How do I improve my design and aesthetic senses? Learning fundamentals

Design is the same way, it was broken down almost scientifically and it's very logical.

Depends on what you're designing though. But just searching design should like pop up a ton of results.

http://2d.cgmasteracademy.com/principles-of-design-process.html

Maybe looking at this course outline will help you a bit.

>>2824534

What do YOU like? Start there. Collect a bunch of paintings (or drawings or whatever) that speak to you and try to analyze exactly what you like about them. The point is to refine your own taste not to acquire a new one. Unless you have some form of head trauma you shouldn't need to be told what's beautiful.

>>2824562
Pretty much this.

I like Waterhouse's Lady of Shalott too. Why do I like it? Hmm lets see.

It's relatively loosely handled, not too smoothed out, you can still see brush strokes. I tend to prefer that. It is mostly just the head and hand where things tighten up, helping reinforce the focal point and not become an overly-tight, over-rendered mess. Contrast in detail levels.

This image is also pretty simple, in a way. If you reduce it to its very basic abstract composition, it is a white triangle on a black background. He has made sure to offset the triangle from center. The triangle (girl) is kept separate from everything else through value contrast. Her head is the point of the triangle, arms the sides, this is common, easily leads us to her face. The quilt more or less extends the arms of the triangle, creating more mass leading to her head. The lines of the grass and trees in the background on the right lead to her face also. The bit of sky in the corner forming a triangle pointing us in towards her.

This piece is pretty colorful, at least compared to my garbage, and the average digital fantasy painting which so often has that monochromatic heavily color-graded effect. How does Waterhouse pull off colorful harmony? One trick he seems to be employing is to reuse colors throughout the image. The red and yellow of the quilt shows up again in her dress, hair, face, the foreground grasses, the background stairs and trees... The blues in the quilt are similar to the dark green trees behind her and the lip of the back of the boat, and highlight on the water. There is a spot of the blue on the horizon over on the right too. Colors reused, dabbled all over.

I've always thought the way the plants were drawn emphasize her expression. The chaotic mess of shapes for the grass in the foreground. The vertically streaking of the trees in the background, looking kind of like paint running down the canvas. Dreary.

>>2824562
But it doesn't really work like that. You can see an awesome picture and understand what makes it so awesome, but it doesn't mean you can create something as great. It's about decision making, conscious or not. Unless you rip off someone else's work, you have to make your own decisions.

Photography, cinematography.

Explore nature and stare at natural scenery. At the top of a hill, in a national forest, in your backyard, anywhere you are as long as there are other forms of life than yours.

Observe the beauty of shadows, textures, and gestures in real life locations and occurences.

Watch Tarkovsky.

Read poems.

It's mostly something you develop by yourself, something you grow up with, a talent. I can't really give any meaningful advice. Just try to become a more sensitive and spiritual man, that's the most useful advice. Develop your love for nature and small things in life, tell yourself that these are home so they need to be loved.

>>2824534
find what ticks with you, study it, adopt and improve on that style

>>2824534
You develop better taste through academic education that teaches critical thinking.

>>2826256

Taste has nothing to do with thinking, just as sexual attraction does not. You can develop a understanding of why you like certain things by thinking, but you don't actually acquire a taste by thinking.

>>2826261
Critical thinking is a by product of academic education. I am not saying critical thinking will develop tastes, just that they are a result of academic education that can develop better tastes in things, as opposed to art education that doesn't teach critical thinking. If you are well read, you will have better taste, that's my experience.

>>2826277

When you word it like that, I agree with you.

I personally got a lot of things for free with my upbringing.
My dad was really into architecture, history and collecting antiques and my mother was really into fashion and modern art. We travelled through europe quite a bit and I was dragged through countless museums starting at toddler age. My dad took me to historical locations and houses here in Sweden. I didn't always appreciate it at the time, but in retrospect I realize that I got exposed to a fuck ton of art and aeshetics at a young age.
God bless my parents what a whiny ungrateful bitch I have been.
Sorry for the therapy session but I thought it was relevant to bread