How can you delay gratification when just starting out? It's

the gratification is in learning. if you don't enjoy drawing, you either need a new teacher or should give up

>>2791231
How is the learning enjoyable? It's just tedious.

>>2791231
plz sticky this

i get why beginners say they're more interested in the end product (which they naturally should be) but how are you supposed to survive through the intitial year/2 year grind when it feels like a chore

if i were you op i'd reevaluate what i truly want from art

>>2791228

Once I learned how to do female thights my enjoyment has gone up considerably. Also hands, hands and gestures make yoy charcters more expressive, and thus more satisfying to make, so there, focus on that.

>>2791228
>>2791228
The key of progress is finding something easy enough so you can enjoy the practice and something hard enough so you can struggle learning.

Imagine you just started climbing. Will you climb upstairs or fucking K2?

Climbing upstairs is boring, and climbing K2 is discouraging. Find something inbetween instead and enjoy your long-term progress.

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Learning has to be enjoyable. You draw something for the first time, maybe a nose, and it's awful. So you look at whatever your reference is and try to figure out why yours looks so different. You try again and correct one thing that you did wrong. You keep on drawing it over and over and keep figuring out things you're doing wrong, and you try things that you don't think will work but somehow they do. That's what makes drawing so amazing for me; it's that feeling of acquiring new knowledge that you didn't even know existed.

>>2791238
quit your whining, faggot. dumb children can scribble with intense excitement and focus without giving a shit. before vilppu, cavemen had no choice but to paint vague representations of females when they needed a quickie. right now, you (should)have a goal and infinite resources. but if you can't derive fun from pencil marks, then you will never improve.

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>>2791238
Well my friendly neighborhood nigg-padre, you see.
Everyday, I think about art. Every waking moment I want to draw art.
Each time I draw I use a new technique and try a new way of doing something all while pushing myself to my absolute limit.
I don't use a technique because I have to, but because the desire to experiment and draw in every possible way is too tantalizing to control.
To put it simply, I have become the art.

>>2791276
This. Exactly this. You get satisfaction in learning new techniques and strategies that previous you couldn't ever fathom. It seems so simple to present you but impossible for previous you. It is so much fun to learn and improve your craft.

>>2791228
if you are just starting out you are probably underestimating how long it will take

>>2791316
>To put it simply, I have become the art.
Post yourself, faggot.

>>2792248
kek

>>2791295
>>2791316
For people having so much fun, you sure sound a little angry.

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>>2791270

This post gets it but it needs more explaining. Here it goes.

OP - the gratification in work is a fickle thing and if you approach it with an end-goal in mind where you haven't laid out a very plausible path towards that end goal, the lack of confidence will lead to a lack of motivation and will be very detrimental to your learning.

The philosophy of training is as important as the training itself.

Allow me to explain.

I'll assume this is the first difficult, long-term endeavor you're facing, and as such you have no previous conception of how to approach it, how to pace yourself, how to think and how to develop a philosophy of the work involved. In other words, there's a large number of things "you don't know that you don't know".

From what I've seen, /ic/ advocates the Nicolaïdes approach which is essentially the "If you're not drawing 16 hours a day you're a loser", but his way not a forced meme like /ic/. I'll spend a bit talking about his approach.

His book can be distilled down into one sentence: you learn the philosophy of the work by doing the work. It's not about the techniques involved but rather a continuous development and refined approach to how you work and advance.

There are a number of things that Nicolaïdes wants you to understand and one way to understand these things is to follow a curriculum like his without asking too many "whys". Instead, you draw first and ask questions later. He wants you to practice gesture over and over so that the common line movements that you see pertaining to the object in front of you are ingrained in your mind.

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Cont'd from >>2792587

(Side note: I've always found the "take a blank piece of paper out and draw straight equally spaced lines, now draw circles, now draw ellipses" as some kind of a necessary warm-up ritual to be ineffective because you're not training your deeper sensations whatsoever).

This is why we say that the human figure has a lot of triangles and S curves, and while you can point this out to someone the only way to get the underlying purpose of it is through drawing the human figure. Deviations from perfect shapes and curves start to jump out at us, but this is difficult to communicate.

At this stage, learning detailed muscle and skeletal anatomy is actually not that beneficial. It becomes helpful later on when you want to express a particular emotion or characteristic of the human figure without screwing it up, but getting the contour of the individual muscle groups and larger forms of the body is satisfactory early on.

