I'm possibly the oldest guy here and I think the most important thing that I'd generally recommend (besides not giving up etc.) is to not FUCKING move on from one subject to the next too quickly. I guarantee a lot of my stagnation stems from bailing prematurely when I felt either overly confident, overly challenged or simply bored instead of truly committing things to memory, and while I'm mostly referring to anatomy that really goes for any given kind of study that I've been doing or avoiding this entire time. Even on days where I work from 9:30 am to 8pm and then hang out with my parents until 10 or so I could probably get a dozen decent studies of specific anatomical features like simple bones or muscles done. However what usually happens is I draw a dozen or more one day, think I have everything figured out and go on to do something else, or even do nothing at all for a few days straight. Then I come back to it to find out that I wasn't as smart as I thought I was when confronted with that same subject seen from outside the realm of an individual study which necessitates a lot of wasteful backtracking. I estimate I could draw as much in the practical sense over the four years I've currently been drawing in a single year or less, and more effectively too. I am truly ashamed of how few even rudimentary, sketchy portraits I've done and the amount of 10 minute+ figure drawings etc. despite how important these things obviously are. When I get a bit better I'm going to work on a lesson plan for essentially starting from scratch based both on what I'd learned from other artists and the mistakes I'd made so far and hopefully that will help others avoid the same pitfalls and accelerate their progress. In the meantime I'll have to think of what I'm going to do to proceed myself while keeping everything else in context.

>>92 I look forward to it. I'm just starting and have taken your advice (and op's) to heart. I hope you consider making some sort of guide in the near future, I'd very much like to have a look at it.

>>660 I wish I was in the position to make such a thing, but drawing still isn't particularly intuitive to me just yet, even years after I'd "started" formally. There's a lot of work to be done on my end but I'm warming up to the challenge once again and I hope I do get to that point where I can help many people through my experience. That said, A lot of the books, infographics and other material you will find out there is made in good faith, you just have to try and find the teaching of someone who resonates best with you while remaining unafraid of making less informed personal art even as you become more cognizant of the areas in which it may be lacking.

All right, listen hard. What I'm about to tell you is going to change your life. Not kidding. This is the single most important advice you will receive in regards to digital art. Better have your ears peaked. Are you ready? Set hotkeys for PANNING and ZOOMING the document to the buttons of your STYLUS. Key one of them to ROTATE the canvas with a modifier (preferably on a tablet button for ergonomics). The quality of life improvement this simple little thing have made for me is out of this world. My speed, comfort and productivity have multiplied since. Also, that excruciating pain behind your left shoulder stems from reaching over the tablet to the keyboard. Key as much as fucking possible to the tablet itself.

>>1016 I've pretty much ignored my tablet's physical hotkeys this entire time, maybe it's time to take the 5-10 minutes to set them up properly

>>1016 My cats are the only ones to use the touch keys on the display tablet.

>>1019 As someone who's also been drawing for years and has literally never used the touch keys doesn't it really seem like quite a waste though? You can set macros for them and everything. Why are we like this?

