I repeat this all the time: but don’t ever follow the rules. Don’t let some post on the internet tell you what to do. Which .. yeah, OK, you don’t even have to listen to this, if you don’t want to. If you wanna shade in black, you do you. If you’re not concerned about shaky lineart, you do you. If you don’t want to blow your canvas up to stupid proportions so you can painstakingly fake the smoothest lines ever, don’t. Entire art movements were born out of people deciding the current arbitrary rules were too boring. Art advice that discourages experimentation and personal growth is advice that you shouldn’t take. Art advice that makes art-making unpleasant is advice you shouldn’t take.
I was very worried some time ago about balancing my other life’s interests against making art - things that are equally important to me (living my life; making my art). I asked for some advice, at the time. I’m now on the other side and I can safely say I am alarmed by the amount of advice, at the time, that told me to cut out what I feel are vitally important things to the human experience, just to make art. You can, actually, work a demanding job, take care of yourself, see your friends, go out and enjoy things life has to offer (movies! television, music, food … so many things), AND make art. Life informs art. I feel without a measure of living, you cannot make good art. It won’t resonate with other human beings if you’re not experiencing other human beings/the things other human beings are experiencing. Maybe you become technically great at whatever when you’re all cooped up drawing endlessly for hours at a time, but there is nothing that informs that. You have nothing to draw from. Seriously, go out. Do not buy into the ‘you’re a lesser artist if you’re not spending every minute of every day breaking your arm drawing & forsaking everything else’. Stop glorifying over-exertion and over-work.
Be kind to other artists. Share your resources, share your knowledge. You never know who someone will grow up to be, or to do, and you contribute to the growth and experiences of others. The way I conduct myself in relation to my peers, to other artists, is definitely built by the way artists treated me when I was young. I am often grateful that I grew up as an artist in the early 2000s as opposed to now, because the climate now is just so different.
I get worried when I see the way some artists respond to young/amateur artists seeking advice. You are literally building a generation that will gatekeep the community, that treats resources and knowledge as something that needs to be kept secret from others, because this is the way you have treated them. The pretension of some in the art community is the one thing I cannot stand, the ‘lone wolf’ mentality, the ‘I self taught this to myself all by my lonesome and you have to work for it too honnie’ is so extremely grating and shitty, frankly. Like, honestly, damn you are not the first person ever to discover a particular PS shortcut. When you say ‘I don’t share my brush settings because art is not about brush settings :)’ ironically you are portraying the exact opposite message because if brush settings don’t matter, then why are you so intent on keeping them to yourself as if they are that important you have something to hide?
TL;DR: be cool, keep it real, be kind & have fun.
dailybridgerton
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2087
romaincrisis
snowghoul
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