Art troubles

[dotmidi]

Sometimes im proud of my art in the moment im making it, but every time after a day or two i just feel like everything i make looks bad and wrong
I'm trying very hard to just PRACTICE, A LOT but I feel like no improvements are being madeee 

Some advice would be nice, im not sure how to keep on drawing when everything i make looks like dirt to me:sad: especially with digital art. My friends do not understand my point because they think i want my art to be a certain way so i can get followers, but im not a social media person.
i just want my art to look nice for the sake of myself.. i really want art to be the ideal form i have in my head but i can never achieve it!!! 

i know that a lot of people struggle with this issue, but they usually get better with time.. for me though, that hasnt been the case  i really feel like my work is stagnant

really, seeing people actually getting better at art makes me so frustrated 'cause i dont think i can achieve the same
is this what impostor syndrome is ?? LOL:omg:k:

[Melooon]

Ooph! Im just gonna chime in to say that art is really hard! No matter how casually you do it or how fun you want it to be; all art is a struggle; but thats a good thing, it means that your really trying and your really invested! If you can suffer, then you can make art, the rest is just technicality

Ok so some practical advice; first split things up - there's your creative vision - your technical skill - and your expectation based on the world around you. Those are all separate things and you have to deal with them separately!

Its also really important to remember that creation and criticism are TOTALLY separate mental processes - do no try to analyses or critique your work as you create it - create then analyse then create again later.

• Your creative vision is within you and based on what you wanna express - it sounds like you might have this sorted for now, but your mixing it up with your technical skill. This is not about how your work looks, its about how it makes you feel - improve this by experiencing life!
• Technical skill is easier - follow tutorials, study other artists, practise doing works that you are not emotionally invested in. You should not be thinking about emotion or creative vision when your working on technical stuff.
• This ones harder and you'll have to resolve it for yourself! Avoiding social media is part of this step for you; its about figuring out how you want the world to see you and how you want to see yourself in relation to the world - so think about others to improve in this area.

Getting these three things in balance is really important - but it will never be perfect, some will always be stronger or weaker, and also you will have a natural leaning towards a particular one; be aware of that and put extra effort into the areas that you feel yourself avoiding!

Thats my random art advice for the afternoon! I might edit this later becouse Im in a rush now, but I hope it helps a little!

EDIT: This is a great book to read and Id recommend it to anyone making art! (if you search you can find PDFs online!)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/615570.The_Artist_s_Way

[carcinoGeneticist]

Your harshest critic is often yourself, I completely relate to this struggle, and find that it's because your artist's eye is on a higher bar than your current skill level is. (As stated by Melon in the post above.) It's really hard not to want to obliterate your work when you can't feel satisfied, but try to take it slow otherwise it'll probably stress you out. Try to compare your new work to your old work as opposed to your new work to other people's work. And maybe try something like redrawing old work and seeing how you've improved in comparison.

Not sure if this'll help but you can get through this slump!

[WingsOfImagination]

I can deeply relate to that, probably even more than you think.

I have struggled with the same issue for many years. I used to be so extremely frustrated with my art, to the point that I constantly thought about it day and night. I have practiced hard and tried my best to follow various online tutorials, read countless advice from artists and spent ridiculous amount of time looking for art resources that will click with me. All of that, yet my art quality remained pretty much indistinguishable from that of a small child.

However, it is only quite recently that I managed to make some actual progress (although small, but progress indeed!), and I do think I'm finally on the right track. I think this is due to understanding the following:

1. Art is hard. Art is extremely hard. You're basically training your brain to fight against its very natural tendency to simplify the complex, so it can deliver and process ideas more easily. Never feel bad for struggling with art, ever! Do not be afraid to fail over and over. Even if everyone seems to have it far more easily than you. Don't view it as something that you should be able to do, but rather view it as you slowly pushing over your own personal limits.

2. Know what you're aiming for. One of my biggest and most time wasting art mistakes was that...I practiced a lot. What did I practice? I don't know. People told me to "just practice", so that's exactly what I did. I practiced some here, some there, tried to copy random stuff, all of that for years I'm telling you. But why did I not make any progress? That's because I did not know for what I was practicing, other than being like, a better artist. Just like you, I just wanted that beautiful vision in my mind to become a reality.

What you should actually do: Understand what kind of art you find beautiful, what you find attractive, collect a lot of inspiration. Verbalize it to yourself and break it down to its most basic components. Make yourself a list of subjects that you need to learn and turn your main goal into a bunch of mini-tasks. Also understand what you do not like.

