Yo! I was wondering if anyone had any tips on improving art. I'm not a beginner artist (I've been drawing since 2018), but I feel like my art sucks, and I want to improve it. I know that one of the best ways to do it is to attend an art class and/or go to art school, but I don't really want art as a career. It's more of a hobby of mine. Art doesn't have to be as good as the Mona Lisa, but I just don't want people to insult me for having "bad" art, and I want to stop thinking that my art looks bad. If anyone could leave some tips or tutorials, then that would be amazing.

OUH i know about this !! this is like my thing !! okay essay incoming - because the awesome thing about art is you don't have to go to school for it. i'm also going to assume you haven't been to any art classes - sorry if this information does end up being redundant!

so, like, first and foremost, the thing i gotta recommend to any artist is to !! do !! some !! studies !! studies are observational drawings done typically in rapid succession. in other words - you just draw exactly what you see but on a time limit! this forces your brain to quickly develop the muscle memory needed to draw whatever it is you may be looking to draw. whether that be people or plants or landscapes or animals - anything you want, really. these will not "look good"! they will look sloppy. here are some of mine! you could also do some more long-form observational stuff if you want to hone in on something specific like realism, though it's entirely unnecessary. the whole purpose is to simply understand how things in the world work visually so you can incorporate them into your style in a seamless, believable way. for timed studies, i recommend using quickposes as it's free and convenient. if you want to go to an in-person study session, i recommend that as well! (also jsyk, in these two previously mentioned study methods, it's common for nude models to be a thing. if that's something you're uncomfortable with you can always go to a café or smth and draw the people you see there! works just as well if not better.)

another thing you should do is learn about the elements of art !! understanding these fundamentals is a great way to then understand what it is you feel your work may be lacking. it's also a great way to analyze the works of others, and understand why you may like or dislike something someone else made. the way you would learn about these in art school/classes is by using a variety of techniques and mediums that focus on a specific element. for example, you might be asked to use pen and ink to learn about line and texture, or a line-less charcoal drawing on gray toned paper to understand form and value better. if you have an art gallery or museum nearby, take a trip there and take note of some of the art you like! ask yourself why it is you like them, what elements do they showcase particularly well - don't feel bad about pointing out something "obvious" in your own analysis!

most importantly, i want you to keep in your mind and in your heart that your art is not "bad". everything in art is subjective! if you get discouraged because you're not where you want to be, it's okay to take a step back and collect yourself before trying again.

Ah, I cannot thank you enough! Sometimes my self esteem gets super low, but I'm trying to help myself to not think that everything I do is trash.

of course!! if you need any more help i'd be more than happy to give further guidance :] and keep your head up!! you got this!! <3

I wish I had an answer, I'm in the same boat. I can do pixel art that I think looks ok, but anything more complicated than that looks like it was drawn by a 12 year old.

What I've been trying is just some daily practice with reference. But that only really works for simple/quick things that you can do every day like poses or facial expressions. I'm at a total loss when it comes to shading and coloring. Still, my poses are a lot better than they were a few years ago, so daily practice does work. It just only improves the thing you actually practice.

It might be easier to give advice if you shared some of your artwork. The generic advice of "draw more" and "use reference" probably apply, but it's hard to give specifics without seeing your current art.

honestly, it wouldn't be a bad idea to make this thread an art crit thread :0 i feel like people would get good use out of it!

i'm holding my hand out to you would you like some direction

i getcha!! i do a lot of art as well ^_^ (1) (2) (3) (4)

i don't have as thorough feedback, but one thing i do sometimes (both intentionally and subconsciously) is to look at art i like, identify specific parts i think are good, try to find out why they're so good, and apply it to my own art if i'm able. i did a lot of art trades a few years back, and i unconsciously stole a tiny feature from the style of pretty much everyone i traded with

this can also apply to specific things you want to work on too – look up art references for things you want to work on (or look at how your favorite artists go about it), and try to identify the techniques used. if it's something more broad like anatomy, a lot of people make tutorials and you can sort of build your own method for it over time

i hope this is helpful! [: i heard someone say once that you have to get bad drawings out of your system before you can get to the good ones – so keep at it!

I used to do a lot of drawing and stuff way back when i was a kid/teen. I think the biggest thing and something that eventually lead me to stopping drawing is not understanding a simple thing. Your lines being 90% there is good enough, you might think you can do it all better, but at some point you have to move onto the next thing. Get your drawings to a finished point and consider it done, yes you could redraw the arms again for the 25th time, but you could also get some shading done and call it finished. I spent so long redoing the lines and stuff my ability to do other things were way less developed, leading me to spend longer doing those if i ever got there. So everything ended up taking multiple days just to get something I ended up only 61% liking, an improvement over the 59% liking i'd have had if I just called it done a little earlier. Finishing things and making a little catalog of your work is the most important thing. That's what I found the biggest hurdle for me and it applied at all scales. like forks was saying, the rapid studies and completions of rough sketches will help a ton in getting you to figure out areas you dont think you're proficient enough at now.