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Overthinking and Art
5 years ago
Hey everyone. Hope you're doing OK. This current situation is, pretty rough, to put it mildly, but I don't wanna talk about it too much. We're doing alright over here. I might talk about it a bit more later on, among other things, but for now, stay safe everyone.
If you've known me for a while and even chatted with me, you know I tend to overthink things. It's a pretty bad habit of mine that I've been trying to break, but it's proven to be very difficult. Unfortunately, said overthinking is probably a major reason in why I haven't been all that productive when it comes to drawing. Y'know, 'sides distractions and being lazy.
I found myself getting too critical of my artwork, to where I would start over and/or give up. I know that I should accept whatever mistakes I end up making and try to improve on them in the next drawing. I do think this might be why I find myself defaulting to doing a lot of figure drawing lately. Kind of a "safe zone."
How much practice should I do? I want to improve and expand, but I'm not sure how much should I practice in comparison to drawing my ideas. Of course some say you should practice everyday, but how effective that is does vary from person to person. I think looking at the sketchbooks on art forums like (now defunct) ConceptArt.org and Crimson Daggers might've had a bit of an influence, since one of my goals is to keep a (digital) sketchbook. While they do improve a lot, some of the threads are almost nothing but studies. I've been thinking maybe I should limit practice to things if it's something I'm struggling with or it's something that's new to me. What do you guys think?
Ever since I took an interest in character designing, reading up about it, looking at videos, I found myself worrying about Jay's design. I kept wondering should something be changed to make it look better. I've made attempts, but nothing major has stuck. I definitely would like to create some characters though, even if they end up being just one-offs.
I started to grow skeptical about drawing or at least posting fetish related art. Mainly huge muscles. I got worried that people would only care about that kind of artwork and nothing else I produce and people would see me as some fetish artist. I got worried that if I draw a ton of it, and not much else, my art would begin to stagnate. I even thought of the possibility of me doing things outside of the fandom. Would doing that kind of art hurt me in the future? Most likely not, maybe? I mean, there are a few artists that I know that has drawn porn of various kinds and yet work for video game companies. Of course, they keep their kinky stuff separate from everything else.
I've thought about making a secondary account for fetish (or at least the more NSFW) stuff, but a friend convinced me that's not a good idea. I think what I might end up doing is just keep it all on FA. If I make any future art accounts outside of FA (which I'm considering), I won't post any questionable content on those galleries.
The internet has also felt a bit more intimidating too. Feels like people are a lot more aggressive about things, big and small. Especially with social media being such a huge thing. Guess I worried about getting on people's bad side (especially friends), be it because of me or my artwork. Of course, I know what I shouldn't talk about, and it's not like I'm drawing anything controversial. I'm just worrying too much.
Guess it boils down to that I'm just taking art (and other things) way too seriously, when I should be trying to have fun with it. Practicing is fine and all, but too much of it can burn you out. Art became stressful, and it really shouldn't. Or at least, shouldn't be as much. Even the majority of professionals making a living off doing art for games, shows, and so-on are having fun with their work. Probably been unintentionally wanting to impress people, but I should be drawing for myself for the most part. Not like I'm doing commissions anyway. Not yet at least. It is something I wanna do when I get to where I'm comfortable with the idea.
I've had friends tell me to just draw. Heck, it's even said by a great artist in the series Bakuman, that I should just draw, and I haven't listened. I feel kind of bad. As mentioned, I should accept any mistakes and keep moving forward, draw whatever I want (of course, long as it's legal and not against the AUP), and just, well, have fun. I'll get better over time, but I have to keep drawing and even try new things every once in a while. If you guys have any advice for me about any of this, I'm all ears.
Of course, action speak louder than words. I say all of this, but I have to show it by drawing. Hoping for the best, but I'm sure I can do it.
Take care everyone, and stay safe.
~JT
If you've known me for a while and even chatted with me, you know I tend to overthink things. It's a pretty bad habit of mine that I've been trying to break, but it's proven to be very difficult. Unfortunately, said overthinking is probably a major reason in why I haven't been all that productive when it comes to drawing. Y'know, 'sides distractions and being lazy.
I found myself getting too critical of my artwork, to where I would start over and/or give up. I know that I should accept whatever mistakes I end up making and try to improve on them in the next drawing. I do think this might be why I find myself defaulting to doing a lot of figure drawing lately. Kind of a "safe zone."
