Any tips for someone who wants to get more serious with their art and grow more?
It probably sounds like a broken record, but practice and studying are huge with improving art!
I always highly recommend live figure drawing for studying and practice. If you can’t take a class for it, even just bringing a little sketchbook with you and taking a moment to quickly doodle random people or animals or things around you is super helpful. You quickly build skills like base structures of drawings, capturing ~the vibe~ of different things, balancing details versus simplifying things, etc. Also it helps a ton in kicking the perfectionist out of you - it doesnt have to be “good” or “accurate,” (cause a: art is subjective, but more importantly b:) the goal of figure drawing is to capture the “essence” of the thing. There’s a bunch of different figure drawing techniques you can try out as well but again, it’s a great way to hone your skills. Studying is important!
And similarly with studying, make a collage or list or something of inspirations and art you like, or even just interesting references. Or both. I know a lot of people use pinterest for that but if you have Discord you can make a server just for yourself and make channels of inspiration, notes, and etc., or even make a sideblog on Tumblr for collecting inspiration. Then study what you like about those (composition, lighting, shape language, colors, etc) and try those things out for yourself. It can be difficult to try different techniques for things if you don’t know what those techniques are, so doing this gives you a nice handy reference sheet of things you can try out that you think look nice or are interesting.
