Whenever I spend more than a few hours on an artwork, something happens to me which I'm sure a lot of others suffer from as well. Let me know if this sounds familiar. It goes something like this: over the course of a project, your eye starts to become estranged from your work. It begins as a lack of excitement for what you're doing. "This feels a lot like the not-so-fun kind of hard work." Then it progresses into not seeing anything that you're doing right, only the mistakes. It's kind of like an allergy that increases in severity with exposure. You push through and make the thing, somehow, but the whole time you have a growing, nagging thought. "This sucks." And you step back and you gag. It's true! All you see are problems. Crappolla! A steaming waste of precious expensive materials. The prevailing sentiment is failure, disappointment, and self-rejection. And no amount of consoling or praise makes it better, either. In fact, the more people insist that it's good, the more you feel actively repulsed. "They're just saying that to make me feel better." Or, "They don't know good from bad anyway." The very idea of looking at your art after this period of seeking reassurance makes you ill. It's like a poison that blocks all your objectivity. It makes you wonder why you try at all. This is something that I've heard Mark Carder dub as "the artist's curse." Sometimes I get it worse than other times, but boy did I get it with this illustration. I look at the finish of this and go "bleck," but I don't need a pat on the back or anyone consoling me. It's okay not to like what you've made. Just don't let it rule you. Don't let it make you immune to compliments. I just have to accept that my dumb brain is activating its inferiority complex, and I will eventually move on and realize it's not all that bad. There's always an opportunity to do better next time, anyway. Or do the cycle over again, at least haha. What do you guys think? You ever get this? It's like, you know it's probably pretty good, but you also think it's objectively awful. Weird feeling.

I feel like I’m missing something from my art to take it to the next level any help would be greatly appreciated

My attempt at a Drew Struzan-style colored pencil portrait. It's no secret that I adore the man's art, especially his looser comps and sketches. So I tried to capture some of that essence with this while retaining my own caligraphy. Or in other words, not trying to be a total imitator and be myself with it. I'm a little more timid than he was with the bold linear marks, but I tried not to shy away from allowing definitive shapes and lines to form, either. It's such a balancing act between keeping the realism (soft edges, more tonal and simplified, etc.) and bringing in more abstraction and linework and detail. I think I struck it pretty well, but my mind always goes towards more subtlety and less bravura for some reason, even though it's the bravura I crave. I guess I don't feel like it'll look realistic enough for my taste if I go too heavy into the linear stuff. But I like it... so... What do y'all think? How could I improve for future works? How can I incorporate more abstraction and linear style rendering without killing the realism or becoming an imitator? Love to hear some people's thoughts on this. Thanks for looking, at any rate!

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how much information a drawing really needs. Landscapes like this contain a lot of elements, and every area could be pushed further with more detail. But if everything is explained too clearly, the image can start to feel busy. So this time, I wanted to focus more on how much detail to give each area. I kept most of the image within a middle-value range, and saved the clearer details for the focal areas.

Does anyone play with Procreate for studies before getting out the brushes? It feels totally different. I swear every "oil brush" on there changes the value of the color selected. I'm new and working with paint is foreign, but this feels totally different. Is it at all analogous to oil paint? It feels and responds so different that I'm unsure it will be as helpful in getting faster iterations as I had hoped. Trying to do quick studies before committing to paint and hoping to get some idea of a process that works for me. Thank you for your input. It is always genuinely appreciated.

pen testing

Started a lay in, but I'm realizing the reflected light is going to pose a problem for my newbie eyes and skills. I often hear that inventing can make things wonky... Wondering if simply compressing the values of the neck such that the reflected light there is darker would be a possible solution or will I end up chasing my tail?

Here are a few brushwork studies of grass and trees. When drawing natural subjects like these, I wanted to try arranging the strokes in different ways and see what effects they would create. Using the split marks of a fan brush as a base, or dragging the broad side of a flat brush to create a sense of direction, both turned out to be interesting experiments. Looking back, I think I could do a little less refinement next time. Leaving more of the underlying brushwork visible might bring the result closer to what I had in mind.

