What does /ic/ think of Plague of gripes?

He's cool and I love a lot of his work and videos, but he recently did a video about his ethos when it comes to learning to be an artist, and I pretty much disagreed with everything he said.

He basically said practice was pointless and all you should do is constantly try new styles instead of practicing. I remain unvonvinced...

>>2372572
Man, whoever suggested that sounds like a faggot.

He seems like an alright guy, but I don't like his art much. His colours, his rendering, his lines, his style in general, it's all just not very appealing. I think he's just a hobbyist, though, and a good amount of people seem to like his work, so I don't think it matters much. The stories or comics he does seem nice.

>>2372572
I'm watching this right now, and it's kinda... weird. I don't really like the things he's saying. It all sounds really naive, I think. Nice voice, though.

>>2372602

Yeh he has a very strange philosophy about improving as an artist. Hate to have to disagree with him so extremely because I am a fan but... this video is baffling

>>2372572

I watched it, and I think there's a decent amount of wisdom that newbies could stand to listen to, namely: a lot of tutorials are lame and teach duplication instead of developing an eye, your idols might well suck at conveying what/how they draw, to try a bunch of new things to see if you might have a niche you might not have thought about.

He seems like he balks at the formality of training, though, and I think for a lot of people that can mean they don't take training seriously, but I think he's got a decent enough head on his shoulders.

That being said, I don't find his style appealing at all.

I'll break it down for you
>Hobbyist
>Generic 'style'
>Drawings lack believable form, depth, and a sense of gesture
>Zero knowledge on lighting and shading
>Wildly misinformed idiot misinforming masses of 8 year olds on how to improve

>>2372565
>>2372572
not going to watch his videos as they are over an hour long just to see what he says... his style/skill is good enough to make fanart of cartoons, if he does something more detailed than that, it shows how poor his overall knowledge is and if what was said that he tells you don't practice just experiment with styles is true, he is a huge fucking failure destined to stagnate and should not be telling others to do the same.

>>2372565
As a person I've got nothing against him. As an artist, I always thought his work was pretty shit.

Wait he's giving people art pointers!?

Look, the guy is funny, but he's in no position to be giving anyone advice about art. He simply isn't advanced enough to place himself in that position.

>barely related internet celebrity thread

Niggas...please!

[ - ]

>>2372565
He's pretty uninspiring, but I agree with his advice for the most part. If you look at people like Tehmeh or Sinix, heck even Ruan Jia, Mullins and KJG the thing that's striking is that they developed their own theories of painting through experimenting with all sorts of approaches and being willing to make mistakes. To use a food allegory, cooking by the book can get you results with actually knowing what you're doing, but if you want to learn to create your own recipes you have to try out different ways of putting ingredients together, different ways of processing them, different ways of presenting them, etc.

While I may just sound like a fanboy jumping to his defence he doesn't say don't practice, he just has a different perspective on what practice should be
as far as an as artist goes I like his stuff but I feel most of his popularity is from his animated videos instead of his drawings

I think the message is just getting a bit muddled here. He's more or less saying that you should be trying to learn new things, and not just making the same mistakes over and over. I think the entire point of the video was to keep you from stagnating by trying to get you to seek out knowledge. Find better artists, find out how they got good, emulate them to learn their techniques. Jeff Watts has said stuff fairly similar.

He's not the greatest artist in the world, but he's said so himself. He's been so caught up in animating cartoons and whatnot to stay afloat he hasn't been able to focus on just plain drawing. He's really made a lot of progress since I started following him, though.

It would be cool to see what he could do with more serious studies and less fanart/concepting, but you can't make someone want to do something they're not interested in when they're having success with what they enjoy.

>>2372572
I think Plague had a hard time putting this specific idea into words, though. He says practice and perfect practice aren't the best ways to learn, but then he specifies the ideas he's talking about as "variable practice", so people get confused by it.

I think the essence of his video is that learning to draw isn't something that can be diluted down to a step-by-step process where you draw circles, then you draw the rest of the bird. You can follow the steps just fine, but the idea he's pushing is that drawing should be about experimentation and going out of your comfort zone as often as possible in order to produce unique results.
If you draw anime every single day for a year, then you're going to get better at anime. However, unless you're learning through a master who can provide the correct principles while you do so, then you're ONLY going to be able to draw anime. If you are forced to change your style...say, if you needed to make something more fantasy-oriented and you never studied stuff like Berserk, or you needed to create vehicles but always focused on figures only, then you're going to be like a fish out of water. Gasping for air.

But if you're trying various things while you learn and practice, then you're not going to have as difficult a time adapting to this new scenario. There will naturally be difficulty in trying new things, but learning to deal with it in the early stages of learning is better than being forced to learn everything all over again.
His talk about how 'trying a new style" and finding something you can adapt to your drawing is sound advice, too.