One thing nobody talks about really is that during all this time you're developing your own taste for what looks good to you, and you're developing a method in you to determine what is important and what isn't, and what is required to capture the quality of the figure and what isn't.

So how does this relate to gratification and producing decent art?

I would recommend not looking for gratification of anything immediately, but rather keep an open eye to what I just mentioned - draw with intent to discover for yourself the sensations in you that lead you ("the natural way") to understand what you're drawing and why you're drawing it.

From this you'll develop a different, more pragmatic philosophy than just focusing on the end-result. Consider each step in your work as an end-result in itself.

From here you can much easier identify what you're missing.

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Cont'd >>2792588

The term "slow it down" has no meaning until you spend weeks on one drawing, moving it from stage to stage. Large detail -> medium detail -> small detail.

FZD and others like to toss out sped-up landscape painting videos, sped up portraiture and everything else. Gumroad et al are full of these.The artists generally discuss, IMHO, tangential subjects that are too advanced for most beginner artists (who are in fact their audience), but don't do justice to talk about how to derive composition from the turning of large forms towards and away from the lights. Again, this goes back to how the beginner artist doesn't know what they don't know - they can't see if even if someone is pointing it out to them.

This is the same issue I see with some of the less refined art work posted on /ic/ - don't detail and don't do scratchy lines if you haven't turned the form to express where the light is coming from and where the shadows are! Shade an arm like a cylinder before you shade individual muscle groups.

So again, slow things down. One step at a time. Most painting books spend a long time talking about the necessity of drawing and shading well ("good draftsmanship") for this reason.

This stage never really goes away, you merely build up on it and you get faster at pattern matching, looking for deviations, and cultivating taste for what looks good.

And this is why it's a lot easier to have a teacher walk you through the steps the first few times around, from seeing, to composition, to blocking in and outlining, to rendering, and other things. Think of it as training wheels for your mind's eye. It's beneficial to have someone in front of you who can take the time to explain how to correct a particular mistake and why. Doing this through the internet and online crits is too damn slow and ineffective.

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Cont'd >>2792590

With all this in mind - and I'm barely scratching the surface here - you're better equipped to produce better works of art.

It could be months or it could be up to a year but you will start the take the training wheels off in your mind and you'll become aware of your own internal processes, at which point you won't be stumbling as much but you'll have a clear conception of what to work on and how to go about improving it. Here is where those otherwise confusing hints on how to improve your work that better artists and teachers mention to you will make far more sense than they have ever before. You'll be able to relate to what they are saying internally.

This will be the slow period - it's mechanical and rote in it's nature, and you'll need to answer a lot of questions to yourself as to why you do what you do.

Furthermore, you will, I hope, find that the work, the sitting down and working at things without the fear of "making it", is in itself sufficient for you to feel like you've "made it.

I'll drop a quote from "The Art Spirit" by Robert Henri:

"I am not interested in art as a means of making a living, but I am interested in art as a means of living a life. It is the most important of all studies, and all studies are tributary to it."

Ignore the 10,000 hours / 1-2 year git gud nonsense. The passage of time at this stage is irrelevant. Don't beat yourself up if you spend time away from drawing.

And one last thing - it's okay to feel both good and bad about the work you've done before. Just make sure you sign your work, hang it up on the wall and use it as a reminder. Some of it will be unfinished and unpolished compared to your most recent work, but ultimately it is a testament to yourself, not to your audience.

When you have days of particular torment, read books like Art & Fear, The Art Spirit and the host of books written by older artists that touch upon the philosophy of the work. It will help you through the grind and the doubts.

>>2792587
>From what I've seen, /ic/ advocates the Nicolaïdes


Entire. Fucking. Post and further posts

DISCARDED

Do not listen this guy no matter how well written it is.

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>>2792612

I shouldn't have said /ic/, I should have said /ic/ and the general approach espoused on the internet. The opaque "draw what you see in front of you" approach with no further clarification.

>>2791228
>How can you delay despair when just starting out? It's demotivating how long it will take to be able to produce any decent art.
fixed

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>>2792587
>>2792588
>>2792590
This is great advice. If, as you say, drawing lines and ellipses, etc don't help to construct a greater spatial awareness, what can someone without access to formal education do in their first steps?