I just got into painting last week. Got an easel. Gonna set up a proper space for oil painting. Can you share a picture of your space and what things you've found essential or even just massively beneficial to your process? A proper cleaning of the space will be my next step... Thanks!

When painting black objects, it’s easy to instinctively treat them as one solid mass of black. In this still life study, I wanted to explore how objects that appear nearly black can still have their own color tendencies. Although color perception is subjective, comparing warm and cool shifts, along with the direction of each hue, makes the color relationships easier to understand.

This is a digital painting i did on adobe photoshop and this time o tried a different anime style other than my usual tintin simple picture boook and creating this piece was very relaxing and i was happy with the results that came out and also i was bored of my older tintin style drawing so i wanted to put my hands on something different and i used a refference for creating this piece.

any tips to improve would be appreciated

I’m painting a photo for a commission and could use some help improving it. It’s not done, but I could use some advice going forward. Especially any big proportion issues and how I could keep working on and improving the faces. Or anything else that’s feeling off or could use more work before I continue on that part. Any advice really. Thanks. (The photo blew out the highlights and my painting is overall warmer than the photo of it.)

I get they are connected and like a more detailed vid explaining so I can plan out some paintings in the future.

Here are a few watercolor studies exploring texture and color. Colors can have different hues while still sharing a similar value. In drawing, I’m usually trying to solve form. With watercolor, I’m more interested in how color can create the mood of a scene. I experimented with subtle hue shifts within a close value range, then placed these studies beside my earlier drawings for comparison. There is still room to improve the flow of my brushwork, as well as some of the proportions and smaller details.

First full day of summer, first artwork. I'm going to do a portrait painting of one of my all-time favorite actors, Cary Grant. I thought I'd take the Proko community along for the ride, explaining my steps as I go for anyone interested in exploring this technique, even if they're not necessarily interested in the subject. That technique being a classic illustration-style mixed-media application, my current préféré, made popular by my art daddy Drew Struzan with his movie posters in the 80s and 90s. It is a fairly popular method, however, used by other illustrators of the day and even by some contemporary ones as well. These include Richard Amsel, Bob Peak, Matt Busch, and Mike Butkus, to name a few. And I'm showing it here because I think it's a rather unused... disused?... undervalued approach, not spoken of too often in fine art/academic art circles. So let's go! Step one is the most important. The drawing! This is done with regular graphite on a 10"x15" heavyweight Crescent cold-pressed illustration board, #110. The surface doesn't have to specifically be this, but I wouldn't recommend doing it on canvas or hardboard. It might be okay on watercolor paper, though, or something that's at least heavy enough to support the layers of paint. I like illustration board because it's cheap, stiff, and very absorbent, perfect for the washes I'm about to do. And because I'm not too worried about having to redo this, I'm going straight ahead on the raw illustration board, no preparatory steps needed, but you could do it over a layer or two of gesso if you wanted. Drew would tint his gesso gray, but again, I'm just going straight in. Just watch out for adhesion issues if you do opt for a primed surface like that. Also, with this approach, the drawing is essential to the outcome. Solidly designed shapes and confident lines are a must, for they not only serve as a guide for your later stages, but since a lot of it will show through the transparent layers, you want it to look like a finished artwork from the jump. And that's the whole reason I like this technique, because at every stage it can look like a finished piece. The further you go, though, the better it becomes. Notice how I've gone for a lot of big lines, distinct shapes, and heavy hatching. This is because I want to convey masculinity in this painting. I've also taken this fairly far into the rendering with just the pencil. It will save me some tedium in expressing those values in paint later on, but also adds to the overall texture and mood that I'm aiming for as it goes. This technique is kind of like tinting a drawing rather than purely painting a portrait. Makes things go fast once things start going, if that makes any sense. Anyway, let me know what you think! Hit me up with any questions!

I drew this pair of Scottish Fold siblings during class. My student told me they'd been together for 17 years. For this drawing, I spent a lot of time finding the right balance between the overall value relationships and not over-rendering the details. Finding that balance between saying more and saying less is always an interesting challenge.

i am taking ideacraft by sterling hundley, and i take digital notes. I wanted to revise today and found this in my notes but unable to recollect which video is this from. Can someone help ?