bad art advice

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if you want to be an actual artist, ditch Loomis, Vilppu and all the other "for Dummies" poison books.
draw people as much as you can from real life. in parks, cafés, shopping malls, at bus stops, on the train, school, at work, anywhere - best in places where people rest and hold still for a few seconds at least. ask you friends to sit for you. using construction as a beginner right away makes you think in construction constantly. i've seen sketchbook pages here of people who use construction, even when they draw people in real life. you shouldn't use that at all, when all you need is in front of you
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While drawing from life is important, this idiot is suggesting that you don't need to learn how things work.
Here were some counterarguments that show what I mean:
If you go to a life drawing session to draw a vase of flowers without understanding that it's just a modified cylinder with light rays bouncing off of it, you won't learn more than 10% of what you could've learned.
Go to your local art school to see how far drawing from life alone gets you.
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This is bad advice. We need to learn from others before us, and absorb the sum of human ingenuity and artistry, and channel this language alongside your own ingenuity and ideas.

Example: go out into the wild to do some "survival". If you haven't learned from other humans, learned macro and micro details and methods, chances are you'll catch an illness, invent some crude tools and probably fail. It's the same with artistry, look at the evolution of greek statues

First they started as simple Egyptian 2D statues
Then they "took a step forward", literally going from flat 3D heiroglyphs to a semi realistic model in real space.
Then they invented rules like harmony, contrapposto etc, and the figures started to look languid, noble, beautiful, graceful.
Then the sculptors decided to take it to the next level, and did autopsies of bodies, stripping away skin to reveal musculature and veins, bones and facial proportions. They studied the previous statues, and improved them to the point of realism.
Then they idealised them further into gods, using the work of hundreds of years of sculptors to turn it into a mathematical science combined with the pure artistry, reverence and ambition of the Greek soul.
Then the Greek and Roman world crumbled, and most of that knowledge was lost, hence the naive, 2D art of the Medieval and Dark Age period (just google the Book of Kells).
The rules of the Greek and Roman masters were resurrected by artists who studied the statues dug up by archeologists, and they tried their best to carry on where Antiquity had left off, leading to sculptors like Michaelangelo, painters like Botticelli etc.

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, while those who do have the pleasure of watching them repeat it.
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> shitting on Vilppu
> the same guy who gives clear instructions on how to study from life
If what you got from Vilppu is "construction only", you were not paying attention.
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Good old "references are cheating" (multiple times, from diffirent people, so I actually was afraid to use them untill I was like 19), "you won't get anywhere doing this as an adult, so stop" and also "you probably saw this [design] somewhere and just think you made it yourself" (not an advice, but instilled a long-living phobia).

Then again, I don't think I can draw properly - I can make designs, but poses, anatomy etc. just elude me. But I sure enjoy* doing it.

*with certain exceptions
 
UnsufficentBoobage said:
Good old "references are cheating" (multiple times, from diffirent people, so I actually was afraid to use them untill I was like 19), "you won't get anywhere doing this as an adult, so stop" and also "you probably saw this [design] somewhere and just think you made it yourself" (not an advice, but instilled a long-living phobia).

Then again, I don't think I can draw properly - I can make designs, but poses, anatomy etc. just elude me. But I sure enjoy* doing it.

*with certain exceptions
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Shit, I hate this advice too. People took the concept of "don't trace someone's work and if you do credit them" and totally convoluted it into "EVERY ARTIST IS SACRED" and if you don't ask every single moment of your life for forgiveness for using their art you're a terrible person. Or you have the kind that think two characters sharing a slightly similar pose is "tracing" when in reality, the human body has a set of limited movements we can make. HOW we show them is what makes them unique. For example, The same body templates/movements seen in Bleach will not be the same as in Jojo's Bizarre adventure because the styles are so distinct. And how do you develop those styles? From studying from life.

:powerlevel:I remember getting gift art when I younger on da:powerlevel: and people literally asked me before giving me a gift if they could draw one of my characters, like...it's a gift? A gift is by all means supposed to be somewhat surprising. But now thanks to the internet people are so afraid of being called a "tracer" that they can't even put out fanart without feeling shamed for it.