I've just started drawing, trying to understand first and foremost how my pen connects to the page. What would you say is the next step? I'm a bit stuck to reconcile all the different perspectives in terms of regimenting fundamentals vs feeling things out that people on here obsess over. Drawabox has its appeal, as does going outside and eating shit until you get it right.

The multitude of schools of thought in philosophy are healthy because philosophy is more a bending of perception as a guiding light, but with something as visceral as drawing/painting/etc, there are avenues that, more important than being helpful, can be detrimental to the process of discovery. How can I discern the correct path in terms of evolving from basics to developing my own eye?

>>2792587
post
>>2792588
your
>>2792590
work
>>2792592
bruh

>>2792587
>>2792588
>>2792590
>>2792592

Thank you for taking the time to write this.

As for myself, what has really helped me was understanding that my worth as a human being is not determined entirely by my success as an artist.

What are your thoughts on choosing the right teacher?

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>>2792994

> what can someone without access to formal education do in their first steps?

This is a difficult question for me to answer because I can't speak from experience. I'll chalk this one up to "I don't know."

A number of books exist out there such as Anthony Ryder's Figure Drawing. He's also formally trained and outlines the way that he's been taught. However, books by themselves will only get you so far. I found books work best for me as a supplement to my formal education. You need correct, precise critique.

If you can find the time to do life drawing sessions, do that. Look for life drawing sessions that also involve rendering, not just quick gestures but full on extrapolation of form. Facial features. Hands. Feet. From speaking to students in various schools, some rush life drawing too quickly and don't let you fully articulate the human form and the nuance of the muscles. This is a must IMHO.

*Maybe* attempt online learning paths like the Watts Atelier or the New Masters Academy.

These things will cost money (though not a lot). Luckily they're fairly non-committal so you can pay-as-you-go.

> Drawabox has its appeal, as does going outside and eating shit until you get it right.

I don't mean to talk negatively but I'm not a fan of CtrlPaint / Drawabox based approaches to teach beginners. They rush the constructive-perspective aspects far ahead. I think it's unreasonable to expect a student to understand how to employ construction and perspective before they've had a chance to put down and shade a human figure that is in front of them. It's overbearing to have to learn how to do construction frames, shadow projections and perspective projections *and* learn the human figure.

In other words: books like Loomis and Bridgman work best when you already have some life drawing under your belt than when you're starting out cold. Deep anatomical knowledge is wasted if you can't draw and articulate what is in front of you.

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>>2792994
>The multitude of schools of thought in philosophy are healthy because philosophy is more a bending of perception as a guiding light, but with something as visceral as drawing/painting/etc, there are avenues that, more important than being helpful, can be detrimental to the process of discovery. How can I discern the correct path in terms of evolving from basics to developing my own eye?

It's interesting to bring this up because it's not unheard of that students have to drop old bad habits and re-learn new ones to move forward. It usually has to do with not being entirely honest with what is in front of you and taking shortcuts when drawing.

It's not always a bad thing to do this when you're pressed for time but if you know that you are being lazy or sloppy about something, you need to fix it before it becomes a problem. I assume we all have that feeling when we're taking shortcuts because we don't want to deal with the pain of fixing things. Knowing what you can delay when is a learned skill.

Your eye and your philosophy from my experience develop in tandem. Avoiding trying to build a philosophy where none exists, especially when learning something new. You can refer to writings of old masters that I mentioned earlier, and you should see a reflection of your own thinking in what they talk about. But don't get too caught up on it.

>>What are your thoughts on choosing the right teacher?

It's a catch-22. I've known instructors who tell you just enough information about something so you can continue, and I've known instructors who can break things down for you in a systematic way and explain how and why and the history of it.

The deciding factor that I've seen in what, in general, is considered the "right" teacher has to do with how soft or how harsh a teacher is, and how the student receives the feedback. I prefer having harsh teachers who can articulate feedback precisely because I understand they want me to get better.

>>2793082
What advice can you give on communicating with your teacher effectively?

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>>2793091

Chances are you'll have more than one teacher and each will arrive at similar conclusions but differently. In general the usual rules apply: be courteous and listen intently. Be okay, to some degree, with not getting the big picture until you do something they ask you to do.

It's okay to not know. It's okay to forget. It's okay to be terrible at first. Let them help you. Empty your mind of preconceived notions. Forget the things you've drawn before. Take deep breaths. You have a nude model in front of you. Don't see limbs. See shapes. See form. Their arm moved slightly - that's fine, don't let that stop you.

