A few questions for all artists

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This is actually a pretty interesting thread. Nice to read everyone's background and opinion on the matter.

Carry on.

This is like a revised version of this thread except with less advanced/technical jargon and a more inclusive atmosphere. I approve.

Carry on.

Ah, thanks for the heads up, Araiia.

Carry on.

I thought I could help a little bit as I'm a starter myself. I just started drawing this month. My mother is a amateur painter and once she wanted a mail model so I posed for her. And then I went all correcting her, and she told me I had talent for shapes, so I thought I'd give drawing a go.
I think if you want to go draw you should have a good eye for ratio. Also you need to be creative. When I go to bed, I most of the time come up with 1-5 things I want to draw the next day, but that is where I find out I got no time for that
Anyway I think it's talent for the basics, cause with only talent you don't get very far. You need to practice, so you get more experience at what happens if you draw what line My advice for you is go draw for a month, draw alot, try different things and if you like it/goes well, keep doing it. If it keeps sucky, it's possible you aren't made for art, maybe your next weeks soccer proffessional
I can't say all this too certain as I'm just a starter myself, but I believe that it would be like this Also I advice you to start drawing by hand, computer is alot of difference, drawing is more natural cause you do it your whole life, so might be easier to start with.

Hope it helped

Q. Were you guys born with a talent for drawing or did you start off terrible and gradually improved?

I used to really enjoy drawing and art in schools so I guess I went home to practice. I wasn't that good maybe a little better than the average in the class which soon changed when I didn't pick up a pencil properly until high school. I started again getting into art in 2005, I even invested in my first graphics tablet. Improvement certainly takes lots of work but it's SO worth it. I look back at my old stuff and think I've grown so well. Later I'll gather so of my (embarrassing) old work with some of my newer stuff and I'll post it in here.

Q. What tips do you have for someone like me that is interested in creating his own masterpieces.

Be inspired, start off drawing things you have a real passion for, that when if it starts to turn sour. You'll have the patience and drive to correct and complete it.

Q. What mediums do you guys use.

Used to use charcoal/pencil when I started out. Moved onto digital (photoshop + Wacom) when saw I was there was no mess involved and you could get professional results. I was awe struck by some of the digital artists.

Q. Building on the last questions, what programs do you guys use in retouching your art. I have photo shop because I need it for the website creation but what else do you recommend?

Photoshop is my proffered program as I've used it all along. I sometimes wish I had used Corel painter as that has some wonderful results. I just don't have the patience to learn a new program and work flow. Give that a go.
I also recommend art rage for messing about in, it gives a very rough look.

Q. Do you have any good websites/programs that you find to helpful in improving art skills?

Yes! The best thing you can do is find an art forum with like minded people. For critique and moral.

the only thing painter has over PS is the rotatable canvas.

Forward

I debated with myself on whether to do this or not, but I thought it would be in the best interest of the OP to post. I apologize beforehand for all the people that I offend with this post. I don't mean to exclude anyone or inflate my epeen; I just want to offer my views.

On the practice of art

While I believe there is nothing preventing a person from being a master of fine art except motivation, there is definitely a right way to practice. For a starting artist, I believe lineart, digital art, ctrl z, or even things like pen/ink and markers, stylization or cartoons are bad.

I do not mean this in general. I actually enjoy a lot of the things I have just listed in general, and some of my favorite artists have stylized drawings.

It is just that all these things teach nothing about volume or mass, light and dark, composition and design. With all these things, you tend to focus on the character or subject, and them alone. It is easy to get trapped into a circle of no improvement where you are just drawing the same things over and over again because you are too scared to deviate from your "style."

It might be that introducing background is too hard for you because you never learned to do it in the first place. It might be that your figures look awkward because all you learned is stylization without understanding how the human body work (I have a lot of struggles with this myself). It might be that everything you draw looks flat because you never really learned how light interacts with objects or the physical basis for speculars and core shadows.

A mastery of the basics is the building blocks of good art no matter what the style is. All the decent animators, manga artists, cartoonists have a firm grasp of realism should they ever choose to do so. I have a friend in Pixar, and he told me that when the place picks new artists for their design team, they don't look at all for all the characters or cartoony stuff you have in your portfolio, they look for good old traditional figure drawing and paintings because that demonstrates to them you know your BASICS. A style is easily learned, but the basics are not.

