Help me learn to be an awesome artist

[James]

I felt the desire to draw last night. Every couple of months, it happens. But I know the drill:

-Get inspired to draw.
-Have no fucking clue what to draw.
-Start to draw something.
-Get frustrated and upset that it's not good enough.
-Throw out drawing, break pencil.
-Go online and look at awesome drawings that other people do.
-Cry myself to sleep over how much of a failure I am.

So I DIDN'T draw last night. I just went straight to those last two steps.

I can't get what I see in my head out onto paper. I just can't. I need help.

[executioneer]

try doing art that is not drawn, like sculpture or something

[Dole]

or potato prints.

[MetalMilitia]

finger painting

[Helm]

It's hopeless, there's nothing you can do.

[Ninjavenom]

My friend, modern art is for you. Try getting some sort of crayon, and drawing on potato chips. People will go so wild that you broke the rules of art and drew on potato chips that they will ignore the fact that you just drew a yellow and green robot molesting a small child.

[ScruU2wice]

If by modern art you mean conceptual art. not all modern art is doing retarded things differently. regardless of that you still need a statement of intent.

[glowbelly]

you should be punched in the mouth every time you take art too seriously.

it could be a performance piece.

it's intent would be to shut you the hell up.

[Rez]

i dont have anything in mind, just draw lines. then start positioning them according to how i feel they should be arranged.. always working micro, and then branching out when i'm still satisfied with what i got (or maybe just to salvage it).

lines mean that it can be any sort. curved, blocks, varying thickness, etc etc...

just dont have anything in mind until you think you're about 3/4 done, then you can refine it and make it into something kickass.

maybe. it works for me, anyway, so you could try it to see if it does for you.

[Rez]

Originally Posted by glowbelly

you should be punched in the mouth every time you take art too seriously.

it could be a performance piece.

it's intent would be to shut you the hell up.

i hope your baby doesnt hear you type like that

[ScruU2wice]

Originally Posted by glowbelly

you should be punched in the mouth every time you take art too seriously.

it could be a performance piece.

it's intent would be to shut you the hell up.

I have a friend in my AP studio class who does nothing but splash paint on wood. He basically makes fun of me for actually trying in my art when all his peices take roughly 3 seconds and he's going to get a 5 on his AP portfolio. I really hope he gets nothing for blowing off 2 semesters of time that everyone in my class is frantically working to pull together 30 pieces. Basically he works 5 minutes a week and stands there mocking everyone for actually trying when they don't have to.

My beef is with everyone who jokes about flicking paint on a canvas and say they could sell it for million because they saw the price tage on one of Jasper John's peices.

Call me jaded. Tell me that it's only a few people who do that. Call me a shit head for not thinking it's awesome when someone puts a video on loop in a gallery. I don't care. I know way too many people who think that modern art is something made up, and are all to ready to vote to cut funding for it in schools so they can save $1.24 on there tax return.

[James]

Originally Posted by glowbelly

you should be punched in the mouth every time you take art too seriously.

it could be a performance piece.

it's intent would be to shut you the hell up.

I'm going to blame your incoherence on the fact that you're pregnant, and your hormones are all out of whack. You usually make sense. :/

As for making sense, nobody in this thread is, aside from Rez.

"You want to draw? You can't draw? Try doing something you don't want to do! It's still art, and you want to be an ARTist, right? LOL I'm so clever."

That'd be like, if you wanted to be a surgeon, but you had no hands, so I suggested you become a secretary at a pediatric office, since that's still related to the medical field.

I don't want to be a secretary. I want hands.

[Helm]

when you look at art you think is awesome, could you, if asked, explain why it is awesome? Can you explain what you don't like in other art pieces? If you at least have a good 'artists' eye' you might at some point become a halfway decent artist if you really try, regardless of the fact that you started when you were 20.

[James]

Originally Posted by Helm

when you look at art you think is awesome, could you, if asked, explain why it is awesome? Can you explain what you don't like in other art pieces? If you at least have a good 'artists' eye' you might at some point become a halfway decent artist if you really try, regardless of the fact that you started when you were 20.

I started when I was 5. I had a painting in a children's museum of art. It was a shitty watercolor picture of dinosaurs, but for some reason my art teacher thought it was great, submitted it, and it was hung up on he wall. I hardly remember the event, and I don't think I ever got the picture back. :/

I look at a lot of fantasy art. What I think is awesome is how people can conjur up these images in their heads, and then put those images onto paper (or onto a computer screen). There's no reference for things like this, and yet people can create such intricate and detailed pieces, that it just blows me away.

Also, I also find it awesome when a person can capture a sense of photorealism in their images. That's something I wish I could do, but I cannot.

