bad art advice

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IceGray said:
Part of that may be due to the monopoly of proprietary image processing software in the early days of computers.

As for free art programs, I love Medibang's cross-platform service.
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Yeah, that makes sense. I think Fire Alpaca and Medibang would be great starters for beginners. Krita has a bit of a learning curve that takes some getting used to, but it's worth the time in my opinion.
 
You know the loudest, most confident person in any art class or school that has to have an opinion on any and every advice and lecture your paid teacher gives?

Listen to what they say and do the opposite.
 
CoronaVenom said:
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.
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I dunno I've always found under drawing/construction lines/ovals useful, even when doing sculpture. You build something complex up from simplicity. Like I'll get the motion of the pose down draw in the ovals for hips, head, and chest and build it up from there.
 
Marissa Moira said:
I dunno I've always found under drawing/construction lines/ovals useful, even when doing sculpture. You build something complex up from simplicity. Like I'll get the motion of the pose down draw in the ovals for hips, head, and chest and build it up from there.
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Learning to draw organic subjects without construction lines seems counterproductive, however, drawing without construction lines teaches your hand and eye how to draw things with a natural flow. Construction lines tend to give organic subjects an unnatural appearance, a stiffness to human form, for example. My college teachers were absolute on removing the "construction crutch," as they called it. Every student is often resistant against learning to draw without something they've learned from cheap "how to draw" books, but, once learned there's a greater pay off, a natural flow and organic look to the human figure.
 
"gesture" is becoming a bit of a meme, it's good for learning how to bang out a quick pose and put life into one but it's not the end all be all and barely the start. So I don't like how it's presented as being anything more than a tool to help your poses.
Personally speaking I have a big disregard for nitpick criticisms "x looks wrong" type things, which is the only examples of bad advice I've ever been given. I don't think all criticisms are somehow equal in their worth, and I've found a lot of the time the nitpicking comes from those with limited art experience or people holding something against you the same way sjws moan when they see anime girls with tiny waists or big boobs.

CoronaVenom said:
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.
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afaik image flipping was supposed to keep you from drawing things leaning to one side too much
 
Saffronette said:
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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I use Clip Studio Paint. It's a great Photoshop alternative, if you're willing to wait on a sale.
 
Marissa Moira said:
I dunno I've always found under drawing/construction lines/ovals useful, even when doing sculpture. You build something complex up from simplicity. Like I'll get the motion of the pose down draw in the ovals for hips, head, and chest and build it up from there.
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That's pretty much how I feel most of the time. Construction's great if you're trying to nail down a pose, learning to draw something for the first time or even for certain parts of the body (I can never get hands right without them, even with visual reference) or even hard inorganic objects like buildings and cars. But for most other things I just get a few shapes down, maybe add a basic skeleton and motion lines and go from there.
 
Xolanite said:
I use Clip Studio Paint. It's a great Photoshop alternative, if you're willing to wait on a sale.
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Too bad I couldn't, but I didn't mind paying $50 for the "Pro" version.
 
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I had a friend who was taking art lessons through Utemy or whatever it's called. Anyways he turned out to be a total sped. He could apparently only draw when being instructed. Attempts to do so when not being instructed looked only slightly better that what Chris Chan can do. With Utemy however he could manage to make really amazing pencil drawn art that was incredibly lifelike and professional. I argued with him constantly that he could do it on his own but he would insist that he needed Utemy to show him how to "draw with his shoulder."
 
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Infinite paths that all conform to porn. Creativity and innovation is washed out in favor of blind conformity for profit. Thus artists are taught to exploit each other and popular things for money.
 
DDBCAE CBAADCBE said:
I had a friend who was taking art lessons through Utemy or whatever it's called. Anyways he turned out to be a total sped. He could apparently only draw when being instructed. Attempts to do so when not being instructed looked only slightly better that what Chris Chan can do. With Utemy however he could manage to make really amazing pencil drawn art that was incredibly lifelike and professional. I argued with him constantly that he could do it on his own but he would insist that he needed Utemy to show him how to "draw with his shoulder."
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Wha a coincidence I was going to talk about this....

