Hey! Mind if I vent to you? So, I'm feeling really discouraged about my art again. I feel like a good chunk of the time, my art goes unnoticed when I post. So I tried DA to see if I'd get more of a response there, I signed up only recently and I guess compared to the great art I found there, I feel kind of embarrassed posting anything of mine now
ALRIGHT sorry this took 45734986 years to reply to and itās rambly as heck but here we go.
First of all, never feel embarrassed about posting your art. If you believe youāve done the best you can and itās good enough to post, you have nothing to be ashamed of. Thereās plenty of time to be embarrassed later when youāre a better artist and you can go back and say āno wonder no one noticed, I canāt believe I made those mistakes, once I learned the proper way it became so simple!ā I do it all the time Lei!
Iām gonna say right now, in my experience, deviantArt isnāt gonna get you very far. I recently quit the site when I got a commentā¦ here just look at this. This person literally thought my drawing was bad because I tried to make it anatomically correct. More accurately, they thought the drawing would be somehow ābetterā if I had stuck to the source materialās art style.
In terms of getting your art out there to a bigger audience, itās true, the more sites the better. But at what cost? The community there, from my impressions, is made up of so many young artists and fragile feelings that youāre hardly ever going to get a word of critique on your art. In my time on the site, about five years and around 300 posts in my gallery, I can count on one hand how many times I got a āthis bit looks off and hereās whyā comment. Because Iām pretty sure I only ever got one of those, now that I think about it. Iād gotten āthis looks badā with no explanation. Iāve gotten, as you can see in the link I posted, āhereās what you should changeā with no real justification as to why I should change it.
And itās not necessarily a bad thing that there are young artists posting and people trying to be kind to one another about their art. But it just feels like thereās no incentive to grow, know what I mean?Ā
But thatās just my take on the site. If you wanna stay there, know that youāre gonna have to make a real effort to promote yourself. You need to submit often, you need to submit to Groups, and you might even wanna straight-up go to peopleās pages and say āhey look at my artā just to get some eyes on you.Ā
And thereās where Tumblr has the advantage: reblogs mean your followers are doing your promoting FOR you. But that doesnāt always mean youāre gonna get notes on a post. Some drawings Iām still super proud of and spent hours, even days on, never broke even ten notes. And, well, what can ya do? Some I reposted multiple times, some I reblogged once or twice, but eventually you just gotta let it go and move on. So those drawings didnāt get notes, it doesnāt mean they werenāt good. They just didnāt reach the right people. Itās discouraging but you canāt dwell on it. Promoting yourself can be hard! Next time you just have to make a better drawing and hope that one person notices, because sometimes it only takes one or two people and suddenly youāre creeping up on 4000 notes.
Now I can only speak for myself here, but as someone who always scrolls through her entire dashboard to wherever she left off last, I can say I always do notice your art. And as someone who sees every drawing you post, I will say that I think youāve hit a wall and just kinda settled.
What I mean is, thereās not a lot of difference between the drawings you post now and the drawings you posted a year ago. I feel like you found a style you were comfortable with and said to yourself, maybe subconsciously, āyes this suits me, this is all I needā. And I think thatās one of the worst things you can possibly do as a growing artist. ESPECIALLY where YOUR main style influence is MOSTLY from one source.
You seem to have let yourself become comfortable with an adaptation of sorts of the āGravity Fallsā style. Which is fine as a starting point. Remember how I encouraged the hell out of you when you played with old-timey cartoon styles? There were two reasons for that: first, you canāt have only one major source of influence. Second, I hoped it would loosen up your style, but Iāll get to that in a second. You should have multiple sources you draw inspiration from because itāll not only make your style unique and personal, but itāll help you find the methods that best work for you.
For example, I always take SO LONG doing lineart on my drawings. Straight-up black outlines just doesnāt work for me anymore, if it ever did. And once something stops working for you, you gotta change it. Iāve been trying to play with purplekecleonās method of lining, because itās fast, efficient, and the results are gorgeous, something I want to try and make work in my own art. Thatās not to say I wanna copy their art and every way that they do things with their art, itās just that one aspect. I wanna figure out how they do it, then make it work for me.
For another example, I find my drawings are all so stiff and static. Gosh I wish I had the sense of form and weight and motion that modmad has. Thank goodness she posts so many sketchy sketches because I can really take a look into the thought process behind the art! Maybe if I can understand how she makes her drawings flow, itāll click one day and mine will flow too!
For a much simpler example, eyes are tough. And sharkie-19 draws the cutest eyes! I should try to draw eyes like she does, and even if I straight-up copy at first, hopefully as I draw them more my hands will settle into motions that are quick and natural for me, and itāll become my own style for eyes.
And donāt even get me started on tanglefootcomic like thatās my long-term art style dream MAYBE SOMEDAYā¦.
So, if I may critique your art, I think thereās a few very simple things I think you need to do:
1 - You need to break out of your current style. What youāre working with right now is cute but limiting. Find MANY artists you love, find at least one thing those artists do that you think can make your art better, and try it yourself! It might just fit you like a glove.
2 - You need to loosen up. A majority of your drawings consist of characters standing there, looking straight at the ācameraā, maybe gesturing, but thatās about it. Actually Iāve noticed you never even do Ā¾ views, which is kinda funny because thatās what a lot of people fall into while never going near face-on views. Youāre doing the opposite! Thatās a bit unusual. But yeah, more poses, more sitting, more walking, more holding things, more eating stuff, whatever gets your character moving. And EXAGGERATE that movement if itāll help you learn!
3 - You need to start practising anatomy. Iām sorry if this sounds harsh, but thereās just little to no proper anatomy in any of your drawings. Youāve got arms attached to ribcages, legs at different lengths, and you basically assign only one simple shape to each body part where there should be more shapes at work. For example, your cervitaurās deer bodies are basically just one oval. They should probably be more like two circles hanging off a curved line with a soft triangle or three for the musculature. Even the most cartoony styles start with basic knowledge of anatomy. They say you canāt break the rules until you know the rules. Once you understand how bodies are made up, then you can simplify it. You canāt simplify something if you donāt even know the complexities of its full form, right?
4 - DRAW. EVERY. DAY. Anyone who has any interest in improving artistically should do this, plain and simple. I personally do this through the ādonāt break the chainā challenge, a thing I was introduced to through this video. Watch it to the end. As of this post Iāve drawn at least one thing literally every single day for 103 days in a row. And guess what? I got better. A lot better. And like they say in the video, it doesnāt mean making a masterpiece every day. Itās about making it a habit. Itās about having the opportunity to try something new every day. Iām also doing an āevery single PokĆ©monā challenge which is more of a long term thing, but itās still an incentive to draw. Along with a lot of other series type projects I want to do, Iām just bad with time management lol.
If youāre feeling discouraged about your art, that probably means itās time to take these steps and really start to try and improve. Every bit of advice I just gave you, I need to take myself, you bet I do. So what I think you should do, get a sketchbook, start doing a ādonāt break the chainā challenge, and at least every five days try to break out of your comfort zone and draw something new. If you can do that, I think youāll soon enough start to get noticed and feel better about your art.
Itās worth a shot anyway!
