Aunum's Art

It’s not a contest to see who can get by without them. It’s not cheating to look at a thing in order to know what the thing looks like.

USING REFERENCES FOR ART IS NOT ‘CHEATING’!!!

If you can draw/paint without references, great!  But if you need to use them, and feel that your art can be bettered by using references, please, use them!  This is one of the biggest tips I can give to artists, is USE REFERENCES! 

Anyone who would dare to attack someone for using references after ‘recognizing a pose’ is a dipshit, who doesn’t know a thing about art.

Do you know who else used references for their art?

Norman Rockwell

Alphonse Mucha

Gustav Klimt

Toulouse Lautrec

Vincent Van Gogh

Paul Gauguin

Edgar Degas

Gil Elvgren

Frida Kahlo

Pablo Picasso

Disney Studios

Soooo. I made this post originally on my personal blog (I’m eliciaforever), and it was nothing more than a little rant about a specific incident that I deleted after five minutes. But before I could delete it, it took the hell off on me, and now it has all these notes. And LOTS OF AMAZING INPUT.

And I just wanted to add in response to the above tags in particular, that shaming people for using references is something that happens to so many of us SO OFTEN. It doesn’t matter how skilled you are. People think art is supposed to be magical or whatever, and anything else is a crime. The reality of course is that art is a thousand times more deliberate than a lot of people think it is.

On a side-note but still related: I occasionally get messages from people trying to shame other people for “copying” a pose or expression from one of my own pictures. Newsflash: if you’re trying to grovel for brownie points by putting down another human being for pursuing their talents, it won’t work. I don’t give a shit if they use my poses or expressions as reference.

If they copied the entire character and design then that’s another story entirely, but how do you think I got to where I am today? It wasn’t by pulling everything out my ass without references, that’s for sure, and I wish I used them more often. I feel like then my colour theory (or blatant lack thereof) wouldn’t look like eyebleeding oversaturated rainbows every single time and I might actually understand perspective.

Finally got around to coloring this little cutie! :D

You can find “rawr?” For sale on redbubble By searching for #redbubbleartist aunumwolf42

Or follow this link:

A http://www.redbubble.com/people/aunumwolf42/works/22282859-rawr

Alrighty everyone! I tallied up all the votes from the “What should I draw” poll from both instagram and twitter and the result was Sci-fi Tiger for the win! So here you are! Thank you everyone so much for participating, I really had fun working on this, I hope you enjoy what I’ve made for you as well! Will definitely make more polls in the future! :D

Destroy the idea that digital art isn’t art, or is somehow lesser than traditional mediums. 

You are a painter of light.

You delicately move data and photons into images of hope, horror, love, pain. 

Your hard earned skills are not lesser because your work cannot be touched by physical hands. 

Your ideas, which you painstakingly execute with those skills and all that experience, touch the minds and hearts of the thousands who may come across it. 

Their impact is not lesser for having been absent a physical body during their creation.

-You don’t get better at drawing by avoiding drawing until you are better at drawing.

- You don’t have to make a new masterpiece every day it’s okay if all you drew is a doodle of a bug. You are now +1 bug doodle better at doodling bugs. 

- Also it’s okay if the thing you drew didn’t turn out very good. Everything you draw makes you one step closer to being able to draw good. You are still +1 step better at drawing whatever you drew no take backsies.

- You are the only person who knows if your art didn’t turn out as good as you wanted it to. You are the only person who can see the things in your art that weren’t what you imagined in your head. No one else will know unless you tell them.

- Comparing yourself to other artists just isn’t fair. You get to see all of your art, the best stuff and the worst stuff. You usually only get to see the best stuff other artists make. You don’t get to see that half drawn badly propotioned face they drew at 2 am and immediately scrapped. So don’t compare your badly drawn 2 am face to their best work.

A bust of my character Aron in a type of Steampunk Art Nouveau style border.

Just having fun when I can x3

Another commission done! I adore loltia fashion so I had alot of fun working on this sassy bunlita, and all the dresses I had to research while working on it xD