My #1 advice on how to avoid that is this::

You need to know exactly what you want to acomplish. You see actually a lot of art instruction can be divided in two big categories:

Artists that want to mostly Capture life vs Artists mostly draw from imagination.

Yes, all artists use reference, But those two huge branches do exist. Ignoring this will cause people a lot of headaches. Let me explain: A lot of people want to draw from imagination, be it cartoons, or manga, comics etc, but they go with teacher that teaches how to "capture the model" instead and then be confused why their drawings from imgination are shit.

Artists that "capture life" usually aim at having their art in galleries: Think people that just want to copy a nice landscape or draw hyper realistic pencil drawings of a celebrity to share on facebook or a boomer that justs wants to draw their kids.

Take for example this:


1581135241388.png

100% done in ballpoint pens by a lawyer. It's amazing. But there is a catch: he can only do this by copying a photo. And that's the weakness of these "capture" artist. They are married to their reference. He couldn't draw this girl looking up or down from his mind.

Nothing wrong with that. Those artists were taught things like using grids as if it was a coloring book which are amzing for getting a likelness, but useless if you want, say, to draw manga or cartoons from imagination. Grids lke this:

1581136405248.png
.

This is in part due to deceptive marketing. There's a lot of scams in art education in places like udemy and youtube... so you will think you will be able to draw like your teacher from memory.... but turns out the course you are in is for copying. but I digress.

Point is if you want to draw manga and anime, and you aren't being taught construction (aka drawing with 3d from imagination), so you can draw your characters in any pose you wan from your mind, they're wasting your time.
 
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On that note: "Superhero comics must be in an exaggerated and nearly realistic style, or they suck!" is one comment that sits ill with me.

Same with "Photorealistic art is the only 2D style that's valid."
 
Tanti-Fanti said:
I don't understand why people think that either medium will suddenly make their art better? That's not how it works.
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It's the same with a lot of things. People think buying that shiny new tool will instantly turn them into a master, and that's in part because of the marketing may intentionally or unintentionally demonstrates the grand possibilities of said tool. This goes hand in hand with how the world lacks patience and discipline, because we now expect instant gratification out of everything and refuse to humble ourselves when we think we're the best in the world. But clearly 99.99999% of people aren't.
 
Pixy Misa said:
Good news? Most of the best info is in books, And not even obscure ones. How to draw the Marvel way, Loomis, Scott Robertson, etc. All are more worth your time, and the best part is that they are free.
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I would vouch for the Loomis books, pdf's of all of then have floated around the web for years and some are back in print too.
 
Its important to know that almost every piece of art advice or illustration "rules" have been broken or disregarded entirely by many talented and successful artists. The rules your favorite artists swear by are useful if you want to draw like them, but aren't the end all be all.

CoronaVenom said:
Learning to draw organic subjects without construction lines seems counterproductive, however, drawing without construction lines teaches your hand and eye how to draw things with a natural flow. Construction lines tend to give organic subjects an unnatural appearance, a stiffness to human form, for example. My college teachers were absolute on removing the "construction crutch," as they called it. Every student is often resistant against learning to draw without something they've learned from cheap "how to draw" books, but, once learned there's a greater pay off, a natural flow and organic look to the human figure.
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This is pretty interesting, I know there are artists that draw without construction lines, (generally the more talented ones.) but I haven't run across many people discouraging the use of them. I generally study stuff related to cartoons and comics, and construction lines are pretty useful when you have to reproduce the same figure over and over again. I've even seen rough construction lines in some story boards and animatics. That being said you don't have to be a terribly great draftsman to animate or create comics. Would I be wrong in assuming you were an illustration student?

Edit: Spelling
 
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