>>2789876
>If you really want to excel and progress and be happy with your work, you must make art with the one and only intent of pursuing beauty. Wanna know why so many dumb people get really good at drawing? Because they don't think about it. They're doing something they love and they're rewarded for it. I think art (real art, not contemporary art) is one of the handful of fields where you can't make it if your ego gets in the way. It should be only you and the canvas.

This is beautiful. Romanticized, but there's deeper truth in here.

Addressing the younger folks here (20-ish and under) who are frustrated. I see a lot of melodrama being tossed around that's bordering on self-pity. Drop this attitude; it's toxic and self-defeating.

Read the following.

Let's forget "art" for a moment. I want to give a different perspective on things and I hope it will at least encourage a few of you to follow through. This perspective isn't new and it isn't unique. It's been used by many successful people across varying fields, myself included.

If you want a particular thing to be your job, then treat it like a job. In a good way. Isolate harmful distractions, get rid of them. Games, Netflix, anime, whatever. Online communities aren't for you at this stage because you need to get things done. Critiques of work at this stage don't really help because you're more than likely lacking in several key technical areas that need to be addressed, and you're well aware of what those areas are.

Set a time for yourself, doesn't have to be every day but should have a pulse to it, to review what you did the previous day, and to figure out what you're going to do that day. Once you're done working for that day, set a plan for next day. It's beneficial to leave something not completely finished so you have somewhere to continue from the next day as a means of getting into the groove of things.

Stick to this time - it could be when you wake up, it could be 6pm, doesn't matter. This is your start time, and you're sticking to it. You sit down, you turn off all distractions and you're there until you are done for the day.

There is nothing wrong with having a job while you are working on your craft. Many people have done this, it's normal.

You'll find that your peak focus is in the ballpark of a couple, maybe a few hours. Use this time wisely and let go of the rest. Use this time to get closer to where you wanted to be than you were the day before. Avoid burning out at the end of the day, it'll hamper you the next day.

Treat your work from a professional standpoint. Ask what you're weak at and find ways to improve it. Be surgical about this and be egoless about this. It doesn't always come down to "need more practice" - sometimes a new approach can save you months (or years, even) of struggling. But you need to be honest and open with yourself about what it is you want to do and where you want to be.

You'll have a lot of internal resistances. Remove mental friction when you're trying to work. Have your drawing pad and a pencil out next to you at all times, the book should be open and left on the page where you read it last time, also next to you. If you place your drawing pad in a drawer or too far away from you, you'll give yourself excuses to hold off on working.

Now, art wise.

If you're trying to draw a figure from imagination with dramatic perspective and you haven't drawn a figure at all without dramatic perspective yet and rendered it appropriately, account for the fact that you'll need to do several things at once to make it work and it could be too much.

Whenever you stumble along the way sincerely ask what you don't know and look into how it can be solved. What are your options? Most of the problems at this stage are technical in nature and can be resolved in a systematic way without spending years on it. We have classes, books and tutorial videos (in that order) that can build your knowledge in particular principles quickly. You're not doing "art" just yet, you're learning the principles of drawing, rendering, composition, lighting, color, 3D modeling/sculpting, animation, and so on. The extent of what you are lacking in is based off of what you have set out to do.

Chances are your drawing skills are terrible. Drawing circles, ellipses and lines won't make your drawings better. These are wrist and elbow exercises. You'll at most get better at repeating monotonous circles, ellipses and lines. Maybe. If you get a book on drawing, like for example "Keys to Drawing", you should do two things: firstly, you should attempt to copy the examples in the book as close as possible, and then you should attempt to apply what you've learned to your own studies - which are the exercises the book asks you to do. Do this for each chapter one chapter at a time and don't advance to the next chapter until you've done this.

You will repeat this process of "copy the book examples, then make my own studies" to varying degrees with other books you get over time. This is a very powerful, well-tested learning repertoire for absorbing new knowledge quickly. Find ways to apply what you learn in the books to life studies of things. You'll trust the application more and will feel confident using it. You'll get better at using it through imagination because you have clear proof that it can be applied.

You're no longer doing mindless doodles and gimmicks. Approach with candor. Establish a theme for the work you're doing, and make it a realistic goal that will take you somewhere between a day to a few days to complete. Don't go less and don't go way more. You'll burn out and either way won't get very far.

You're not going to be switching to any auto-pilot mode here so take your time and work slowly, fixing mistakes along the way. Active focus and deep breaths. Find a state of meditation in you while you are working.

Don't leave your work half-done before moving on. Complete it and store it. Frame it, take a picture of it. This will go into your portfolio should you choose to use it. You're investing your time here, so you better use it. I'm sure you've heard this before - instead of doing lots of mediocre things, do one or two things really well. In this case that means to finish what you're working on at an even level. Each "stage" of your work should feel finished before you proceed to the next one. If you're doing the human figure, don't leave hands or feet incomplete before you start doing the rendering and the details. Force yourself to not skip ahead. Work big, medium, small.

Here is where references will come in handy. If your theme deals with a particular exterior or interior setting, and you're not sure how some feature or object of the scene should look like, go explore. Find one, settle on it, modify it a bit to suit your over all taste. This is where you can stimulate your creativity on the fly. Use ideas from other artists. Could be big like aspects of the composition, could be small like a drapery pattern in the backdrop somewhere.

If you want to work on environments then pool together a list of the fundamental things that you think you'll need to do environments.

Sometimes borrowing ideas from existing sources can help you because you can't expect yourself at this stage to come up with everything yourself and solve every problem simultaneously, and using existing work as a reference allows you to gauge the quality of your own work relative to the reference. Constraints like these are often times beneficial. If you like the composition of some cathedral interior from another artist, use the composition, establish the perspective grid and place different things while attempting to keep a similar composition. This is how you work your way up to a complete master study.

Don't be tempted to "practice this one thing for 30 minutes then that thing for 30 minutes." Chances are highly likely you're not using your time well. If you're having issues placing a certain element in the scene or on the figure, find out what is wrong with it. Is it a perspective issue? Porportion? Does it look bland? Does it need to be moved somewhere else for better effect? Once you isolate the issue, find a way to solve _that_ issue.

In other words, you can't get better by just churning out same exercise routines and putting in "more hours" of the same sloppy garbage. Put in the hours of effective work to solve things you are incompetent at while building a portfolio of your work. Often breaks help you move past certain incompetencies when you get frustrated, so again, don't burn out by working too much at once.

Along the way you'll do a lot of small individual studies to solve individual problems you're having. Always incorporate these studies back into what you're working on.

Once you're done with a piece you're working on and you are tired of working on it, if you think it's worthy of being scrutinized then feel free to share it with people to ask for opinions and criticism. If you're holding back on sharing something that you feel proud of but that you think will be ripped apart, share it. You need to get over this fear and it'll go away by itself over time.

You'll build the tolerance over time for this kind of work, you'll be able to focus longer and more effectively, and you'll find out what works for you and what doesn't.