I've already shared a bunch over on the Drawpile, but I'll write down some of it for this thread. Here is a bit of advice I would've given myself back a couple years ago. 0. Focus on yourself. I mean don't look too much at other peoples work and get discouraged (You don't know what their life is like. You don't know how much time and effort they've invested into their art.). You are you, and your art is unique. Simply focus on becoming a better version of your past self. If you strive to be like another artist, you will always be a second hand version of that artist. This thought makes me sad. An artist, who never really explored his personal art style. 1. Just stick with it. Eventually you will get there. Everyone else who hasn't reached his art goals has just simply given up prematurely. You don't need to draw every day. (You would probably make faster progress, but if you just can't get yourself to draw, then don't force it.) I've taken many breaks of several months. But I eventually always get back to drawing and painting. 2. Don't post your art online. Or at the very least don't make it a priority. I say this, because you will naturally start to question every stroke you make. "Will others like it?" "Is that too lews for that board/community?" "Why bother, someone already posted a better version of this." "I can't post that online." Just draw what you fucking like. Do it privately, so you can focus 100% on your idea and he process. 3. Practice deliberately. Don't "doodle around", or at least understand that "doodling around" will not help you develop as an artist. Because you're not adding new knowledge to your syste, but instead just do iterations on the things you already know. Art is similar to math or any other science. You have to study a lot and practice a lot to get great. It's funny how I've used to joing Discords back a few years ago, because I thought the streamer was great. A year or so later, they would still be at around the same skill level, while I've surpassed them. That's because I've a learning attitude. I'm open for everything. These streamers either have ego problems or are just plain lazy, and therefore stagnate. 4. Just copying images doesn't make you improve a lot. You should always have a clear intention with your studies. If your study goal is not clear, chances are you will not reach it. You don't need to do a perfect copy of something to capture its essence of it. Ask yourself: "Why am I studying this image?" "What exactly am I focusing on? Color, Shapes, Anatomy, Composition?" 5.If you feel like you're having an "art block" or "don't know what to draw" just watch a documentary or learn something new. Provided your process is not influenced by social pressures (as described in 2), you're probably just lacking some new input. Art is shaped by your experiences. If you're a boring person, your art will be boring. Travel, get complementary hobby, whatever. 6. Draw while not drawing. How to draw from imagination? You have to actually conciously see and analyze the world around you. Always observer. Kim Jung Gi was two years in the military, where he couldn't draw. But he drew in his head. He observed and saved everything he saw in his brain. (Drawing is ultimately just materializing an image, you have in your mind.) Have a note book ready at home, or in your backpack. Whenever you see something interesting, take a note. Take notes about the colors of certain object, of how the gradient of the sky looks like, or whatever you find valuable for you art. Make a litle sketch to capture something of interest. Then later on refine it at home, or base a drawing on it, or encorporate it as an element into your drawing. Remember one thing at a time. Analyse something and focus on remembering that one thing. Then add it to your drawings. Then try to remember another thing. Great pieces of art are just a reflection of someones knowledge and experience (and also his mood and psyche). 7. Dude there are a ton of fucking books on image boards, why the fuck did you not look there earlier? Like... yeah. Holy shit are there many good PDFs on mega.nz. Use them. (But only choose a hand full of them to study over a prolonged period of time. You can read a book five time and still learn something new on the fifth read.) 8. It's all about dem values. Value, Brightness is the most important. Values are 90% of a picture. Color doesn't fucking matter. It's all about color relativity (and value relativity, but we assume you've mastered values.). Think in terms of "warmer" and "cooler". Just use whatever fucking color you feel like, it really doesn't matter. I'm serious. Just keep the light source consistent. Take the light sources color and just mix it into everyhing that's hit by it. If you want to make a rim light, take the light sources color and just press down harder with your stylus. Voila, a rim light. 9. Use your arm and shoulder. (And a smudge guard.) If you want to have smooth lines, use your ellbow and shoulder. Hold your fingers in place and fix your wrist. This is allows you to create perfectly smooth lines for anatomy and organic shapes, but also long straights for more man-made objects and structures.

>>1022 A little correction, because he phrase could be misunderstood. (I won't autistically fix all the other typos.) >Practice deliberately. Don't "doodle around", or at least understand that "doodling around" will not help you develop as an artist. Because you're not adding new knowledge to your syste, but instead just do iterations on the things you already know. Practice deliberately. Don't "doodle around", or at least understand that "doodling around" will not help you develop as an artist. Because you're not adding new knowledge to your system, but instead you're just doing iterations on hings you already know.

>>1022 >How to draw from imagination? You have to actually consciously see and analyze the world around you. Always observer. Kim Jung Gi was two years in the military, where he couldn't draw. But he drew in his head. He observed and saved everything he saw in his brain. (Drawing is ultimately just materializing an image, you have in your mind.) I've heard about this from multiple artists and more recently I've been trying to live it. Glen Vilppu said something to that affect as well stressing that "we don't necessarily draw with our hand so much as we draw with our mind".