How much practice should I do? I want to improve and expand, but I'm not sure how much should I practice in comparison to drawing my ideas. Of course some say you should practice everyday, but how effective that is does vary from person to person. I think looking at the sketchbooks on art forums like (now defunct) ConceptArt.org and Crimson Daggers might've had a bit of an influence, since one of my goals is to keep a (digital) sketchbook. While they do improve a lot, some of the threads are almost nothing but studies. I've been thinking maybe I should limit practice to things if it's something I'm struggling with or it's something that's new to me. What do you guys think?
Ever since I took an interest in character designing, reading up about it, looking at videos, I found myself worrying about Jay's design. I kept wondering should something be changed to make it look better. I've made attempts, but nothing major has stuck. I definitely would like to create some characters though, even if they end up being just one-offs.
I started to grow skeptical about drawing or at least posting fetish related art. Mainly huge muscles. I got worried that people would only care about that kind of artwork and nothing else I produce and people would see me as some fetish artist. I got worried that if I draw a ton of it, and not much else, my art would begin to stagnate. I even thought of the possibility of me doing things outside of the fandom. Would doing that kind of art hurt me in the future? Most likely not, maybe? I mean, there are a few artists that I know that has drawn porn of various kinds and yet work for video game companies. Of course, they keep their kinky stuff separate from everything else.
I've thought about making a secondary account for fetish (or at least the more NSFW) stuff, but a friend convinced me that's not a good idea. I think what I might end up doing is just keep it all on FA. If I make any future art accounts outside of FA (which I'm considering), I won't post any questionable content on those galleries.
The internet has also felt a bit more intimidating too. Feels like people are a lot more aggressive about things, big and small. Especially with social media being such a huge thing. Guess I worried about getting on people's bad side (especially friends), be it because of me or my artwork. Of course, I know what I shouldn't talk about, and it's not like I'm drawing anything controversial. I'm just worrying too much.
Guess it boils down to that I'm just taking art (and other things) way too seriously, when I should be trying to have fun with it. Practicing is fine and all, but too much of it can burn you out. Art became stressful, and it really shouldn't. Or at least, shouldn't be as much. Even the majority of professionals making a living off doing art for games, shows, and so-on are having fun with their work. Probably been unintentionally wanting to impress people, but I should be drawing for myself for the most part. Not like I'm doing commissions anyway. Not yet at least. It is something I wanna do when I get to where I'm comfortable with the idea.
I've had friends tell me to just draw. Heck, it's even said by a great artist in the series Bakuman, that I should just draw, and I haven't listened. I feel kind of bad. As mentioned, I should accept any mistakes and keep moving forward, draw whatever I want (of course, long as it's legal and not against the AUP), and just, well, have fun. I'll get better over time, but I have to keep drawing and even try new things every once in a while. If you guys have any advice for me about any of this, I'm all ears.
Of course, action speak louder than words. I say all of this, but I have to show it by drawing. Hoping for the best, but I'm sure I can do it.
Take care everyone, and stay safe.
~JT
Take care as well during these chaotic times.
When practicing, prioritize experimentation over repetition! Improvement comes form understanding, not muscle memory!(for me anyway)
Set reasonable time frames to work in, a couple times a week, but never leave home without a sketchpad(even if it only fits in a magazine pouch!)
Finding Critique can be like pulling teeth. You may need to prod a dozen people before one actually tells you something useful! So don't be afraid to ask(because people certainly don't volunteer it often these days).
Paralysis of choice can hinder personal character design. Those one-offs might be useful to experiment with, harvest elements you like that worked for yourself!
In terms of gallery content, I know the feeling of not wanting to be seen as a particular 'type' of artist. Segregating your 'professional' work from your personal interests is usually wise, but I've found trying to maintain seperate galleries for different interests has proven to be counterproductive.
'Just drawing' is easier said than done, it helps to pick a broader category, or specific subject ahead of time or assemble a list of starting points to work from(I do this for a drawing challenge every november with my Daily Dinos series)
Specific advice aside, I've found motivation is considerably helped when you set aside 2 or 3 days a week and gather reference materials and resources ahead of time to sit down and work on a particular subject or improve a particular method(I'm playing with Transperency Masks this week, for instance), set a broad weekly goal, rather than a daily one(that is REALLY easy to be derailed), but try to stick to it!
I try to dedicate my Saturday and Sunday mornings to drawing. The night before I often setup reference sheets or pose models so when I get out of bed I dive straight into drawing before I can be interrupted by other people, maximizing the time I have free to do so, and minimizing distractions.
