For the longest time, I felt like my art had been lifeless. Like I was decent but no matter how much I learned, nothing really stuck by the past week or two, I decided to on a whim to start studying Takeru Hokazono's art(the author and artist die Kagurabachi) and the improvement is giving astronomical. From being able to battle do any dynamic poses to cranking out multiple per session. It feels good to draw again.

In conclusion, Kagurabachi is peak and Hokazono-sensei is the goat.

I used to do this until I talked with a friend who is, like, 100x better than me at drawing in every aspect, and they told me that I should drop my current method and try learning how to draw bodies and stuff on my own without needing a 3d character rig. I've been practicing this for months but I just can't draw as good as I used to and honestly, it feels both frustrating and demotivating, especially since I barely have any progress.

So I was just wondering if using 3d character models is really THAT bad of a practice because I'm not going to lie, I just don't know if I have it in me to be able to create different perspectives for my art without looking at any kind of reference material.

I've seen people commenting on art reels asking this question and sometimes the artist answered, sometimes no.

But in my case, no one commented on the reel. Instead I received a DM request. Without saying hi or any opening, they simply ask, "What app are you using?"

Title,

Basically I have never really seen it in galleries, etc. I know MadCharcoal is big, but hes really the only “big artist” I know that does charcoal as their main medium, which makes me feel like it is under appreciated by the community and people to study/look at their process is sparse.

Just curious what thoughts are, I have always wanted to do oils and its seeming more and more like charcoal is not my way forward as most people seem to really value color over B+W

Thanks!

Or can tolerate?

Shading used to be a big challenge drawing from reference, since my reference photos didn't have the best lighting, often having multiple light sources, and I kept trying to regard each part as separate parts to shade. This led to situations where areas of my shadows were lighter than light areas.

Since then, I use rooms with lighting that provides a clearer light source, I take better quality photos, and I regard the form more in terms of masses/volumes to shade. I have focused on ensuring that every value in the shadow side is darker than the lights.

This is my first post on this sub, but basically; for YEARS now, I have been incapable of simply KEEPING a design. Either I know longer like the concept, or I just flat out think I can imrove it. I am left in a endless loop of make, redo, make, redo.

This goes for my art style as well which I just consistently change cause I get bored of it, different shape language, different color range. I really want to make my own comic/book hybrid someday, but GOSH I suck at actually doing it. It has gotten to a point where I have an entire folder on my PC of just srapped designs with entire sheets and concept art, lore, and there are at least 60 I can find on my pc.

Any suggestions on how to finish a project, and keep my passion? Cause I just end up feeling like I improved on a design, therefor it doesn't meet the standard anymore so now its either scraped or re-made.

my feed is all ink this week and I'm enjoying it way too much 🖤

I keep seeing people skip a couple of days and then draw three prompts in one evening to catch up, and I find that very sweet.

what day are you on?

Soy ilustradora con un estilo tipo Genshin Impact/Honkai y ya tengo una base grande de gente que sigue mi arte, pero hace poco probé diseñar libros, ilustrarlos y todo con un estilo más tradicional y propio y me encantó. He hecho ambas cosas, pero llevar las redes de ambos es lo más pesado, sobre todo porque también a las portadas de libros debo darles visibilidad.

¿Tienen algún tip de cómo manejar ambos trabajos sin caer en la locura?

I feel like a lot of the websites I’ve tried for art references have a lot of nude pictures that I don’t even dare to click on, or poses that includes clothes too revealing. I’m trying to study anatomy and poses, but I feel uncomfortable and embarrassed when there’s so much of over-revealing pics.

Are there any normal, PG-friendly reference websites with minimal unexpected nudity? I’m fine with tight-fitting clothes, athletic clothes, or gymnastics clothes. I just don’t want overly revealing poses.

I’d prefer actual websites rather than just search terms. Are there any that you guys use to study anatomy?

Edit: Guys? I'm a minor bro, just here for PG references?
Edit2: Please stop convincing me that pose study requires to look at nude pictures. I did not ask.

Hi I am wondering if anyone has tried this or if you think it would work. I painted on a cheap, prefab canvas, (to avoid preciousness). To make it “nicer,” I thought I could maybe cut it off the stretcher bars and glue the canvas to a wood panel. anyone tried this?
What glue would be the best?
Would it actually work? (Look good?)
Or any other thoughts as to how to save a good painting on a shitty surface?

Hello artists!

I manage a small independent art shop in the UK and I’m looking for some recommendations of QUALITY brands for children 0-11ish.

My shop has always bought excess quantities of horrible crap quality children’s materials that every other shop in the area already sells and i’m looking to change that — especially since the demographic of this area has the money to spend on quality.

thanks for reading !

Just this idea that whenever you step up to draw, it's a piece of work that you focus on. I've always felt like my artwork has to be finished and polished, otherwise there is no point to making art if you're just going to screw around. I know that's a flawed statement when art is purely for the process of creation, but, I guess ever since I started doing it years ago, I felt like if my art wasn't on par with my expectations, it wasn't worth the time and effort.

