/furry/ - Your new home

Everyone is born with the talent to draw, anon.

"Technique should be taught, not as an end in itself, but as something

related to individual expression, as a means toward an end. One cannot

separate technique from expression. There is only expression. All that you need in the way of technique for drawing is bound up in the

technique of seeing - that is, of understanding, which after all is mainly dependent on feeling. If you attempt to see in the way prescribed by any mechanical system of drawing, old or new, you will lose the understanding of the fundamental impulse. Your drawing becomes a meaningless diagram and the time so spent is wasted." - Kimon Nicolaides

That paragraph changed my whole drawing life. After I read it and understood it, my art improved by leaps and bounds in months.

>>499224

Anyone who believes art is talent based is a fucking faggot. It is purely an academic pursuit, not a spiritual journey.

>>499245

that's digital. almost all of furry art out there is sai/manga studio/photoshop.

>>499245

Get started on paper and pencil though. It takes a while to get used to a tablet and that's not something you want to worry about when you're just getting started (get a scanner if you want to share stuff online)

While talking about any skill, the moment someone pulls out the word 'talent' is the moment when I know they've given up without even trying.

>>499276

>Traditional

>prisma markers and ink pens

I don't know how to feel about not being able to ctrl+z… I guess I still lack tons of confidence for it.

>>499284

What I did right before using markers, was practicing drawing with pens.

Every time I fucked up, I started over, and over, and over.

It was really frustrating, but it paid off. Whenever you're more confident with a pencil/tablet you should try it <:

>>499245

>Do people paint insane shit like this

>This is the sort of level I aspire to, one day, reach

If you consider that thing to be insanely good or anywhere even remotely near mediocre, you should seriously re-evaluate your standards.

Go to this thread and pic up a new goal to compete against.

>>495516

These are the people you should try to be like, that's if you're hell bent on keeping your artistic goals within the furry fandom.

Don't try being like the mediocre people in the furry fandom.

Try to be like the ones who are actually working in the art industry.

That's going to give you a whole different point of view regarding art and how you should practice it.

>>499224

How about instead of waiting a year, you do that shit now son

>>499284

What better way to gain confident and steady hand movement than to have literally one chance to get it right?

>>499224

You can become >>499245 level of "good" by fandom standards, quite easily. But if you want to REALLY git gud, like those people who get hired by companies to do artwork for MMOs and movies and shit, will take way more effort than it's actually worth. Spend your time learning more useful skills

>>499224

I'm an artist making 20k a year atm. I don't work particularly hard, spend most of my time chilling, fapping, watching movies and playing vidya. Then I do all of my work in sprints or crank it up a little when bills catch me off guard. I'm fairly certain I will crack the 35k mark within 1 or 2 years, hopefully without having to work much harder.

I promise you that absolutely anyone can learn to draw or paint, and make a living doing it. It's not hard to learn it, it just takes a lot of time and patience. The key thing is that there is no 'understanding' to it. You can't read books and learn that way or get a little bonus for being smart. The ONLY thing that matters is the time you put in. If you are willing to put in 3-4 years of hard work, drawing/painting for 4-8 hours per day every day, then you can make it.

Otherwise you can't.

Of course putting the effort forth will help you become, at the very least, a good artist. While it's true that everybody has the ability to draw, it's really a matter of time, practice, and generally giving a shit and striving to improve.

Granted, my perspective on it might not matter for shit since I don't actually draw things, but as somebody who likes to write his stuff, the same absolutely holds true on my side. I've always been pretty decent at putting words together, but reading my older stuff compared to my most recent works (before I basically became too busy with IRL issues to keep up on it), there was a noticeable improvement in all regards. That's because I never ignored my faults in the stuff I wrote and always tried to improve upon what I built before.

Even now I look at my later stories and see things that I could have done better, or things that I've never done well to begin with (lack of description is a huge fault of mine; I can picture things in my head, but it never seems to make the transition to words) and make a promise to myself that I'm going to do better next time.

So yeah. Natural ability plays a part, but so does practice and desire.

>>499224

I'm not good at drawing but using a tablet feels like a big power boost.

>>499553

>do you have to start out non-digital

No, but it helps a lot when you're learning fundamentals. The restrictions it puts on you keeps you from being lazy when you go to do digital work, and once you've learned how to draw, it applies equally well digitally or physically. Digital just gives you a lot of tools you don't need that can become a crutch when you need to learn the basic stuff.

