Better late than never! I want to wish Angelique Vizer aka @amvproductions a happy birthday 🎂👏🥳🎉 and she’s one of my favorite cartoonists on social media!
I hope she had a great birthday on Friday. I know she did. 😊 Her artwork always brightens my feed — from her adorable original characters to your fan art of pop culture favorites. Angelique’s talent, creativity, and vibrant style make her such a joy to follow on her platforms. ✨🎨
Even though I retired from Twitter/X in May, I’m so grateful to met her there as she’s an amazing supporter and conversationalist.
If you’re a fan of animation, please go follow her on her platforms — e.g. Tumblr, Cara, BlueSky, and Artfol, etc. Angelique is a colorful digital artist. 🩵💙💜🩷 Go uplift her work! Artists support artists, especially the small ones! 🙌✍️
By the way, I drew her in the style of Don Bluth (one of my favorite animators) because she fits in his work perfectly! 🤭
Hey there! I've come across your art ever since I got into Risk of Rain 2 (better late than never, I've been sleeping on this game for years, jesus), and I'm enamoured with it, to say the least. Is there any advice you could perhaps give for an aspiring artist?
you're getting an essay whether you like it or not.
tl;dr of it if you dont want to read
- learn how to take critique
- dont skip fundamentals
- tracing is okay*
- be mindful when drawing
- you wont see good results for a long time
ok firstly, glad you like my art! i try my best on pretty much everything i make so the compliment is greatly appreciated!!
secondly, you have NO clue how much i love yapping about how to draw. im not an expert on how-to-draw-ology but i like to think i know enough to help other people not swing in the dark when it comes to getting better.
learning how to take criticism is THE most important part. not getting butthurt or at least listening to peoples critiques when they mean well is critical to improvement because its specialized advice for you. you have no clue how many young and/or new artists have gotten mad at me for giving critique when they specifically asked me for it. if youre looking to improve you gotta bite that bullet. not all criticism is valid(dont listen to people who are just tryna make you upset), but good and valid criticism can come from anyone. dont unvalidate someone's critique just because theyre not an artist or "not as good" as you. try and get as much feedback as you can and move onto the next piece instead of fixing something to perfection. you will get obsessed in a very destructive way.
learning fundamentals is another step to getting better. that means actually learning perspective, hands, anatomy, and all of the other stuff people hate drawing. its like lifting weights. most people dont like it but if you want to get stronger you need to put in the time to do the painful stuff.
chris christodoulou(ror's composer) actually made a similar comment about the topic of improvement in his field that was along the lines of "if you want to write music, stop playing video games and read a book". he got a lot of shit for saying that but honestly its true.
you need to treat art as a discipline if you want to get better at it. draw as much as you can for as long as you can before it becomes a health hazard. when im not resting i tend to draw at least three hours a day, not counting the 3 to 6 hours additional hours a day i draw during college. obviously a beginner doesn't need to draw that much but drawing daily is a good start.
if you want resources on where to look for fundamentals, Sinixdesign and Ethan Becker were who I turned to for advice that is relevant to the industry. There's definitely others out there but I tend to do more self studying so i don't know the more recent stuff.
something that they'll bring up is that tracing isn't bad AS LONG AS YOU DONT POST IT AND CLAIM IT AS YOUR OWN. it's a good way to see how other people deal with stylization, but its absolutely not okay to post that stuff online. treat it like how traditional painters do master studies. its for your own education, not clout. and you shouldn't be drawing for clout anyway.
last but not least, draw what you love and you'll always love drawing. dont be afraid to hyperfixate and lose interest in things. it will help you continue your art journey. a lot of people in my art school have little to no motivation to draw outside of college because they have no interest in drawing outside of assigned work, which is not a great relationship to have with art if you want to pursue it in the long run. draw what you want to draw when the motivation hits you. if that motivation is risk of rain? draw it. if it's leg muscles then fuck yeah draw that too.
you can stick fundamental practice into your casual art by being mindful of what you are drawing. that can be done by asking questions about what's going on to further the progress of your art. its kind of hard to explain in text, but its basically just keeping in mind how your lines influence the piece.
in the beginning youre going to have ideas and none of them are going to translate to paper. its going to take years before anything will ever compare to whats in your brain and thats just the sucky part. ive been drawing seriously for about 5 or 6 years and theres still a ton of shit i do NOT wanna touch but i have to if i want to improve.
we're all sisyphus pushing that goddamn stupidass boulder and the only thing we can do is acknowledge how far we've come while still knowing that there's more work to be done. but thats kind of the shit that i live for.
An on-location sketch of the falmouth harbour, one of my favourite views from the floating platforms, its an experimental piece created by holding the pencil at the very end to have less control over the marks and a verity of lines