When you study, understand that rather than trying to find that just right learning material, it's actually better to prioritize quantity. Not every teacher or resource is going to fully click with you, but in most cases there is at least one thing you could take. Even if you don't fully understand it now, it doesn't mean you won't in the future! All of these small pieces of knowledge will eventually merge on their own. Actively refer to your inspirations when drawing, do more reference than imagination drawings especially in the beginning.

3. Keep in mind that drawing is not only a mental skill, but a physical skill as well! The reality of things is, your body doesn't always know what your conscious mind already does. Watching lots of basketball doesn't make you a good player, even if you know the ins and outs of everything. Listening to music doesn't make you a singer. Appreciating the fine and precise details in a painting doesn't make you able to draw a straight line!

Make sure to transfer the knowledge in your mind to your body by understanding what you should do, try until you do it, then repeat it a lot.

4. Drawing basics are important and will help you tremendously. Personally I'm using the online course DrawABox. It will give you a strong foundation that will inspire confidence in you and help you rationalize a lot of art things.

5. Organize your time and form a healthy habit. That means study time (by subjects), break time, practice time with and without reference, even mindless drawing time! Pretend as if you're making your own art school. To draw well is like a part time job!

And remember to always take it easy. It's the nature of it to take a long time, you can only feel frustrated for so long before it makes you give up, and it's just not worth it to do it to yourself 

(Also keep your back and neck straight as much as possible while drawing! Sit on a good chair! and take breaks every 30 minutes, otherwise you'll end up with a neck injury like me that will disable you from drawing for 6 months straight!)

[purelyconstructive]

I have done both illustration and graphic design "professionally" before, but I would by not consider myself "great" at anything. Like all that I say, please take the following with a grain of salt...

Preliminaries

Generally, I find it best to cultivate an attitude of: "I am grateful for where I am and I am excited about where I am going."

Gratitude keeps one from becoming discouraged and excitement keeps one from stagnating. Together, one will always enjoy whatever they do, including the act of doing art. Art should be relaxing, something that we look forward to each day, not something that we would rather avoid because it is so stress-inducing.

It is also important to keep in mind that one might never truly "capture" what is in their head if they have a vivid imagination, even if they are a very skilled artist. However, if one's goal is to create things that are progressively closer to their inner vision as best as they can, then it is only a matter of thoroughly connecting what one sees to what one does. How can this be built into a habit? I will offer a simple method that has been useful to me...

Skill #1: Learning To See Things As They Are [Understanding]

Oftentimes, people replace the shapes and tones of the images that they see with symbols in their own mind. This tendency is particularly evident with optical illusions. Let's go through a few examples that have a strong relevance to drawing...

In The Muller-Lyer Illusion, when multiple lines meet at the same point, they can make the lines that they are attached to seem longer or shorter than they actually are:



The two horizontal lines in the above image may seem to be of different lengths, but they are actually the same size!



Similarly, within The Ponzo Illusion, overlapping lines might seem to distort the lengths and sizes of others:



Notice how the same is true with more "complex" shapes made up of multiple lines or curves (like the little symbolic "people" in the right-half of the above image).

When we group enough lines or dots together (such as in the case of "shading", we get some sort of tone:



Like lines, a tone can seem lighter or darker than it actually is depending upon the tones around it:



While tile B might look like a different shade of gray than tile A, they are both the same!



This is called The Adelson Checker Shadow Illusion. All of the illusions that we've shown here have one thing in common:

How something is perceived is dependent upon the context in which it arises.

Not only is this a beautiful metaphor for all forms of communication, it is also important in drawing...When we are drawing, we relate the lines that we are about to draw to the ones that we've already set down. Take a reference image and ask yourself, "How long is this line relative to that one? What is the distance or angle between them?" Use a ruler or protractor to check it after you make a guess.

Do the same thing with tones. "Is this tone darker or lighter?" One can purchase little cards that have a "grayscale" printed on them:



There are little notches cut into each shade of gray to isolate a tone underneath the card to check how light or dark it is in comparison. If you need some pictures to test it out, most photo manipulation programs have settings to turn color photos into black-and-white/monochrome ones.

Skill #2: Learning To Do Things As We Intend [Practice]

Now that we have some awareness of how we see, we can use it to inform our practice of making different types of lines. Fill up some sheets of scrap paper with straight and curved lines of various lengths and pressures.

As you do this, take note of how you hold your drawing instrument and how you move it. If at all possible, grasp it loosely and move from your elbow and shoulder, not your wrist. This gives one a wider range of motion and keeps their hand and back from cramping up. It should be comfortable to draw! Do not make the body tense.