>practice

Yes, practicing correctly is the point of practicing. It doesn't mean doing perfect work, but it means trying to work with a clear goal in mind. Art books are important because they teach you what you should be aiming for when you draw. Art classes are important because they do the same, plus there's a teacher there who can look at the mistakes you're making and tell you why you're making them and how to correct.

If you want good how-to-draw books, there's always /loomis/. For something a bit more modern, I've heard drawabox.com is a good tutorial.

>"the key thing is that there is no 'undertstanding' to it"

What that guy means is that reading books or tutorials is only going to get you so far. Illustration is a task that's both mental and physical, and the only way to get everything to work together the way it should is to practice. There's no book to read that'll make you good by reading it, but there are books and tutorials out there that will make you better if you practice their techniques. Drawing from reference doesn't have much to do with it.

>artists who draw a lot and their art doesn't improve or gets worse

If you do things wrong without noticing or trying to improve, you'll get set in your ways. You might find a style that works and then optimize so you can draw it adequately and quickly, without bothering to polish or examine closely what you're doing afterwards. Some artists don't want to improve, and those are the ones that stagnate or regress.

>ability is to some degree a heritable trait

Ability means shit. Some people start out naturally more talented at art than others, but that head start is never something that can't be overcome with work. Some people are never going to be fantastic artists, sure. Some people have muscular disorders that make coordination difficult, sure. Not everyone is going to have a visionary genius waiting inside of them, sure. But with the proper practice and attitude, just about anyone can become a competent artist.

>>499556

Art isn't all that different from writing, aside from the starting level people have with it–I think people are generally more confident with writing.

hmm

Everyone over and over says "Just draw :^)" and they're right. I know there's no secret to drawing good, we just have to crank out hundreds and hundreds of pics to get good. But even with that knowledge I'm still lazy and never do it.

How do i fix?

>>505049

Stop thinking about motivation and think about obligation. Chasing motivation is absolute nonsense, it's a whim that comes and goes and if you sit around waiting for it, it'll never get done. Obligations are simple: get up and do it. It doesn't matter if you want to do an obligation, you have to do it.

Do whatever you need to do to make the obligation work. For me, I have a sheet of paper taped to my door and I put a check next to each day of the week that I spent some time drawing. Don't draw, no check.

It might seem kind of negative, focusing on forcing yourself to work, but it's actually good–when you force yourself to work, you'll usually find that you start to enjoy yourself, even if you didn't feel like it in the beginning.

At least, that's what helped me, realizing that you shouldn't be chasing motivation and that you should be setting obligations for yourself. For instance, it really helps me when it comes to getting commissions done. If I don't give a deadline, I never work on it; if I do, I get to work because it's not longer about motivation, it's about obligation.

>>505049

If you play vidya, drop competitive multiplayer games like LoL and CSGO. They take up a huge chunk of time per round.

>>499245

>doing that crap on a canvas

>someone actually thought that someone would draw rimming irl on a canvas.

I used to draw when I was a kid, but gave up when I never managed to get any better than stick figures.

I had fun doing it, at least. Wonder if I can tap back into that again and try and improve.

>>505595

Dude. Artists.

As >>505049 said, just drawing is a good way to getting better. But I worry that I might stagnate or learn bad habits without noticing it. How would I avoid things like this? Also, where can I go for critique on furry art? Proper critique, not stuff that is basically "it's shit, kill yourself". I'm very new to drawing, and I think it could help.

>>508926

Imageboards are the best place to get critique for new, unknown artists as you can post it on a place with actual traffic, rather than a dead FA/DA profile that no one knows, and the critique you get is more honest and useful. It's way better to get an insulting yet brutally honest critique than a hundred of hugboxy don't-want-to-hurt-ur-feelings "it's really good!" comments to your stick figure drawings.

>>501726

Well i actually started with that sorta stuff, but once you actually get serious and get past making basic shapes, grab krita, along with a pencil and paper, then look up tutorials and just do shit, work on basic shading, bodies, whatever you like honestly, because at this point you're gonna be working on the basics for a few dozen hours.

Good luck anon, we'll all make it one day.