And finally, the sense of style that can be presented, be it realistic or fantasy or whatever. To be able to find one's own personal style and presentation. To have an entire piece be a signature.

For an example of the first and third points, I'll direct you to Stephanie Pui-Mun Law: http://www.shadowscapes.com/

[Helm]

I wasn't talking about your artistic preferences. Wow this artist is awesome. I was more talking about WHAT makes something awesome or makes it sucky. Understanding structure, positioning, key elements, colour theory. If you slowly begin to understand that, and decode art in a such way, you will find your skills getting better also, because you'll be able to intergrate some of those tricks, to various degrees of sucess. Same for knowing how to pick errors out of a picture. Chojin doesn't draw photorealistically, for example, but what I used to do a lot, was show him my drawings, and he'd point out errors that I had completely overlooked. That's what I mean by good artist's eye. If you have that, you stand a chance to be good. if you do not, you'll never learn to represent reality in drawing.

As to things to draw. Start out with simple geometric objects, then people in simple scenes. Cars, buildings, telephones, animals. That's where you start, not with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

[glowbelly]

my post wasn't directed at you, james. for fucks sake. PAY ATTENTION PEOPLE.

[James]

Eh, Helm, in that aspect, it's nearly impossible to try and explain it, in my opinion. It ends up boiling down to what I like, and what I want to be able to do. There's art, and there's really bad art. I don't think there's any unyielding concepts or rules to creating AWESOME art, so it doesn't even make sense to disect one's works to the core basics and determine what logically makes the piece appeal to me on a structural level.

Maybe I'm really just unable to understand what you're trying to say. Yes, once I understand the key elements of art, my work will get better. Except it doesn't. Yes, I should draw using real-life objects to help me understand how to use those elements. Except I have.

I may sound like a spoiled brat here, but I don't really want to spend another 10 years drawing hands and tissue boxes as I try to understand how to draw dynamic action images entirely from my imagination. IF that ever even happens.

My problem is I feel like my own skills will never match my understanding of the work, or what I want to do with that understanding.

[Shyandquietguy]

Have you tried using painting techniques?

[Dole]

If you want to do something you are currently unable to do, how about lessons and practice? I know its a radical idea, but that is GENERALLY HOW PEOPLE LEARN THINGS

You dont get to be good at something without hard fucking work.

[James]

Hard fucking work? Lessons? Shit. Had I known that's what would be involved in developing art skills, I would never have bothered. Someone lock this thread. I don't want to be an artist anymore, now that this entirely new information has been brought to light.

[Helm]

There's art, and there's really bad art. I don't think there's any unyielding concepts or rules to creating AWESOME art, so it doesn't even make sense to disect one's works to the core basics and determine what logically makes the piece appeal to me on a structural level.

No. There's actual concepts and rules as to what makes stuff awesome, really. Not saying there's no accounting for taste, but lots of artists use a lot of common techniques to get stuff to look dynamic and interesting. And you can learn that stuff, by really paying close attention to art you like, and dissasembling the pieces until you understand each one of them.

And I'm sorry to break it to you, but your 'awareness' of art will always be more advanced than your technical skill, and you'll never be completely happy with how you draw, and frustration will never go away. So deal with it.

You just might have to draw hands and tissue boxes for the next 10 years until you're good enough to do other stuff. I know I did.

[Ninjavenom]

There are certain elements to art, Jimmy-boy. Light and Shade, Texture, Value, Line, Form, Shappe, Color, and Space. Helm's asking you what youur favorites pieces all use out of these and how they are used in common that makes you like them.

If you don't wanna sit and draw tissue boxes and hands, just draw the standard stick-men. Start with those until they're postured as realistically as you can get 'em, and then start to flesh 'em out. There's tons of sites on the web that tell you how to do that, and all figure drawings regardless of genre or style use this technique. Even if figure drawing isn't your main interest, this will still be useful for other applications. It's just about learning to start from the bones and work your way out.

[Marine]

Originally Posted by James

I felt the desire to draw last night. Every couple of months, it happens. But I know the drill:

-Get inspired to draw.
-Have no fucking clue what to draw.
-Start to draw something.
-Get frustrated and upset that it's not good enough.
-Throw out drawing, break pencil.
-Go online and look at awesome drawings that other people do.
-Cry myself to sleep over how much of a failure I am.

So I DIDN'T draw last night. I just went straight to those last two steps.

I can't get what I see in my head out onto paper. I just can't. I need help.

simply use the bucket

[executioneer]

> You don't see the bucket!

[Marine]

Originally Posted by executioneer

> You don't see the bucket!

HERE IS THE BUCKET! (_)