Improving in my ability to do art. (Questions and such)

[Nerii-San]

Hello everyone. I'm pretty new here. I'm seeking advice from anyone that may have opinions how to become really good in art.

Small back story:

I now have 2 years or so of free time currently to dedicate myself to whatever I could dream of doing, and I've never had the free time to do that once in my life. I've had to work minimum wage jobs for many years to even have enough food or a place to stay, and I'm finally able to relax after all these years. The 4 or 5 hours after my job was over during the day, I was so tired that it was hard to even think, but I still tried to draw regardless. I skipped many days of drawing due to depression setting in, but at the same time in the back of my mind I was always in love with art. I'm currently 27 years old. Art has been something I've been told by many that I've been good at all my life (whether it's true or not, and I don't think I'm amazing, but I do love every drawing I do, from rough sketch to a large project) and it's something I've loved and have had a passion about for many years. I live with PTSD which I often have encounters with very low-self confidence, depression and for several years I spent most of my time playing video games/online games for a form of self-motivation and happiness. I would draw on the side, but the addiction and self-satisfaction often set in above what I'd truly love to do and dedicate myself to. I've been proud to say that for the past 8 months I've dropped that addiction down to a non-addicting bare minimum and have been trying to change my life up as a whole. This is something brand new to me, for I've never had a chance in life to choose what I'd like to do. I'm not finding it the easiest thing to do to change my mind frame for the past 10 years, but I am trying hard to.

I've developed my own art style, and I'm always thinking of specific ways to change it or improve it. It may not be to everyone's liking, but it's what I love, and to me, that's what I feel matters most.

The things I find myself to enjoy mostly doing is designing things. I love all forms of graphic design, web design, and illustration. I'm also in love with the idea of making things more and more beautiful to where I could never get tired of looking at them.

My ultimate goal is to do illustration and work in graphic design and make that what I do for the rest of my life. I intend to work hard and shoot for that by practicing every day and learning more and more new things.


My current idea for a daily schedule is -

- Rough Sketch - Illustration
- Rough Sketch - Graphic Design idea.
- Anatomy Practice
- Studying other areas of art.
- Coloring Practice (traditional or digital)

Much later: How to market my art and the things to do to make a possible future in it.

My new toy as of 3 days ago is a 22 HD Cintiq tablet, so I want to mess around with a lot of digital art. I also have a book dedicated to teaching you all aspects of photoshop that I'm learning from each day.

This is where my artwork is currently at. http://www.conceptart.org/showthread...87#post3669987
I also messed with colored pencils for the first time in 4 months and I came out with this: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/102586847/rameraeyes.png
I was pretty proud of my colored pencil work, even if it's not the most amazing, but it's probably the best I've done tinkering with colored pencils.

I also purchased my first anatomy book: Figure Drawing and All It's Worth.

So yeah I'm aspiring to become very good at art, and if anyone has any tips or ideas toward what one can do with a lot of free time and ways of getting better I'd love to hear any feedback. I just want to make art one of the main parts of my life, and I truly hope I can.

[Medelo]

Take this with a grain of salt.

But what you need to do is to drop this, throw this out of the window:

I've developed my own art style, and I'm always thinking of specific ways to change it or improve it. It may not be to everyone's liking, but it's what I love, and to me, that's what I feel matters most.

You're dooming yourself to a narrow mindset with this sentence. Just forget about 'style', for now. At this stage it's just a crutch.

All your sentences that start with: "I'm pretty happy with" or "I'm proud of this..." mean only one thing, you haven't seen enough of what's out there yet. Start broadening your horizons. Get an art history textbook or two and read the whole thing. Start hunting down artists you admire. Start collecting their artwork in your own folder. Subscribe to a few graphic design magazines, look up graphic designers and learn more about their work and the industry they work in.

You say you want to become "Very good" at art but that means , basically, nothing. It's such a vague statement and it's because you don't know what you want yet. While working on your craft with Loomis and all those other books, you also need to get out there and see what else is going on. You need that exposure to start to narrow down what exactly it is you want to be good at.

[joshabplanalp]

I agree with Medelo, limiting yourself to what you like to do will get you stuck in a rut that will enevitably be really tough to break out of. I have found that developing images that pop into my mind and bringing them to life no matter what genre they fall into seems to work well and there will always be a part of your own style in them no matter what you draw. Also there are many differant facets to explore in the art industry now, I am driving toward the video game design field as the main focus of my career because ever since i was a kid ive always wanted to do the cinematic sequences in rpgs that you have to watch during game play but there are a dozen differant artists working on differant aspects of a video game. The same applies for animated fetures and manga(both of which im exploring as possibilities). What im trying to say is as long as you dont lose sight of the fact that you love to create beautiful art through your imagination then you will find satisfaction in building your skillset of the basics such as lighting effects, shadowing, and most importantly how to minipulate your the capability of the human eye to be drawn into the illusion through your media choice. I hope that wasnt to long winded lol. good luck.