/art/ - Art & Creative

The question of the ages

I think you need to ask yourself what you really want out of art. Is it to be a concept artist for a movie? Is it to be famous on deviantart? Is it to accurately draw your dreams into the canvas? Is it to get dank street cred on 8chan draw threads? Is art the only thing that will give you what you want?

As far as learning, the way I see it is: if you stop trying you'll still be in this position 10 years from now, wondering the same thing, regretting that you didn't start sooner. If you had kept pushing through, even if it felt hopeless, you would be at the point where you're happy enough with your art and/or can get an art job or whatever it is you wanted.

>>2518
I have to second this. To create a contrast to your situation: I'm past thirty and I've just picked up what I stopped doing as a kid. For me it's just that I've really missed making pictures. I looked at things and kept thinking "I wish it was like this" or "I'd like to see this but with this motive" or I just get an idea, but I've always lacked the ability to make it a reality. I'm not expecting e-fame or surpassing people, I just want to git gud enough to be able to create the things I want to see.

Reading what you wrote this caught me:

>The reward for being as good as the HFA prodigy is that I will be able to contribute images to someone's Tumblr
The question really is, what is it you want from art? To tell you where the hope went we really need to know what you where hoping for.

>>2529
Then the only thing you can do is to keep practicing. The more you wait by questioning whether you should do it, the older you'll be wishing you stopped questioning sooner.

Your past doesn't matter, you only need to learn to let it go and look forward, be open to new things and ready dismiss old things, particularly things related to art and technique.

If you want to be a child prodigy, then sure, it's too late. If you want to be "talented", then maybe it's just not in you. But if you want to become a master artist, the only thing in your way is yourself. A master has failed more times than a beginner has tried.

>>2529
>that I'll always have that flaw in the perspective of the folds of the dude's jacket that Kakizaki Masasumi wouldn't
If that's the guy who made that panel I have to say I disagree. On the whole I don't see how many of highlights could be where they are and how many of the shadows could be where they are. Also the crease on the left elbow looks unnatural to me.

You should see these as uplifting comments for your cause. I have a recommendation to you; look at his works and try to find bits that look bad. I promise you, they will be there. Not just that they don't look entirely right but actually really bad. One of the great hurdles in any form of art is that you are completely aware of every single thing you can't get right, but you are oblivious to such things when you look are others' work. As such it easy to always elevate what others do above high above your own efforts simply on the basis that you are not immediately aware of the flaws in them and you usually don't dwell on images long enough to find them. If you spend two hours making something you have two hours to find all the faults in it.

I can guarantee that there are parts of that image you posted that he is unhappy with, but that you are oblivious of, and in the same way a lot of the things you'll get wrong will be things no one else would ever think about.

> I don't think the person that I am is capable of producing the things I want to see
That's a tough thing to come to terms with, and frankly any knowledge of standard distribution tells you that will be the case for most of us regarding most things, but probability is of course not certainty. In any case I get the feeling that the main issue at this point is that fact that you don't seem to enjoy yourself. Regardless of your potential I don't think anyone can make any great progress if they do not enjoy what they do. Am I right, and if so, why do you not enjoy your drawing?

>I don't like any of what I can see the person with my biography doing. Am I making sense?
Oh yeah.

>>2541
>But if you want to become a master artist, the only thing in your way is yourself.
I can't approve of talk like this that implies anyone can become a master artist. It's giving people false hope. Sure, you'll never find out if you have what it takes if you don't try real fucking hard, but if you assume that you'll be guaranteed master-hood if only you try for long enough it's easy to set you life on a path that leads nowhere.

>>2542
>I can't approve of talk like this that implies anyone can become a master artist.
And I can't approve the notion that some people are just somehow incapable of doing it. When someone tries "real hard" and still fails, I'm pretty certain it's because they either over-estimate the effort they put in, or have been doing something wrong (e.g. repeating muh animu styel over and over, trying to learn anatomy from gestures, mindlessly sketching without trying to learn something from it, etc).

Some people will have much easier time getting it right for sure, but I can't agree that other people are just "unable" to. There's no physical limitation that prevents you from learning this stuff.

>>2544
> There's no physical limitation that prevents you from learning this stuff.

The physical limitation is personality. Becoming a decent person is difficult, and in the mean time your brain is rotting as you get older, becoming less plastic. If you don't fix it while you're young you'll become that grumpy old asshole listening to rush limbaugh.

>>2544
>There's no physical limitation that prevents you from learning this stuff.
You are saying that the brain is not subjected to physical limits. I'm not gonna mince my words here: You are delusional.

We are born with different brains. The size of the regions are different, the folds (determining what areas have more connections than others) are different, the thickness of the grey matter layer is different. Saying that someone with hardly any folds over the area he uses for visual tasks can be as good as someone with many deep folds over the same area is basically saying that the number of neurons involved in a task has no effect what-so-ever on our ability to complete it. You might as well say that people can live and think without a brain all-together.

Do you also deny brain damage exists? Do you deny that mentally retarded people are they way they are because of the brains they were born with?

>>2546
You can't have a limitation for learning something. Brains don't have any kind of filter like that, you're basically saying "some people can't learn 4+7 because biology, right? better leave that one for Einstein".

I feel that you're confusing "master" with "perfect" or "best in the world".

What's your goal in your life...
Do you want to Dominate?
Do you want to be Accepted?
Do you want to Grow?

Your problem is that you are self-deprecating, big time. You need to look into this and ask yourself why. You believe that even if you try your hardest, you still won't be good enough; i.e. self-deprecating. This has nothing to do with your level of art talent; even the best can be self-deprecating. You need to learn to recognize this flaw in yourself if you want to move forward.

>>2547
>You can't have a limitation for learning something.
Then why isn't there a person on this planet that knows everything? Why isn't there a single person that masters everything? Clearly there are limits.

>Brains don't have any kind of filter like that
Do you even understand what you are talking about? The reason humans can't lift fifty tons isn't that our muscles have any filters, its that so many muscle fibers can only lift so much because of the damn laws of physics, and for the same reason so many neurons can only do so much thinking. Otherwise mice would be as intelligent as humans.

>you're basically saying "some people can't learn 4+7 because biology, right?
Yes. Many mentally retarded people can't learn 4 + 7 because of the limits of their brains. This in no way leads to your ridiculous false dichotomy.

>I feel that you're confusing "master" with "perfect" or "best in the world".
To master something means you are approaching the limits of what is humanly possible for people talented in that field. You don't have to be among the best but you have to be in a place where the difference starts to become a matter of nuance.