Leading to the next "advice" I heard from a very horrible video on YT was that bases were good for practice as references when that is never the case. Bases suck because they are made from other people who can't draw and when you use them they give you bad results because you're restricted to bad art. Bases actively destroy your potential because you are limited to a certain style. I don't know where this idea came from that da and tumblr bases are good, but they aren't. You're better looking up an actual tutorial and doing all the work for yourself.
 
Tanti-Fanti said:
bases were good for practice as references when that is never the case. Bases suck because they are made from other people who can't draw and when you use them they give you bad results because you're restricted to bad art. Bases actively destroy your potential because you are limited to a certain style. I don't know where this idea came from that da and tumblr bases are good, but they aren't. You're better looking up an actual tutorial and doing all the work for yourself.
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Some stores sell wooden anatomy figures that are much better for using as a "base", they provide structure, can be posed in many ways, and dont have any particular styles attached to them.

Really being stuck in any style sucks, I've seen many artists draw somewhat interesting work early on only to create "their own style", then draw the same 2 or 3 things for eternity while fans pat them on the back.
 
Any version of "just find your own style!".My response is always "What do you cocking mean with that?"
Sycra has a good video on this topic:
https://youtu.be/FMUYG1hkY5c

Like I don't have A style- I have many. Every artist have their own strokes and ways of applying them, just like with handwriting. But there is a difference between someone scribbling and someone doing this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PenmanshipPorn/

Imagine if calligraphers got the same "just find your own style!" advice, and then spent their whole lives just penning ink in one way? Developing different styles for different fictonal universes is part of the fun of being an artist. You can create anything as long as you can draw it.
 
MoistHoleGodess said:
Any version of "just find your own style!".My response is always "What do you cocking mean with that?"
Sycra has a good video on this topic:
https://youtu.be/FMUYG1hkY5c

Like I don't have A style- I have many. Every artist have their own strokes and ways of applying them, just like with handwriting. But there is a difference between someone scribbling and someone doing this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PenmanshipPorn/

Imagine if calligraphers got the same "just find your own style!" advice, and then spent their whole lives just penning ink in one way? Developing different styles for different fictonal universes is part of the fun of being an artist. You can create anything as long as you can draw it.
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That is pretty true. I think the main problem with that advice is that people generally don't know your position when you're drawing. Everyone is at different rates after all. So someone could be drawing the same way over and over and not realize how it's frustrating. You need to get out of your comfort zone that's the only way you'll know what you're doing.

People ask :
"I've been drawing for a long time and nothing has changed? Why?"

Because you haven't drawn anything different. Most of the time if you ask these people if they used a reference they say, "No" from my experience. And then I ask "why aren't you?" And that's where the excuses begin.

"I'm not comfortable with x"

Draw it anyways. It'll help you. I hate drawing hands but after doing multiple hand studies my hands improved. Trust me it helps.

"But x doesn't work for me"

Find a work around. Many popular artists had their own habits that they used in order to get shit done. You need to plan and learn to have some time to draw everyday.

"But x is hard!"

The more you complain about it the less shit you get done. Sometimes you just got to do it.

Back when I was a kid social media was barely a thing. Yt didn't even come out yet. I remember having to draw from life and not having a lot of artists to look up to other than Van Gogh books.

Nowadays people are lucky they have so many tutorials to help them and yet they still act lazy about it. It's one thing to struggle but it's another to constantly make excuses and never improve.

One of the worst advices I've seen from this is that, "X artist is only x years old and they draw super well, so I should be drawing at this level."

To that I say do you know that artist personally? Do you know what their habits are like? No? Then why are you using them as a reference? "Yeah someone younger than I has worked very hard compared to me who has barely been in the art world for 2 years". It's like people don't understand that everyone works at a different pace. I don't understand how it's discouraging to find people better than you.
 
a dudette i knew said that it's easy to draw in academic manner because it's realism and while drawing you don't need to think because you draw what you see irl.
and her main agenda is that artists who draw only in stylasation are opressed by realism artists, lol
she's no longer my friend
 
When my girlfriend and I were beginner artists, we knew absolutely nothing about anatomy, and she convinced me peoples' ears were right on their temples.
 
