Learning the hard way.

[Mitze]

Why is it every picture i do i have to get it wrong. Correct it, and then correct it again 20 times, and it still is wrong. I read art books, i look at instructional videos, and tutorials, i see what the artist is doing and understand the principles. I know what should be done. But then a year down the line i stumble on the same idea from the tutorial and suddenly i get it, i remember, i saw it a year ago it that tutorial. I have to discover everything myself. I seem to be incapable of learning from example. Please tell me this just isn't me, everyone is the same.

Or is it as i always suspected, i am just thick.

Sorry beer rant and 6 hours on a piece of crap pic.

[OmenSpirits]

Questions.

Do you start with a sketch, then use the sketch as a ref to the finishing version of pic you plan on doing? Or do you jump right into doing a full render?

When you are watching an artist doing what he's doing, do you try it as he does it, or watch him all the way through?

Learning something is different for everyone. I learn through osmosis, and find it takes less time to retain a new piece of information than usual.

Some of us need a lot of repetition, which even for me, to get better at the new skill set, needs to be done, until it becomes apart of my normal habit when illustrating.

When you learn something, do it constantly until you forget consciously, and remember it through rit (sp) memory.

Learning from example also means practicing what you see over and over until it fits into your skill set.

[armando]

That sounds mostly right. Behind every design there are hundreds of crap sketches. I first got that through my head watching Ian Mccaig sketching out that mermaid character on his dvd, he erased hundreds of times. And there's quotes galore about getting used to throwing away your first tries, everything works the same: fail fail fail fail, then finally get lucky and get it right.
I found this Freeman Dyson quote on wikipedia a while ago, think I found his name in a thread here, or found it by accident looking at sci fi stuff, but it's a good quote:
"You can't possibly get a good technology going without an enormous number of failures. It's a universal rule. If you look at bicycles, there were thousands of weird models built and tried before they found the one that really worked. You could never design a bicycle theoretically. Even now, after we've been building them for 100 years, it's very difficult to understand just why a bicycle works - it's even difficult to formulate it as a mathematical problem. But just by trial and error, we found out how to do it, and the error was essential."

[kev ferrara]

For one thing, most of the books are crap and most art instruction is bullshit. I think the ratio of bullshit to good sensible instruction is about 20:1. That's just books. Even some of the best books are about half bullshit. The very best books, however are gold (Alla Prima, Loomis, Bridgman, Leffel) Once you start talking about all the art schools and art programs out there, the percentage of bullshit to quality information must be 250:1.

Your guide is your imagination. And your reference material is the world. Look at the world like a scientist and use what you see to make the images in your head look as real as you want them to. First, of course, you must have images in your head.

You may need to stop reading books and just develop your ability to see images in your mind's eye. Just dream your compositions a lot more. Dream, dream, dream. Make little notes of what you dream. Then find reference to detail out what you have dreamt up. Or see how other artists dealt with similar problems. (It is important to really love more than just 1 or 2 artists or art styles, that way you will have lots of influences coming into your work, and your work will look unique. But you cannot fake what you really love in art. Either you love it, or you don't, and never let anybody ever ever ever tell you what you should love or what you should not love.)

You should start formulating your own theories about what makes art look good. Stop reading the books, start looking at artwork that you love, and try to figure out what makes it good. What makes you like it. Start keeping a notebook about what makes your favorite artworks "tick" they way they do.

I also would recommend reading Harvey Dunn's lecture notes: http://www.robolus.com/h.dunn-eveningclassroom.pdf

Good luck
kev

[Bushido]

Thanks a lot Kev for your honesty!

[Mitze]

Thanks Kev. It can be frustrating painting, like a word on the tip of your tongue. I know what i want but just can't grasp it. When i look at other peoples pics i tend to look for what is wrong in them maybe i should be looking for what is right in them. What i like in there pic and steal it.

I think i have a big confidence problem with my drawing ability's.

[kev ferrara]

Mitze, have you studied Bridgman? Because it looks to me like your sense of form as comprised of planes and the placement of light sources in space is a problem of yours. You need to be able to conceptualize that stuff in your head in order to create believable stuff. Or photo ref everything, which a lot of artists do... creating sculptures and models of stuff, in 3d programs, or out of clay or boxes or what have you.

Also, bridgman might be able to help you with the anatomy of the eye. Your eyes seem to be a bit sloppy anatomically. I would look at what Bridgman shows about eyes, and then use the information to draw like pages and pages of eyes from whatever reference you have available. If you can make your eyes really believable, the whole picture becomes more believable.

ALso, bridgman has a book called 100 hands which you should pick up.

Good luck
kev