On sampling artists

I do agree with the posts above about stalking some favorite artists, but you should be careful about who you look for in your first stages of learning about art. A lot of people are great artists, but the fact that they use styles that are pretty out there, it's hard to learn basic concepts from their art.

I know a lot of people who have maybe read a bad tutorial or tried off the bat to learn a caricaturized style and really have not improved much in maybe two years. All the "draw manga!" tutorials and such out there are quick and dirty ways to get something that resembles the popular styles, but they learn nothing of muscles or skeletal structure. So whenever there is a complex pose or anything, they flail around trying to guess what should go where.

On drawing from life

Drawing from life might be the single best tool in an aspiring artist's arsenal to become better. I know I don't do enough of it for sure. Everything you draw gets added to your mental encyclopedia of objects to use for later drawings. If you can draw from life and study exactly how it is formed in reality, you can distort that however you want in subsequent drawings. If you have an image of the truth in your head, no matter how much you distort it; it still holds the feeling of the object. If you have an image of an image because you were copying someone else's art, you just get farther and farther from an object, sometimes rendering something unrecognizable after a few repetitions.

Drawing from life also teaches many things about color theory and value. If I were to teach an art class, the first maybe 2-3 classes (around a month actually if I had my way), would be completely and totally devoted to drawing eggs. Yes eggs. I would try to get my students to study exactly how light interacts with the egg, and how to construct an egg in three dimensions using direct light, diffuse light, and reflected light. Oh and I would not have them use anything like pen or even pencil, but rather charcoal or chalk. Force them to forget about lines and such, and focus on creating mass. The students would all hate me for it, but I firmly believe that it would give them a much easier time in the future.

On composition and details

I've argued my stance on composition with a friend last night, and I guess I'll just summarize it here. Learning composition might be the single most important thing if you want to paint. EVERYTHING matters in composition. Shapes, motion, details, colors, values, all these things are only design elements that can potentially aid composition. I think too many starting artists have been sucked into details, and ignored the composition of a piece as a whole. Details are meant to support a composition. Always ask yourself this when you are working on details: "is this necessary? does it make my piece stronger? does it focus my piece?" If you answered no to any of that, chances are leaving out those details is a good idea.

Always take spot checks zoomed out or far away. If something looks awkward, fix it early. Composition is the major culprit of awkward looking art. It's not something that can be learned very easily, but rather requires experimenting, doing self checks, and looking at great artists that have dynamic pieces.

On Styles

I have touched upon this in all the other sections, but I thought I'd crystallize it here because it is important. Styles are great. If everyone painted the same way, I'd be bored out of my mind. But having a style to start can really hinder your progress. Bottom line: have a piece done in at least mild realism that you are satisfied with before starting to stylize, and return to some realism once in a while to keep yourself honest.

Conclusion

Sorry about this TL;DR post. It kind of turned from a response into this rant about the practice of art. This post was not meant to offend anybody, it was just merely my views on what I see as common mistakes that cost new artists years of their time. Please remember, at the end of the day, I'm just another personality on the internet, and I'm by no means a master, so you should take my advice with a grain of salt.

i agree with Blue on most counts, but i think for some people shooting for realism can be abit daunting. realism is much more difficult technically compared to more stylised forms of art where u have tons of leeway.

i think as an aspiring artist, you should look around at the forms of art that inspire you. i slept with a art of star wars book under my pillow many years ago. it was the first thing i looked at in the morning, last thing at nite.

If it is manga you like, i think that is cool but look at the best manga artists for inspiration. look at what they do that makes it look so good to you.

Art is a mix of technical skill coupled with vision and drive. There are many tool masteries that you have to acquire and it is a never ending journey. i agree on Blue's emphasis on technical basics being of utmost importance but at the same time you need to keep it enjoyable for urself. Go for what u like the most, but don't poo poo things like basic construction and anatomy because it makes ur art more believable.

Whatever it is ur doing, making sure u have a damn good time doing it.