There is this idea called "progressive learning" (I'm sure this has another name internationally). The famous 80/20 or Pareto Principle is another widely accepted one. It's the simple concept of learning the important things by studying and THEN doing the thing. So when it comes to improving in art, the fastest way to improve is to spend most of your time studying the hard stuff and then apply your learning effectively. If you feel challenged and discomfort, then chances are, you are right where you need to be. (yay)

Repetition without study seldom brings improvement and even if it does, the progress is super slow. This doesn't just apply to art, but universally to virtually any subject matter you wish to improve upon quickly. This is usually why you see some artists improving at lightning speed despite not drawing very often.

It takes time/experimentation to find your groove and workflow. One of the biggest mistakes I often see out there is artists trying to emulate a person's workflow and then getting frustrated when the results aren't quite what they expected. There are many roads that lead you to your destination, just gotta find the one the clicks for you.
 
I think there's a misunderstanding about references. References are good because they give you ideas on how things behave like drapery. However don't just copy it wholesale like Dobson. I do believe he didn't trace Big Ben because he's shown that he has the tools to draw it freehand, his problem was he drawn it in the same angle and position as his reference.
 
ComputerWife said:
high school art teacher informed me to just “feel out” poses and proportions, also references are a crutch and make you not creative
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My high school art teacher was one of those that make us keep a sketch journal and gave us weekly assignment sketches to do. Apart from that, I remember him often reminding me I wasn't really finished with my picture until I could tell it was, and it was hard for me to know when I was finished. Watercolor is a bitch sometimes but I've learned what he really meant by it.

Deadwaste said:
oh you mean like this?
0a23bf3359a205cb82650783bdd7e3ec.jpg
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That just looks wrong to me. You can tell someone didn't want to deal with holes/slits in the pants and just threw it above the waist and called it a day. There's noting wrong with it coming out of the 'crack'.

MerriedxReldnahc said:
Worst advice I've gotten personally? In that same shitty class my teacher made a comment about how my comics would go a lot faster if I just photocopied a few pages of drawn out panels and used it for all my subsequent pages. Not atrociously bad advice, but I was having a hard time trying to explain to him that you would end up with only three different page layout options and would be designing your scenes based on panel shape, and not vice versa.
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Sounds a little like the method Nicole Hollander uses for "Sylvia". That comic is basically "Cut 'n Paste: The Strip".

He also seemed to suggest to various people in the class that we shouldn't work in different styles and need to stick to just one thing that we were good at. Just about every other art teacher has said that experimentation is important and that it's good to broaden your horizons especially when you're young.
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Damn, that's pretty odd not to try something on your own..

J A N D E K said:
A professor, in my first year of Fine Art at university, back in 1989, told me...

“I have no idea why you are here majoring in Fine Art. You should be airbrushing vans for fans of the Grateful Dead.”

I changed my major the following year.
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Now that's rough.
 
"You don't need to learn anatomy muh style uses cartooning "

Yes because using particular a style that would end being used as a crutch is better than studying from life itself to get better understanding for art.

John Titor said:
I think there's a misunderstanding about references. References are good because they give you ideas on how things behave like drapery. However don't just copy it wholesale like Dobson. I do believe he didn't trace Big Ben because he's shown that he has the tools to draw it freehand, his problem was he drawn it in the same angle and position as his reference.
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I never understood why there is an stigma when it comes to references in the first place I highly doubt anyone can draw something like a car even if its made up just draw from the top of their heads without having some from of reference.
 
Every word of bad art-advice, I know; most, already mentioned, from reading this thread. I'll keep mine short: just the three most common points of bad advice the most basic-bitch-brained "artists" defend, religiously, makes their (terrible and mediocre) art "acceptable." 1) Use guide (construction) lines/frames, or "stick-men" drawing, for figure drawings. 2) [Digital] Flip your image to make sure there's no asymmetry in human or animal bodies. 3) Develop your own style before you try others. Keeping this post short, I'll elaborate if asked, one point at a time.
 
I don't know if this counts as bad art advice exactly, but it bothers me when people suggest only using Paint Tool SAI and Photoshop for digital art.

People often torrent SAI which is very antiquated by now and it has issues saving PNGs. Plus, installing brushes on it is a chore. Photoshop isn't suited for drawing at all and lacks stabilizers. Whenever I mention free alternatives like Krita, they scoff at it and claim it's not good enough. Even though Krita is often updated with new features and has very helpful tools.
 
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