You'll be confused about how to do X. That's why you're there, to learn how to do X. Good teachers typically alternate between several ways of explaining something to you until you get it. The multitude of explanations helps you when you're struggling because then you yourself will begin to attack a problem from several directions. Problem-solving is an understated component when doing art work.

If you can restate a particular thing that your instructor communicates to you in your own way, you're one step closer to understanding the deeper significance of it. These can be simple things but they can also be thinks that impact your process over a longer period of time. You'll better remember things when you restate them in your own words. You'll fall into a loop where you pull back and question things as you go - this is good.

>>2791228
I started drawing when I was young enough to not understand how bad I was, so I never experienced delayed gratification. I loved it right from the beginning because I always thought I was awesome.

The older I got, the less satisfying it became really. I started to realize just how average I was at it. So basically, I have no fucking idea, just try it out for awhile and see if you can stomach it instead of looking for answers here.

>>2793067
>>2793082
Interesting, thanks for the considerations. We seem to have a pretty similar sensibility. You talk a good talk so I'll assume you're much farther down the line from me. What would you say are universal considerations while starting out? Meaning fuck the politics of art, all I care about is the form of the process. Start with understanding the macro form of an object before perspective? Get an understanding of light before construction? Start with construction? Perspective? That's mostly where I'm lost. There doesn't seem to be any consensus on which leads into which. Maybe there isn't! I'd like to hear someone honestly say there isn't. All I know is I'm tired of /ic/ folk obsessing over the politics instead of the process.

I'll definitely try and brush up against true professionals, and take a look at the books you've mentioned. I won't get caught up. Treating them more as maps than rules is how any artist should approach older wisdom. You still need to steer and captain the ship, with all the minutia that involves. I'm looking forward to the next steps. Great discussion

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>>2793107

These are good questions, I am glad people are actually asking these questions.

I won't get into too much verbose detail but I will mention that you have shape - the flat outline of the object as it appears on the 2D plane of a paper or canvas, and the form, the lit 3D nature of what you're trying to convey.

In general, you want to make sure you nail the shape as best as you can before you get started on the form, and the way you do the form is you start to see form changes as shape changes. This is why the whole "look at the object upside down so you see shapes and not the object" method is helpful. Over time you'll develop the intuition of doing this naturally, it'll be a part of you.

However, I still see a lot of work on /ic/ that lacks this step - you need to have shadow shapes in place to communicate light and dark areas as clearly as possible before you even think about interior details.

Construction is the next logical step and I've mentioned the why's before: you can apply Loomis's head construction method, you can apply Bridgman's hands and feet to live models as you're working on them.

This is misunderstood, I think: the construction methods and the observation methods are intended to be combined because if you understand in theory how a head is supposed to be subdivided into smaller portions and where the landmarks are supposed to be, you can look at your model and determine deviations from this theoretical ideal. The nuances will jump out at you and make it far easier to capture the subtleties of the gesture or the face.

In fact, chances are that your teacher will ask you to draw a small thumbnail of the live model before you can do the big, fully rendered one, to make sure that you have the right approach in mind, that your porportions are correct, that the gesture of the body and tilt of the head is correct et cetera. This is your chance to go ahead and use construction to communicate your understanding. It's good practice.

>>2793137
This all makes a lot of sense, very refreshing. I've tried the upside down exercise and its very tough at my stage. Something in the back of my mind fears that I'll accidentally internalize it as a muscle memory exercise rather than a true path to understanding - going back to the idea of not knowing what you don't know, and mentally filling in those blanks to move forward.

Could you expand a bit on the difference between shape and form? I imagine shape as construction, but that's probably wrong. Maybe you mean it as the contour of the object? See, my lack of a developed eye makes me internalize those words as "understand the contours of the object, nail the proportions from contour down to defining the component shapes, then apply the methods as needed when while bringing each section of the object from conceptual shapes to detailed elements." Is that right?

>and the way you do the form is you start to see form changes as shape changes
Could you expand on that as well? Things like "shadow shape" might still be above my pay grade, but understanding the concepts as I progress could really help out.

Thank you for shedding light on everything so far, by the way. Learning to love esoterica and love the process are crucial.

>>2793107
>Perspective?