Anyway, hopefully that's all vaguely coherent, it's kind of midnight right now, so I'd best be off to sleep before I ramble too much further *slumps over and passes out*
Unfortunately where I live is pretty lackluster, so there's not many places to stay and just draw. There was a cafe I frequented when I was in community college, but sadly that place closed down. Plus there is the whole pandemic and all. I don't really mind my work being critiqued as long as it's done in a respectable manner. As you said though, getting feedback is pretty difficult. Seems like the only places you have the best chances is either an art forum like CA and CD, or even a -chan board, and no way in hell I'm doing that. If I do make any other galleries, the only major difference will most likely be that any "questionable" content will stay on FA.
I think when I was told to "just draw," my friends knew I had ideas, but I just never did them. For the most part, I want to do some character designs and fan art. I did see a couple of artists on Twitter do a month of dragons and they drew them in a Spyro Reignited Style, which was pretty neat. I know there is something similar called Smaugust later on. Maybe something like those. I'll make a list and look around for ideas.
I'm pretty loaded when it comes to references. I visit sites like Pinterest and Artstation often and usually save whatever I find interesting. I also have a ton of photos of people to use for anatomy/pose reference. There are some areas I need to gather more reference, but shouldn't be too hard to do. Folder's a mess, but there is some organization. I do use PureRef to save certain references for later too. I guess in terms of a goal, I just wanna draw as much as possible, to fill up a digital sketchbook folder. Maybe I should set a number of pages as a weekly goal or something. Nothing huge, but something doable. I have seen some artists do small weekly sketchbooks.
I have tons of references stored up too, but I assemble them into XnView Windows before starting on drawing so I can bring up pre-selected references on demand, and try to keep them broken up by categories and subfolders so they're easier to fish them all out to set up new reference groups.
A number of pages a week can certainly be more managable, if you keep up on it anyway. Burdening yourself with a strict daily quota is more painful in the event of an artblock, whereas filling out your quota when you have an idea is more productive.
You do have a point about the quota. I don't want to force myself to reach a certain number. Figured I should have some kind of goal at least when it comes to the whole sketchbook thing. Maybe I should just focus on drawing whatever ideas I come up with, but try to do it often.
I am just a hobby artist, but drawing outside my comfort zone really helped me improve. Regarding improving your art. I did not draw a lot, but I see in myself an improvement in last 2 years. I would credit that to just doing something I have not done before (e.g. angle of view or a pose) and in my experience that helps the most, not the quantity. For example. 1) Drawing a hand 100 times in one pose and angle will teach you how to draw a hand in that exact pose and angle really good. Or 2) you could try drawing 30 hands in different poses and angles which will allow you to think more how the hand actually works.
Although it is kinda stupid, you could take one of the many monthly art challenges such as Inktober. You will get prompts and a day to make it which is nice to limit how much you fiddle on your work. Sometime the daily piece will look like a mess, but sometimes it will look really good. You could also add your own personal challenge to these. For example, for first inktober I did I decided to have a focus on one character. For second inktober I did I focused on 2 characters. For this year's inktober i would like to focus on character interaction (e.g. one character is pulling the wounded character to safety, or one character is giving second character a boost to climb over the wall).
I recently found a way to nicely entertain myself while drawing. I take 200x200 size canvas, i turn of anti-aliasing and just draw something that comes to my mind. For example: a sad old lady, scared young man, wasp nest, wasp swarm, torch, carrot etc. To make things faster for myself, I use just black and white colours. As the result of that, I can make something quick (usually 30 minutes or less), have fun with it and quickly move on to the next idea.
Hope some of this helps.
I've seen some artists mention doing things like drawing 100 different hands. There is a artist on YouTube who set up a Pinterest board with 100 various heads, making a challenge to draw them within a week. Maybe when I start doing studies like these again, I should number them and keep track of them. There's nothing wrong with doing monthly art challenges. I've seen some artists do them and improve quite a lot. Inktober is one I've been meaning to get involved with, so I'll try to do it this year. On Twitter I did see a couple of artists draw dragons based on a list (like Smaugust), but they drew them in the Spyro Reignited Trilogy style. Another artist I saw used Inktober to design a world with various creatures. Both ideas were pretty neat. I'll look around for some possible challenges I can do. The 200x200 canvas idea does sound useful.
Thanks. ^^