I've mostly been studying the arm using photos but I can never understand the 3d form of the Arm. Should I do observational studies?

I have seen a lot of people say that beginners should not use the airbrush, blur tool, brushes other than default, or smudge tool. I feel like all my colors look really streaky because currently, I am using the default brush and changing the transparency. If beginners are not supposed to use these tools, what are we supposed to use? I feel like there is something I must be missing.

This is a genuine question. I posted a little suggestive art on my feed, 1 of them has some blood on it, and i intended for the artwork to be like a joke (in a silly matter). The other one is where one is shirtless with a little blood and someone else is biting their neck (but no showing genitals or anything!!) But i don't plan on posting anything extreme like straight up porn or gore at all, i keep in mind that my account is public and some minors follow me so i won't post anything worse than some blood and suggestive art.

But someone asked me a genuine question about it and i started thinking that maybe i should tone down the suggestive art i post even though i barely post suggestive art (i posted 3 suggestive artworks through time). Im not one to babysit minors and i know some teens can handle some violence and a little suggestiveness but maybe i should be more mindful about it. My account is pretty chill and i enjoy posting what i want but if what im doing is wrong then i'll gladly take down the posts.

I've also noticed that i haven't added trigger warnings but the posts i made aren't exactly gore or straight up nsfw in my eyes. Nevertheless i will be mindful to add them next time. Any advice is appreciated.

Do you think being artistic is learned or genetics? Most naturally artistic people I know usually have a parent or grandparent or some immediate relative that just naturally has artistic behavior. I really do think there's a big genetic component to it! What are y'all's opinions?? Also, has anyone had zero artistic talent (like I consider myself at my core) but have trained themselves and practiced so much that they've actually made art that people have been like "wow, that is really good. You are talented!"

I've made about 5 different designs so far, all of which always leave me feeling like a fraud. I feel like i always draw them too pretty or inaccurately.

Is really hard to get job in AU related with art without experience or getting popular in social media by doing general art,Idk how where should I start... As female with lil strict family I was really thinking to go to city in sydney to draw people but i dont have any experience but Im good at drawing people

Would love to know. I feel like I’d benefit a lot from something like that.

I've been trying to look for 2d art(illustration or concept art)or even 2d animation for the fun of it on LinkedIn and indeed,and if you're not looking for graphic design its pretty much impossible,even if you cast the net wider and change the location to the UK.

Indeed has like 0 and LinkedIn has like 5.

I actually had to search for them on google jobs whereas other jobs/fields you wouldn't need to go that far.Everyone keeps complaining about the field being competitive and failing interviews and I'm wondering how in the hell thats possible in the first place.

Strangely enough it's quite bad if you're looking for software dev jobs

I don't know if this is the right flag to use in this thread, but I hope so...

Well, my goal is just to draw a character without a background, because I always see nice sketches of characters and I want to try, but when I do that I feel like something is missing and then I draw the background again.

It's so uncomfortable to leave characters alone...

Is there anyone else here who also has this "problem"?

I genuinely want to know if its normal or its just me. Recently ive noticed my art drawn when im sleep deprived is much better than the ones i do when i have full night of sleep. Like when im sleep deprived and draw id get into flow state immediately and i genuinely dont notice the tike when im drawing.
Lmk ur opinions

Out of all time periods and regions, what do you think? Looking for religious pieces but anything goes.

I really thought that if I looked it up, I’d see more anecdotes of this nature, but I found nada. My mother was always a huge fan of my art and was SO proud of me as a kid. Things I have heard about a million times, for example, are:

“You’re better at drawing than anyone. Anybody on Earth would be jealous of you. Come on, maybe other people are decent at art, but you’re way better than them.”

”Just skip college. It’s a waste of time. You are already the most talented artist in the world.“

”Everything you make is a masterpiece. Seriously, people would pay hundreds for this doodle in your sketchbook.”

This was extremely frustrating as I sort of believed this to be true, but I was also extremely unsatisfied with my art. I never once actually tried learning fundumentals or any sort of art lesson whatsoever. I don’t think I ever used a reference image throughout my entire childhood. I didn’t practice or correct myself because I figured I was too good for that. I just drew full images and became very very upset when they didn’t look anything like I wanted them to. (All of this was made a million times harder having undiagnosed ADHD, but that’s not really what this post is about.)

The truth of the matter, looking at it objectively now, I was decently good at drawing compared to the average kid. I was not particularly skilled compared to other kids who actually learned drawing. This is especially emphasized in my teenage years. Yes, I did get better as I grew up, but at a pace so slowly it meant nothing.

I‘m majoring in animation and illustration starting next year. I’m able to actually learn skills because meds no longer make it impossible. Before, a 10 minute video about learning how to draw hands would take hours and result in me crying and tearing up a page, and now it’s the kind of thing I do for fun if I have a few minutes to spare. I have actually started to learn the art fundamentals. I love learning! I am having so much fun noting my own mistakes and redrawing a better attempt. It doesn’t feel like the hardest thing in the world, and I no longer feel like it’s a statement on me as a person if I can’t get it right instantly (“shouldn’t I be able to as the worlds most talented artist?“)

I have improved in my art more in the span of the last two month than I have in the two decades I’ve been alive combined. Because I’m learning.

Here is something I love saying: I’m a begínner artist. Yes, I‘ve been drawing my entire life, but I never learned the beginning. Now that I can accept that, I can actually grow.