Perspective is also intended to be combined with construction and observation. A part of the figure that is closer to you will look larger than the part that is away from you, even if you think it's a small distance these subtleties matter when communicating depth. You may even have furniture that you want to draw/outline.

Once you can capture these things - the shapes and forms, the values as they relate to light as well as the way they relate to depth of the scenery, you can start to think about exaggerated dramatic perspectives akin to comic books and full-on construction from imagination. You can begin to tackle subjects like landscape composition with aerial perspective. You're in a much better place because you're no longer struggling to learn to do everything at once, but rather you're building on top of what you already know. You hold certain things about space and value to be true because you've seen them.

This is all much easier said than done and you're looking at easily a year's worth of ramping up to this stage. But once you're here, the weight is lifted off your shoulders and you're no longer frustrated at trying to put together a puzzle of N different things at once.

>>2793161

You may be overthinking this. Or I just suck at explaining.

Don't be concerned or afraid about internalizing things or letting muscle memory do it's work - you need both.

The reason why I say don't focus on the line exercises do the life drawing instead is because you'll start to absorb shapes that you see in real life right away and you'll start to translate that into both muscle memory movements of the hand/arm as well as build relations in your mind of things that appear in life. Think of it as a dictionary of shapes that you collect, but passively and over a longer period of time.

Shape and contour are synonym but the word contour is generally meant to mean the outline of an object.

Form is where you start to shade the shape to convey "how the form turns". This is where things like "treat the arms as cylinders" comes into play because an arm is, for our purposes, a cylinder, and we can do an initial form communication of it by shading it as a cylinder before we go into the detailing of individual muscles on the arm. They will in turn have a form that needs to be communicated properly.

Cast shadows are generally what is referred to as shadow shapes, they are obvious and apparent in a single-light environment, whether you're doing characters or environments. You also have to keep in mind highlight shapes but once you get there you've got the hang of it.

And this isn't esoteric knowledge by any means - if you enroll into a formal art school/academy/atelier these are the first things they cover and everything is built off of these things.

>>2793165
>>2793187
No worries, you're explaining it fine. I tend to break things down more than necessary when I'm not actively in the process of doing it, more a quirk than anything, though in the moment I'm sure not to intellectualize too much. Learned that lesson through photography and filmmaking. I'm just fascinated by the methodology of this stuff, and as a filmmaker first and foremost, my foray into this only has a faint overlap with what I've already learned (perspective, light, contrast, framing).

All of this makes perfect sense, thanks for clearing things up. Very clear, precise and relevant info, and you've helped me clear a lot of the mental fog that's come with diving into all of this. This time next year I hope to know exactly how to apply the things you're saying. I've got no penchant for anonymity so hey, if you ever wanna spout some more elucidating stuff to willing ears, uhhhhhh..... [email protected]

Thanks again for the precise content. Any last piece of advice diving into this first year of building skills?

>>2791316
>I don't use a technique because I have to, but because the desire to experiment and draw in every possible way is too tantalizing to control.
sounds like you're a retard who wants to use "w-well I'm just experimenting!" as an excuse when your art sucks. there is literally no good reason to experiment with every style under the sun instead of getting gud (aka MASTERING) at 1-2.

>>2793202
>Any last piece of advice diving into this first year of building skills

The usual - hold yourself accountable for showing up and doing the work. Disengage TV, netflix and other distractions. Don't skimp on life drawing evening classes.

Frame it as an undertaking that you could spend your life doing it, and relieve yourself of the pressure to have to do everything perfectly right away.

I accidentally stumbled on /ic/ and was curious if anyone else had academic training - in general I tend to stay away from the online art discussions with a few exceptions (Polycount, WetCanvas) because there is a lot of unneeded mythology, navel gazing and hostility.

>>2793216
Perfect. That's exactly how I see it.

I checked out /ic/ shortly after my drawing itch began to see what the community was like. I was an /o/ regular a few years back and underneath the asinine shitposting were users who really cared about the history, the intricacies, and had real love for the culture. Was hoping /ic/ was more /o/ or /lit/ than /v/ and it seems so!

With anything, you've got the disenchanted and hostile, but if you've got the stomach for wading through the standard chan fare, you can find people who have a true passion and understanding for the board topic. And without latching onto pure academia like other sites tend to. This conversation is a prime example. Great talking to you