Artcow Chris Hart

[GGGBYBYBY]

Not sure if anybody has heard of an artist known as Christopher Hart. For those who haven't he writes tonnes of shitty "how to draw manga" books and that shit really, really sells because weeaboos don't want to do art the hard way and just want an easy way to draw Naruto hurr. Anyway, you might wonder why I've brought this man to your attention, well this is because he draws about 6 out of 200 pages in his books and his advice is just

Draw anatomy without studying it properly!? Who even writes a book on that? Anyway aside from his terrible advice and downright awful art there is his latent sexism that dominates his books.

Then to top this all off is the fact that he created a Deviantart account to post art and tutorials. All fine and well until somebody calls him out on his sexism or critiques him; (URL's posted incase screencaps are too small to read)

http://25.media.tumblr.com/599c98d39b4c ... 3_1280.png

http://25.media.tumblr.com/4fe3a7515ffa ... 1_1280.png

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m77mx ... 2_1280.png

He doesn't have a deviantart account anymore because he was bombarded with critique by people and he kept calling them trolls. I can't understand how a publisher said yes to this shit... And his ego is massive from it. To the point of swelling.

Mr Hart needs to realize the only reasons he's the "beselling how to draw manga artist!" are because any mention of the word manga has weeaboos lapping it up and it's a pretty fuckin' narrow category to be frank. I know of about 2 regular artists other than him who draw these books and they're Ben Krefta and Peter Gray. Thing is, unlike our friend Christopher these guys have improved over the years...

 

[murdoc]

where in that articulate well thought out post did hart find any reason to call the person a troll
unprofessionalism errydamnwhere

reminds me of david gonterman, though hart is admittedly a better artist

 

[GGGBYBYBY]

It gets me how he can be so unprofessional but still manage to get professionally published.
A lot of his drawings seem like he did them on a whim and thought "I'll slap them in my newest how to book!" because the instructions, when followed never give the same results as they preach. It's like the blind leading the blind really. Criticism is the very fuel of art IMO and if he can't take it then he's just going to end up getting nowhere and making an ass of himself.

 

[WWWWolf]

Yeah, Hart has been a moron, that's for sure.

Of course, that's not to say that other art guides aren't a ripoff. I knew one minor deviantART troll magnet who was really, really angry at all American manga-drawing guide makers, and especially Chris Hart. He recommended real Japanese manga guides. (Superior publications that can cut clean through steel because they have been fapped to over thousand times, and are vastly superior to any art guide on Earth, yadda yadda yadda.) Of course, he showed a bunch of those art guides in his blog. Terrible cover art at places.

If you really want to learn to draw, quit following step-by-step instructions, draw a lot of stuff, and develop your own style.

 

[GGGBYBYBY]

Yeah, Hart has been a moron, that's for sure.

Of course, that's not to say that other art guides aren't a ripoff. I knew one minor deviantART troll magnet who was really, really angry at all American manga-drawing guide makers, and especially Chris Hart. He recommended real Japanese manga guides. (Superior publications that can cut clean through steel because they have been fapped to over thousand times, and are vastly superior to any art guide on Earth, yadda yadda yadda.) Of course, he showed a bunch of those art guides in his blog. Terrible cover art at places.

If you really want to learn to draw, quit following step-by-step instructions, draw a lot of stuff, and develop your own style.

Exactly you're right about developing your own style when it comes to art.

I've seen some Japanese art guides before in my time a lot of it's perverted crap like women taking their clothes off or getting boned or with huge fucking cameltoes. IMO my best tool when I've been drawing is a simple anatomy diagram. Then again I still make fuck ups with anatomy but anyway, it amuses me that he came on there expecting to get his e-peen sucked but instead was bitten. I do wonder if he actually knew how many people actively make digs at him for his art. Most probably not.

 

[c-no]

So a man whose attitude is unprofessional manages to get his "books" to be professionally published because of a weeaboo audience once had a DA account and shut it down after receiving fair criticism from the community regarding his art mistakes? Seeing as how he called them trolls despite the fact they gave constructive criticism makes me wonder how some real artist would react, in fact, if I had some acquaintances of mine who are learning art take a look at his style, I'd like to see their critique on both his style and his sexism. It also makes me wonder who the publisher is, if it's not some vanity publisher, than I'd like to know the company, also I never heard of this guy until now. I'd like to find some funny reactions of him getting butt-hurt.

 

[GGGBYBYBY]

As far as I know he's got various different publishers behind him for example Watson-Guptil publish a good portion of his books but there are one or two published by other companies. Tumblr has a lot of screen cappings of his antics but beware also on that tag lies rather suggestive photos of an unrelated model of some kind haha. I'd link to his DA but as guessed it's unlinkable due to deactivation.