This isn’t a vent post, this is meant to be a genuine discussion because I’m curious if anyone else has a similar artistic learning journey. I would love to talk about it.

Regardless of the type of art one does, painting, writing, filmmaking, photography, music, whatever… how does someone trusts that they can become good at it, maybe get lucky and make a living out of it?

I also want to read some thoughts about that “internal calling”. I feel it, I’m sure a lot of, if not all of you, feel it to, but I’m always wondering, is it an illusion?

It’s worth noting, I am referring to it career-wise. I know it’s not really healthy, and almost offensive to get into an art form with a professional mindset, but I can’t help it. I can’t imagine myself doing anything else besides creating art, even though I’m not particularly skilled at any form yet.

I was at a gallery opening yesterday and an acquaintance introduced me to the owner as a “breakthrough emerging artist” which is very nice, mostly false and also kinda put me on the spot lol

Anyway, we ended up chatting about technique and as said in the title, this very established fine arts person got a politely blank look on their face, took a second to think, then called my technique “creative.”

Basically, I prepare my palette, use a knife to put the colour I want into a shot glass with mineral spirits, then mix until I’ve got a runny pigment soup that behaves like ink. For the spirits to actually sink into the canvas without bleeding onto my table, I use a heavy cotton gabardine and only gesso the back, plus the edges near the tape so I can get crisp white margins. Because these watery oil washes soak directly into the raw cotton fibres and spread out on their own, I get these soft, blurred edges without having to blend with the brush.

While I personally love the results, I’ll admit that I know next to nothing about proper technique and the chemistry side of art. I ended up using two different varnishes on my latest painting because I didn’t realise the regular high-end one would sink in along with the paint…

So yeah. I keep telling myself my work speaks for itself, then I meet ‘real’ professionals and I’m reminded of how much I don’t know. Any other painter here with a similar technique to make me feel less alone?

Update: I ended up having a long chat with a conservation expert who handles work by Francis Bacon and Helen Frankenthaler, the two names that kept coming back in these comments! He made me pull up the specs of everything I used and the TLDR is that my work will be fine. It’s not going to rot, guys.

For the art nerds:

— My canvas is actually polycotton, not pure cotton, which means even heavily acidic-damaged cotton fibres would still be held together by the polyester. Polyester is basically inert, which makes it very bad for the planet and very good for art conservation.

— I used heavyweight gabardine, similar to what Burberry trench-coats are made with: it has a finer grain than traditional canvas and is more durable but because it’s got a diagonal twill, there’s an increased risk of deformation along the bias. The expert recommended sticking the painting on some backing to avoid that.

— Because I used a lot of OMS, the acidic byproducts from lindseed oil are less of an issue than in most artworks, not more.

— Buuut because of this same heavy use of OMS, the binding agent that holds the pigments together is likely degraded to some extent. I was told to add a few drops of synthetic solvent-free fluid (Galkyd or Liquitex) to my shot glasses to compensate, in the future.

— A layer of sprayed temporary varnish, on top of the soaked varnish, will allow the buyer to get their artwork refreshed in a few decades!

— Also, the pH of your ground matters. Most sizing and gessos sit around 8-9; clothing fabric is between 6-7.5. I’m lucky the clothing-grade fabric I got is pre-treated and tested at 7.4!

Is there somewhere I can find/buy high quality digital copies so I can print at home/printing shop?

Certain plates i want bigger than the A4 books they all come in.

I have seen a few stores that sell large individual plates but all are in the US... And it's quite expensive especially when adding shipping. (I'm in the UK)

I learned to write with a non-traditional way of holding the pencil. If I were to get into drawing, should I use what I'm used to, or should I learn the traditional way?

Recently got a cheap woodburning tool and hot knife (in transit) since I thought they could do some cool stuff and later on and when I looked at my thermoplastic pellets I thought that it would be cool to sculpt with the hot knife/woodburning tool into the plastic. In the past I had sculpted moldable pellets by hitting it with the butane torch and heat gun (these pellets are so cool they can handle that and reform perfectly fine) then sculpt I it with a normal knife but now I'm thinking I could save a bunch of pain by just using the woodburning tool with a bunch of different bits. The brand of pellets I normally use is polly plastics moldable plastic pellets. Also in the title when I say "already merged" in case it isn't clear I just mean the pellets have been already formed into a solid single shape as opposed to me taking the wood burning tool to the individual tiny pellets

Recently, it's just been very hard to find anywhere I feel comfortable uploading my art at. I've been using Reddit as suggested by everyone to show off my work. But, I don't know, it doesn't really do much for me? Like, I show off maybe a few pieces, but I just don't really get that sense of community and connection. Maybe a few people comment, I respond, and that's it.

There is also the fact that I can't help but feel my art is not what people wanna see in those subreddits either. Yes, I do suffer from comparing myself to other artists, and seeing higher level artists put up their work right next to mine does discourage me from posting.

The same goes for pretty much anywhere else on the Internet. I just don't see any forums, websites, social media outlets where I feel like people actually wanna engage with my work. And it does make it hard to receive feedback and criticism if nobody even knows what my finished work looks like.

On the other hand, I have been told that you can make up your portfolio on a website and simply share it around, but again, who and where?

I guess a part of it stems from my own insecurity of being seen as a bad artist and not wanting to be ignored, but I do want to know your guy's experience with reaching out to other artists and having your work be visible.