Draw different faces xDNo but seriously, DON’T BE AFRAID OF UGLINESS! You have your default face you draw all the time because you find it pretty and any deviation from the “pretty face” feels uncomfortable. But if you look at photos of different people you’ll see that beauty shows in all shapes, the trick is to make them harmonise with each other.

I drew a default guy and changed only one feature in each drawing and in most cases it might look a bit unnatural. But if you look at the last row you’ll see that all the features, more or less, harmonise with each other in each portrait. It’s because they weren’t added and modified by accident, they were chosen, one by one, to fit the character. So thinking about the character, their personality and purpose is very important.

If a client says they can’t afford to pay you but you’ll get good exposure, one of two things is happening:

1. They are lying. They can afford to pay you, but they are choosing not to. They will pay the printer to print the books, they will pay the mail service to deliver them, and you’d better believe they’re going to pay themselves for sending you an email explaining that they can’t afford to pay you. They think you are a sucker, and if you take the job you’ll be telling them they are right.

2. They are not lying. They have zero budget, no audience and no real distribution system. They’ll still be paying the printer and mail service because people who work in those professions don’t work for free just because someone promises them a recommendation. But they aren’t paying themselves, they’re running on an incredibly small margin, and there’s a good chance they won’t exist as a corporate entity in a few years. Publishing your work with them will give you less exposure than putting it on tumblr or Instagram for free would. It will never lead to a paying job. 

If a client starts ranting about the “short-sightedness” of artists, or otherwise complains about artists in general in their opening offer to you, run. Run as fast as you would run if a blind date spent the whole of dinner ranting about how horrible your entire gender is. Yes, there are doubtlessly clients who’ve been screwed over by artists in the past, but the ones who complain about artists in general will not respect you, they will not treat you well. 

Working for free does not prove that you are passionate about something. It proves that you do not need to be paid for your work. How many doctors went into medicine because they are passionate about saving lives? Do you think any of them are asked to perform heart surgery for free?

No one will ever pay $50 for something if they can get something similar for $5. When you charge next to nothing for art that you’ve worked for hours on, art that required years of training to create, you are telling your client that it is worth next to nothing. They will remember that the next time they want to hire an artist.

People who are looking to exploit artists know that artists are hard on themselves. They know that most artists don’t think their work is good enough to charge top dollar. They know that artists have been told from the first day they started taking their art seriously as a career that they’ll never make any money off it, that it’s not a real job, that it has no value to society. They know how to push artists’ insecurities about their profession in order to convince them that that demanding fair compensation is unrealistic and uncooperative.

If you’re just desperate for a job in the arts, any job in the arts, give yourself a job. Start a webcomic, or give yourself illustration assignments that you post on social media regularly, create work for a gallery show even if you don’t have one yet, or make a book. Give yourself a job. If you’re going to work for free, you may as well be working for yourself, setting your own hours and following your own interests. Having original art with original characters and ideas in your portfolio, and making sure your art is visible online will get the attention of publishers who are actually looking to hire people for good jobs. Drawing a shitty comic for a defunct publisher based on someone else’s shitty ideas will not.

Truth be told, at this point I absolutely hate Amino and no one can change my mind.

There’s so much art theft on the app, and no one is trying to do something against it. There is no “report” button, there is no “DMCA” request. You can only ask the MODs or ADMs to remove the art, but sometimes they will refuse to remove it, or even start being aggressive, throwing tons of stupid excuses for their acts. And you’re forced to download the app and make an account to request them to take down your art.

That being said - even the ADMs and MODs are supporting art theft. 

For example, my friend asked an ADM from SU BR Amino to take down a post because they CROPPED their watermark, the ADM refused to take it down and said that they would make a new post crediting the art. (And they blamed Pinterest users for cropping the watermark - which as a lie).

My friend explained that reposting art without permission is a crime (and in fact, it is) and they said that they weren’t stealing (because no one claimed the art as their own) so it wouldn’t be considered a crime.

My friend told the ADM that artists disliked Amino because art theft as something common, and then, the ADM told their friends about it - and the same people stalked my friend and started to victim-blaming and saying bad things about my friend, like “you are disgusting”. 

After joining the artists community on Tumblr, I’ve meet some artists that share similar stories, and ALL of them have the same dislike for Amino that i have.

For short, if you are a creator, and ask them to take down your art or edit, or they’ll ignore you, or being completely arrogant and disrespectful.

Now stop a minute and think about it with me - 

An Amino blog with more than 100,000 users (where most of the users are minors) learning to support art theft, while both ADMs and MODs are being immature and doing nothing about it. 

Art theft is a big issue on the internet already, and the kids are not learning to respect the artists - they are learning the opposite.

Kids are idolizing the MODs and the ADMs, and not the content creators. 

So what do you think will happen in the future?

Not to mention this damn watermark: 

Re-watermarking an artwork? This should be ilegal.

Now, seriously:

- Don’t roleplay as others characters.

- Don’t re-name, trace or steal others characters.

- Don’t repost art when the artist has clearly said they don’t want that.

Look, that thing you want to do? Stop being a weenie and just do it. 

When I originally made this dumb comic in 2013, I was a Graphic Designer for a Radio Station in Ohio. As of this writing in 2018, I am a Storyboard Artist at Warner Bros. Animation. I am now one of “””the professionals””” referenced in the third image. And let me tell you:

…I am still making things up as I go. 

…I still don’t have character turnarounds.

… I have… some worldbuilding done. Not all of it, though. That’s going to be a permanent work in progress. 

…Making the comic is the character study/studies.

…I am still convinced I’m not working hard enough.

…You will never, no matter what you do or how far you go, ever feel like you’re completely ready to do something until you actually do it. 

If you’re someone who wants to make original stuff for people to see, DO IT!!! 

Your worth as an artist is not determined by the number of Tumblr notes you get. Followers are NOT a currency. Don’t worry about instant gratification, because you’re creating something only you can own for the rest of your life! It will take you longer to build up an audience around something that doesn’t have a pre-loaded fanbase. In fact it’ll probably take longer than you think, but you’ll have a much more satisfying artistic career.

Never refill a Copic with regular isopropyl alcohol unless you have absolutely no other option.

Copic markers have their own ink refills to go with each marker,

They look like this and cost around the same price as a Copic Sketch maybe slightly more however they can be used to refill a marker several times

By using isopropyl alcohol what you’re doing, in fact, is diluting what little ink you have left in your make, therefore changing the shade of it.

Of course the one exception to this rule is the colourless blender 0 which is a marker that is full of regular isopropyl alcohol.

As a side note, DON’T throw away your marker if one/both of the is damaged

Copic also make replacement nibs for all of their markers

Found some hands tutorial by me

(look at the wolf specifically)