Sometimes it is easier to make straight lines by "pushing" our hand away from our body, with the elbow opening up like a door hinge, whereas curves are sometimes easier to make by "pulling" our hand towards us, swinging our forearm in an arc with the elbow acting like a pivot. Do not be afraid to move the drawing surface around to approach each line from whatever angle is easiest.

Set down two points and try to connect them with a line. If you end up drawing a curve when you intend to make a straight line, do not erase it. Draw another line over it and carefully note how they differ from one another. Notice how we can make the "bow" of a curved line deeper or shallower, until it becomes so shallow that it is completely straight.

Repeatedly draw lines of different kinds over and over again, comparing them to one another, all while paying close attention to your grip and how you move.

Skill #3: Developing Hand-Eye Coordination [Understanding Meets Practice]

Next, try some simple drawing exercises. These can be a lot of fun and will help to connect the two previous skills together.

Start by trying to draw some simple shapes (like triangles, squares, rectangles, circles, and ellipses). When you are about to draw a line, see it as if you have already drawn it on your paper. Keep your eye slightly ahead of the point of your pencil as you move it. Move with awareness and intention.

Notice that simple shapes can become the guidelines for more complex ones [as demonstrated here by MangaMaterials]:



When these simple shapes become easy to draw, learn how to make tones of various shades within their borders. One way of doing this is by steadily moving your forearm back and forth like a windshield wiper, making a series of parallel lines that are somewhat evenly spaced from one another (i.e.: "hatching". Change the pressure and density of the lines to make those tones lighter or darker. For example, try to mimic the squares of the grayscale:



They don't have to be "perfect". The tones just have to be noticably different from each other. Repeatedly make various shapes containing tones of different shades, comparing them to one another, all while paying close attention to your grip and how you move.

Skill #4: Making Deliberate Choices [Application]

The previous three skills are foundational. It doesn't matter whether it is "abstract" or "photorealistic", all drawings of any kind whatsoever are based upon them to some extent.

Once we have some facility in them, it then becomes a matter of choosing how we use them and why. What do you want to convey? It is impossible to render the potentially infinite detail within one's imagination or the reality that we see before us, but we can control the simplifications that we make. What will you put in and what will you leave out? We can learn to convey a lot with very few lines and tones, letting the viewer's mind complete the picture.

We have now come "full circle". Use illusions to create symbols by choice, rather than being guided by them without awareness.

Conclusion

I hope this is helpful to everyone. For those that are interested, there is a lot of useful art learning material linked on my website as well.


Photo Credits:

Images 1 & 2
Image 3
Images 4 & 8
Images 5 & 6
Image 7
Image 9

[Colliewood]

Now don't take my advice as more important as anyone else in this thread, especially purelyConstructive there omg that's an amazing resource to give us tysm . No, definitely if you want to practice art skills listen to their advice and follow deliberate practice techniques. But I would like to give a small piece of advice that can apply to any and all art, even things that people don't readily call art. The vision in your mind is 9 times out of 10 impossible for any skill level, let me explain.

Art can generally be considered the act of projecting an emotional feeling onto a tangible object, be that a screen, canvas, book or song. Obviously not every instance of art will fall into this definition, but for the sake of this exercise I'll focus on this element. When putting pen to paper you want your hand to carve the shape of your minds eye, you want to capture that intangible moment into a physical shape. But how can you draw the feeling of pride, of love, of beauty? You must put the mental effort into shaping that feeling into a symbol, the more complex the feeling, the more complex the art. If you don't know how to turn the feeling in your mind into an appropriate symbol then your hand will always fall short of what you want.

For example I day dream a lot. especially when listening to music, certain songs combine with stories I've read and my personal experiences in my mind and I imagine music videos and animations. When I listen to Bedroom Community by Glass beach I can't help but project my personal feelings of being transgender onto it, and further than that I would love to use that feeling to convince people of my Dave Strider Trans sadstuck headcanon. Now that is one complex feeling. The movie in my head has pain, loss, catharsis, and gender dysphoria implied with nothing to show for it.

So it is for simple drawings, if I want to convey that feeling I have to polish and carve and cut it to shape. I actually have turned that music video into something physical. It's not perfect, it certainly doesn't look like the work of a master artist, but it was enjoyable to make and I believe conveys the feeling I wanted. This idea was bouncing around for a long time and I will probably revisit it in the future.

What might be the issue is that in the moment you feel the emotions you're "supposed" to feel, the emotions that you want to project. But after some thought you realize that they aren't as potent as you thought. The thing is when you're struck with inspiration you're always filled with emotion, it's an amazing thing to be able to express that even if it's not perfect. keep practicing the skills of composition and brush strokes, but also practice the skill of appreciation and confidence, practice the skill of refining your artistic projection.