I love your God Damn Artwork and I was wondering: any advice for someone who’s feeling discouraged about her slow improvement? Thanks!!!
buddy i was def-o in the same boat -- i had a five-year slump during my first go at university when i wasn’t actively studying art, and was super unhappy with my progress and portfolio.
first advice: really devote time to hitting the fundamentals -- still-life studies, figure drawing. buckle down on re-learning how to work with values, or how to capture a form in thirty seconds or less, or thumbnailing strong compositions. fundamentals are just one of those things that every artist really benefits from going back over once in a while, no matter what level of skill they’re at -- you’re going to pick up some new understanding each and every time, and it’s going to change how you approach and develop new projects.
second advice: experiment with different ways of rendering. if you’re a traditional artist, change up your media -- use charcoal, use ink, use both, add acrylic, suffer the pastels. if you’re a digital artist -- block out shapes rather than use lines to sketch, work off a colored background, render like you’re painting, render like you’re creating a graphic design rather than an illustration. go crazy with layering textures, gradients, playing with layer styles. copy-paste-mask-edit the hell out of everything just to see if it works.
third advice: if you see an artwork that has a really cool technique or composition or whatever? duplicate it. challenge yourself to look at their piece, identify how they put it together, and then try it yourself. this is one of the best ways to learn advanced skills that are especially geared towards a polished end-product.
lastly, understand that when you’re feeling frustrated with yourself is when you’re closest to a break-through and to leveling up as an artist. that slump is the disconnect between mentally recognizing where you need improvement and physically picking up the skill to do it, and the magic moment will follow as long as you keep creating, learning, and observing.