 

[Fialovy]

I do have a couple of his art books I picked up at goodwill back in my weaboo phase, I didn't really listen to his advice as much as just copy the poses back then. I never took the advice too seriously even back then and just picked up the books for the poses.

I still have them because they amuse me very much so and they are sort of a relic of my naive teenage years.

 

[GGGBYBYBY]

We all have a few relics of the past I guess, I do happen to own one of his books (I used to be a huge fan of magical girl anime and manga so got his guide on that but never used it for drawing but more for looking at da sugoi animu) I think when people buy art books its more for pose reference than "draw a circle then draw in the rest of the face" I used to own a TONNE of how to books (I think they're still in the attic) because I was odd and liked to read them instead of follow them... That's how I used to use them at least.
Funny thing is about his books is that some of the contributing artists are actually legitimately good but there is a lot of shitty art in there. I can see why though based off of his skill why other artists make up the bulk of his publications. I don't understand why it says "Chris Hart" on the cover and it's a bit of a scam that the primary audience will overlook the copyright info in the first few pages and see that there are multiple artist working on it instead of thinking that Chris drew everything in the damn book. It must be so discrediting to draw for that and just have his name slapped on it...

 

[MysticMisty]

As someone who developed her own (rather odd) art style (and still continues to develop it) I can tell you that his art is just a copy/paste of very generic anime/manga style without really understanding or studying the mechanics behind the style. Weebs don't see it, they just see "ZOMG anime style! By an American! Now I can learn properly too!" And the cycle continues.

Of course anime/manga how-to's by Japanese artists are no good either unless you're going to make lesbian drawings, because 99% of the how-to is how-to draw sexy (possibly underaged) ladies in sexy poses. Even the stuff that shouldn't be hyper-sexualized young women still somehow ends up as such.

Really, just study your favorite anime and manga, see how it properly works, then make your own style (even if it is unusual).

 

[GGGBYBYBY]

^ Best advice in the house.

 

[c-no]

Since we are talking about him, is there any mention of him getting butthurt? Any pictures so we can know his mug, any website or blog of his own so we can see his crappy generic, SUGOI KAWAII DESU animu art?

 

[GGGBYBYBY]

http://www.youtube.com/user/chrishartbooks

http://chrishartbooks.com/

 

[c-no]

Looking at that art style that is none anime, would this be him?

Also managed to find a short wikipedia article. Even Wikipedia acknowledges artist disliking his style for being amateurish and not for beginners in terms of being a teaching aid.

 

[random_pickle]

My mom gave me one of his books for my birthday. Do you think I should sell it?

 

[Fialovy]

My mom gave me one of his books for my birthday. Do you think I should sell it?

Sell it to the most die-hard weeaboo you can find.

 

[GGGBYBYBY]

IMO don't. It teachers potential artists it's ok to use step by steps as a guide as opposed to developing their own style indepently.

Not even weeaboos desrve to be regressed like that. From personal experience it's depressing realizing for three or four years of my life which I spent trying to draw well were wasted because some artists made capital on a dopey kid who didn't know any better.

 

[WWWWolf]

One more thought to add: the problem with the guides is that people always look at them and say "this is how you draw, and this is the only guide you ever need", rather than "here are a few good ideas on how to draw on a specific style, for advanced student".

So the problem really isn't that the guides exist, it's just that people tend to depend on them too much and especially too early. No amount of knowing about how to do manga gimmickry is going to save the art if you can't, for example, make the characters look like people. The guy I mentioned in earlier post who liked to ramble on about zillions of manga guides he had, and had managed to learn how to ink and colour and shade characters pretty well, and the art was really manga-ish. Too bad he had absolutely no clue about facial expressions or poses. He could do pr0n poses and Characters Just Sort Of Standing There. Facial expressions? Well, and and that's pretty much the extent of it. I just told him that he really needs to start working on that kind of really fundamental things before the drawings were any good, the way the were the drawings always came across a little bit cringeworthy.

Also, there's a shitton of other work that goes into drawings too, besides just characters. His approach to backgrounds was basically "I have a perfectly functional cheapo cellphone camera, and I bought Photoshop which has some filters in it, and I'm not afraid to use either of these".

So if you're a new artist and want to invest on art guides, go get something that starts from really really basic stuff, and don't be put off by the fact that it doesn't mention "Manga" or "Anime" or "Japan" anywhere. Hell, you can go for free books.

 

[Cwckifan]

Goodness, that cat-girl is bony! Does he draw all of his characters as looking so emaciated? Really, he's not bad, but it couldn't possibly hurt him to listen to the critiques of others...

 

[MysticMisty]

Well apparently he thinks it's sexy since according to him you do not draw women fat or even mildly toned. Probably the males look relatively normal but the females are always stick figures.