[ ART TIPS ] From my inbox 💌 (Patreon)

"Uhmm how do you usually practice or try to improve your art?  How do you study things? I have a hard time with that. Or visualize what you wanna draw?
I ask you because your Artstyle is incredible and a huge inspiration for me.
I really want to improve and maybe even earning money with it for college but, I just have the feeling people dont like my Artstyle"

I received this message from a Patreon supporter and friend, thought the reply could be helpful to more people! This hasn't been proofread so apologies for any English mistake!

🔸 How do you usually practice or try to improve your art?

I used to never "practice" but only draw complete illustrations one after the other for years. This way the progress is stressful and slow, because you notice the hundred mistakes in each piece and try to correct them one by one... when you do not have the knowledge to make it. 

The best way to efficiently make progresses is doing daily warm-ups, sketches, studies. Give yourself a time to complete these, this way you'll be forced to choose which mistakes to correct and which ones to let go; this will lead you to a general understanding of how to make an artwork correct, then you'll be ready to experiment how to make it look good, then you'll want to refine your style here and there, test more techniques and so on...

The first times you do sketches, keep in mind they have to be ugly! They serve a higher purpose than what meets the eye, nobody will have to see them, so just concentrate on making the lines efficient for what they want to communicate. Forget the aesthetic, focus on the shapes underneath.

🔸 How do you study things?

Observe - Simplify - Deconstruct - Reinterpret

The eye has to be trained to read the basic shapes of a complex object, the brain has to possess the knowledge to imagine how what you cannot see is done. 

I remember I've made huge improvements upon unlocking the "3D thinking". To explain what I mean, let's pretend we're at a figure drawing session: there's a bust you have to draw, there's your canvas and there's you.
The lines you trace are not a two-dimensional outline of a shape which "wants to resemble a head", your strokes are the projection of what you see beyond your canvas. You are not drawing a flat thing, you are translating a tridimensional object. 

If you're sitting at the left of the bust, you wouldn't draw its right ear too, but you know it's there, because you have enough experience of the human head to presume so. Studying means deepening this knowledge more and more.
It started with acknowledging that the human hand has 5 fingers, it will develop into the understanding of joints and nerves which you'll be able to draw to better represent the expressivity of your characters' body language.

Axonometry drawing can help you unlock the "3D thinking", start with geometrical and non round objects: a stapler, a coffee maker, a chair... 

🔸 How do you visualize what you wanna draw?

I commonly experience 3 scenarios:

• I have an epiphany of a mental image showing exactly what I want an illustration to look like: characters, vibe, pose, colors, atmosphere, everything; so I "only" have to put in on canvas. This leads to the most successful kind of outcome. 
• I know what I want to draw, but I can't perfectly picture it in mind. I'm usually certain of the characters involved, I have a vague idea for the pose based on the dynamic I want to show but often background and atmosphere are something I decide only later. This is the most common occurrence and the result is averagely good!
• I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I lazily take a reference and copy it after more or less randomly deciding who the characters are going to be, hoping halfway of the process inspiration will strike and I'll feel passionate about the illustration. Luckily this is the least common scenario - artworks born this way have unpredictable results, sometimes the execution makes them worthy, sometimes they're just "meh, something".

Talking with my best friend, who's also an artist, extremely passionate and equally good, she revealed me that she can never picture in her mind what he wants to draw. In her case, she knows the vibe she's going for so she starts sketching a composition over and over again, adjusting it here and there until she's satisfied. Then, she lays down the greyscale for lights values and tests color combinations on a multiply/overlay layer, before merging everything and proceeding with painting. She'll do multiple and radical edits even after this step. 

🔸 Additional suggestions:

If you despise an artwork you're working on and you realize you can't make it better, let it sit until the day after. Sometimes I feel like a sketch is turning out meaningless, but when I reopen the file the day after I'm like "wow is this the same thing I was working on? Not bad at all".
This also applies to when it seems there's no way to fix your art. After hours of working on something, it's highly probable you can't see the mistakes. There's no other way than taking time and come back at it later (later doesn't mean just a hour, sleep on it). 

Draw for yourself, not for the audience. Especially as a beginner/hobbist, please remember that the appreciation of the social media audience is not indicative of the quality of your art, in both ways. You can draw "ugly" and have success because of the content, or you can draw splendidly and be ignored.
Always ask YOURSELF and yourself only if you're satisfied with your art. I can ensure you that when the answer will be a strong yes, you're also going to be more successful on socials.
Sharing your art with an audience is a fantastic experience, I love it and I wish everyone who seeks a community can find it, but comes with delusional moments you hardly overcome if you're not confident enough on your own. 

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If you have more questions or curiosities, I'll gladly reply⁓! *:･ﾟ✧