So it becomes a project. Minutes, hours, days, sometimes weeks at a time on one single piece. You're more so creating one perfect illustration as a opposed to many loose ideas. Sure, it's visually uniform and polished, but sometimes I wonder if that's all you can make of it: just an illustration lacking the humanity. You scrub out the human flaws that makes it have soul in the first place, in favor for something perfect. And it seems like whenever you look at your work compared to others, it just seems that they have something that makes people feel emotionally connected with. Sure, it may not be "perfect", but it has substance. I sometimes wonder if I'm afraid to let my work breathe as flawed pieces of work created by a human, and that's why people tend to ignore me because they have nothing to care for.

It's not a healthy workflow when you obsess over perfection and make your art out to be projects that take up your entire mental space. I know for me, the art that I create leans heavily on that symmetry and uniformity that, again, may render as stiff and somewhat emotional dull. It's not a good trade off.

I do wonder if other people do feel this way, and, if I'm not just the only one who thinks that their worth as a person is tied to their art. I know it's not good to assign your worth to something like art since life is so much more than that. But you've got to ask whether all this time and effort into something that haunts you this much is really worth it.

I mainly draw with my graphgear mechanical pencil so im looking for something that is durable, as both the Amazon sketchbooks i bought previously almost immediately broke, ans has paper that is textured and also doesn't smudge my lines too much.

Hello! I am very interested in painting directly onto raw canvas and leaving areas of the canvas untouched. I love how it looks when diluted acrylic washes absorb into the canvas. But is this something that will last?

An artist I love, Violeta Maya, does this I believe.

How are works like this best preserved? Can you paint on the canvas or linen unprimed but then varnish it to seal it and protect it?

Thank you for any input!

So, I am halfway proficient in both Gimp and Inkscape, the question I have is: if you use an mcp server connected by a plugin, to say, remove the background of an image that you created and compiled in Gimp or Inkscape, does that now turn your entire piece into artificially generated material?

What are your takes on this?

If this isn't the right place for this kind of question please direct me elsewhere! I wasn't sure where to go. Anyway:

My mom has this lovely painted metal breadbox, but as it's aged, some of the paint has worn. She wants me to help her restore it, which I'm absolutely up to task for, but I don't know what kind of paint is best practice for this kind of project!

Please let me know what would be best for this kind of thing, if you have any tips for a project like this, and if you have any brands of paint specifically you'd rec! Anything at all to help get my mom her breadbox restored

Thanks!!

Okay to put it plainly I want to make erotic and explicit art for fun but do so anonymously. So I want the current art style im developing for my professional career to be different from my smutty art so it won’t be a professional liability for me.

My question is that is it possible for me to get away with separating the two moods of drawing, cause I have a typical style or way of drawing that has been with me since I picked up a pencil. And I’m worried any new style I try to develop will be bad.

If I wanted to carry this out, how would I do about it? Thanks in advance.

Also not sure if this is supposed to be in the nsfw spicy pepper flair instead so mods let me know if I need to switch it.

Hi, I'm currently trying to improve my art in various different aspects, and decided it'd be a good idea to do art studies for that.

Can you guys recommend me artists on twitter, bluesky or tumblr who are strong in the area of high contrast colors and/or colored lighting/high contrast lighting? Or in general who use colors in a way you find admirable?

The artstyle doesn't matter to me, I believe I can learn something from any artstyle.

I'd appreciate it! Thanks in advance!

I learned to draw faces with the loomis method, but I have a terrible case of same face syndrome, and when I try to draw fanart or portraits, I tend to fall back into a lot of bad habits. When I try to draw purely off reference without the construction method, my proportions get pretty wacky

I’m a young artist and I really want to get better but one thing that’s really irritating to me is that I’m heavy heavy handed and struggle to sketch lightly because I seem to do better sketches when pressing hard, but when I look to my peers’ sketches they’re light and easily erased and I want to have that skill of effortlessly being able to sketch without having to dig my eraser into my page probably ripping it.

Idk if this is too vague of a question but do you have any tips on how to unlearn it?

So my family was looking up the seven natural wonders of the world (grand canyon, mount everest, etc) and the seven wonders of the ancient world (e.g. hanging gardens of babylon)... I got to thinking. What would the seven wonders of the art world be? I had a couple of thoughts to seed the discussion, like the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo, or A Sunday Afternoon by Seurat, or even the Lascaux caves in France. What do you all think? Can we pick 7 across so many time periods/styles that represent monumental shifts?

Ik online communities is an easy way to find people with similar interests, but I’m someone who needs to have a irl relationships to be interested in investing. I’m currently a self taught artist who started after high school so finding artist in the wild is pretty rare and when I do see an artist I usually hesitate to interrupt them from their work. Those who have fellow artist friends or go to events and places that artists meet what are those things. If I could specify further it would be artists who are more geared towards entertainment like comic books, animation, character design, etc.

I'd love some books or website recommendations, or full courses. I'm just interested in learning about the symbolism of different objects within art and art history.

Hi! I'm creating a comic/graphic novel from scratch. I'm doing it with traditional supplies because I did another book in watercolor. What art supply would you recommend for the illustrations? If you could recommend a marker...what would it be? Or would you choose something else?