Another thing: Only take advice from people you trust. I had to unlearn a few things a couple of times, because of bad advice by people, who were jealous of my progress. I'm not angry at them. I'm just pissed at myself for being dump enough to not listen to my gut, when it said: "I think you shouldn't listen to this guys advice." My advice comes deep down from by love for art and for the people pursuing it. Butt you can't know that, so take whatever I've said as you will

>>1022 I will say, there is this artist who had some advice about drawing, but Idk if it is useful per say: https://lynxgriffin.tumblr.com/post/624404684094029824/youre-one-of-the-most-creative-peopleartists-i Yes, I know it's from a cucked platform, but this artist seems to know helpful things and isn't the type of those people.

>>1026 You present a lot of useful tips. If anything, you are much more helpful than most people I know of. Also, I think if anything is close to being lewd by what you said in your other post, that it would not matter since the artist in question is mostly doing it to just... get on off on whatever they like in fiction.

>>1027 >https://lynxgriffin.tumblr.com/post/624404684094029824/youre-one-of-the-most-creative-peopleartists-i Oh, yes. Exactly. At point "2." I'm talking about that censor brain. It's basically societal programming. I fucking despise it. Thanks for the link. I'll try this "drawing something right after waking up"-thing. I want to see how far I've come in eradicating the "censor brain". Ahahaha, I love it.

>>1022 If you don't mind me asking, how can I improve after this drawing? What critique would you give it?

>>1033 The drawing is pretty alright. You might not like what I'll be saying, but I firmly believe it will drastically improve your work. 1. Perspective Learn how to draw cubes and cylinders in perspective. Be able to draw a scene from different angles. You should be able to move the picture plane around, as well as adjusting the cone of vision. Learn how to see simple forms in everything. Break things down into cubes and spheres, and then place them in space accordingly. 2. Human proportions You should learn how to relate different body parts to each other. How many heads down are the nipples? Or the navel? How long is the upper arm (humerous) in relation to the thigh or width of the rib cage. How many heads wide is the torso? So on and so forth. I personally also use cranial units as a measurement sometimes, because it can be useful. The more of these rules you learn, the more accurate your figures become. And once you know all the proportions, you can deliberately start to push and pull the anatomy. Shorten or stretch body parts. 3. Human anatomy This means the skeleton, muscles, fat pads (and veins if you want). You will also learn a lot of proportions while studying anatomy. I personally can recommend the youtube channel "Proko". You probably know him already. I've personally watched all of his anatomy videos at least twice. Most of them around three or four times. A few more than 10 times. Repetition is an easy way to remember things.

>>1034 Thank you for the feedback, and all the information you provided are things that I can improve on. I have not heard of Proko. Sounds like they would be amazing to learn from. Do they also do anything in relation to anatomy about character such as the one I did above? I guess anthros would be the key word with any character that is not human or humanoid like fairies or those of the sort from things like Greek myth.

>>1036 >anthros anatomy Human anatomy is going to be backbone of any humanoid character you will draw, so learn it. After all, anthropomorphic characters are noting but humans with few altered parts. Since anthropomorphic characters do not exist, there is no real reference on how to draw them, and it is tough to create instructions on how to do it. Only option is "draw a human, but add/change x." To draw things like wings for example, you will need to break them down into basic shapes when planning your drawing and might want to use references. Same goes for anything else you will try to add.

>>1038 >Human anatomy is going to be backbone of any humanoid character you will draw, so learn it. It's also the basis for animal and creature anatomy. All mammals share the share basic anatomy with each other. Obviously there are animals that are more different from humans and ones that are more similar. But once you have very solid foundational knowledge of human anatomy, learning the anatomy of any other mammal is rather easy. You just have to focus on how it's different from the human body, and what makes it read as another animal.

>>1041 hmm nyes

>>1042 I think my pic related is more appropriate. Yours is weird. I'm currently reading Gottfired Bammes books. He's the most based artist I've ever read a book from. He's roasting Loomis and Hogarth. lmfao

>I think my pic related is more appropriate. >Yours is weird

>>1078 >Bammes roasting Burne U N D Y N A M I C N D Y N A M I C

Utilize layer groupings!