declined to design her a caligraphy style tattoo, because of lack of skills)
As long as you don't want to monetize your art, you don't need to be able to draw everything or be able to adapt to different styles.

"If your artworks don't make money, it's not good art and you should stop wasting your time." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist's_Shit

This is the bad art advice thread.

 

[Yaks]

This isn't so much advice since I haven't seen people actively saying to do it, but the social trend with the 20-somethings and younger to make their sketchbooks "aesthetic" and/or have finished pieces on every page. You can do that with your sketchbook if you want, but that's not what they're for. I've ran into quite a few artists who are a decade or so younger than me who are horrified at the very idea of trying it, having multiple things on one page, having something look bad or unfinished.

Dear younger artists: it's ok to have a secret place for failure, learning, mistakes, mess, and planning. You never have to share it. It's a secret between you and your book.

 

[TheRetardKing]

Use your expensive tablet as a food tray if you ever want to eat a snack while drawing art.

 

[SailingtheSaltySeas]

If you’re going to draw any kind of anime style make sure the eyes are super detailed, feel free to leave the detail out of literally everything else

 

[Yukako]

Go to art school if you want to pursue it as a career.

Ignore any unsolicited criticism you receive. This typically comes from trolls.

The number of likes your art receives is the most reliable determiner of its quality. If you're low on engagement, try drawing a popular anime character with top surgery scars. If that doesn't work, use your pen to commit seppuku.

There's no point learning the fundamentals of art if your drawings are stylized.

Only draw as a means of making money, even if it's not a lot.

Never steal someone's artstyle, it's a form of plagiarism.

There's no excuse for not knowing how to draw fat people.

"Same face syndrome" doesn't exist. However, if you're drawing people of color you must give them ethnic traits, otherwise it's racist. Just don't overdo it since that's racist too.

If you're a digital artist struggling to draw backgrounds, either insert a photo or 3D model and place a filter over it. People won't notice, and it saves you a lot of time.