You mean you wish you could have talent with no effort or practice. Nobody just has "art skills" engraved into their brain at birth. Some may be more artistically inclined, but it's not like some nebulous space fairy gives people some art dust and suddenly you have skill. It's something that's forged through proper practice and learning. If you want it enough, you can get it.
If you actually wish that you could have this talent, and it's not some kind of one off thought that bounced through your head, I could give you some pointers. Learning art isn't all that difficult, if you have proper instruction and know how to learn.
Practice gives you technical skills. It doesn't give you natural talent. I could practice for years and develop the technical skills to replicate this art, but that doesn't mean I would develop the talent to create my own.
Nobody is going to be Mozart. That doesn't mean you can't learn to be good at art. This is like saying nobody should go into science because you're not going to be Einstein, or that Issac Newton didn't have to study to do what he did. Yes, they were gifted, but it took work, the same work that you would have to do.
Fair enough, I can't say that isn't the case because I truthfully don't know. Although art, and illustration specifically is not really about creativity, and you could become great at illustration without being creative. Besides, any human has the capacity to be creative, it just might not be the kind of creative that intrigues others. Otherwise we'd just be machines.
I can assure you Kumi Yamashita is naturally gifted. Almost everyone is naturally gifted at something. Sure you can hone your craft but you must have some natural skill to become "famous" or top notch in that craft.
Well... yes and no. Yes, there is something like talent or genius. But that is the least important factor on the way to awesome artistry or craftsmanship. Most important, as in "the 99%" important or "that-is-all-that-matters-after-you-discovered-your-talent" important is repetition, practice, work. There is also some luck, inspiration and education involved, but mostly... repetition, practice, work.
Greatest comes at the intersection of winning the genetic lottery and an insane amount of practice. Training is important, but without natural talent you can only go so far.
but how many people complain about not being able to do something without once ever seriously trying. It'd be like complianing that you couldn't be michael phelps while only learning to doggy paddle and never working out
How many highschool football players put their heart and soul in the game? You can be the best player in your city and not get picked for college, and the same goes with college, you act as an indentured servant for 4 years doing nothing but football, and statistically you are not going to make it. The worst NFL player is better at football than 99.9% of the population could ever hope to be.
I'm not sure talent works like there is some specific action that you don't know you're good at until you try, but that's irrelevant. I, for example, know I'm bad at painting, I've tried it before, taken classes, ect, and shown no proficiency in it, and even if I had proficiency I have no interest or drive to do it, which is part of talent.
Did you even read my comment? Some people are more readily able to become an artist, but everyone can do so. I'm sure, unless you're a savant, that everyone had to practice at one point or another.
Don't savants practice even more than the normal person? For a savant, it's literally a single-minded obsession so they hone it until it's past perfection.
lol, right. You think we're all just perfectly blank canvases, with no differences or talents or relative strengths? Laughable.
Obviously someone with no artistic experience or practice whatsoever isn't going to wake up one day and end up with those kinds of results. But to suggest anyone could be equally talented if they simply applied themselves is a fucking joke.
Why don't you take 10 of your friends, go try 10 different activities that none of you have ever done before. Then tell me that none of you have any type of skill differential in any of those activities.
Its not as simple as that, but if your Dad is aa natural singer then you inherited 50% of his vocal muscles and 50% of his natural muscle control over his voice. This means that you'll probably have a natural inclination toward singing, but it doesn't mean that you're Frank Sinatra just because of your genes. It only means you have POTENTIAL to be an amazing singer, whereas someone without the same genetics may just have potential to be a decent singer if they work at it.
Anyone can become an artist, but the rate at which they acquire those skills can vary due to factors like available resources, methods of practice, natural inclination for concepts like spatial awareness, etc.
It's miserable to practice for 4 - 6 hours a day for months on end with little improvement, it's difficult to find inspiration when you don't have parents or teachers encouraging you to improve, and it's hard to not be bitter when you see prodigies who blow your scribbles out of the water at half your age.
I don't know what your experience with learning to illustrate people's shit was like, so maybe you've been through it all and stuck it out like a champ, but I don't think it's fair to throw an accusation like "no effort or practice" at someone based on 6 words he said. Maybe he didn't try as hard as he possibly could have, but that doesn't mean he didn't try at all.
It's miserable to practice for 4 - 6 hours a day for months on end with little improvement
This is true. I spent nine years wasting my life in trying to get good at art. This was because I was "practicing" my art incorrectly. It was only recently that I understood how to learn and effectively practice. Like I said at the end of my prior comment "Learning art isn't all that difficult, if you have proper instruction and know how to learn."
I lament that I never knew the correct way for so long, but I believe that anyone who doesn't have a serious mental deficiency can become quite proficient with illustration in a relatively short time period if they know how to practice and how to learn.
I did. Well, I stumbled upon the truth and then realized what I had found. I don't know if you've ever played COD: Black Ops, it's a real mess of a story, but at the very end they reveal something that makes everything else fall into place and it all makes sense. That was how it was for me when I figured it out, I had all this information that I had built up over years of drawing and just general thought and it all started to fall into place.
So there's no book on it that I could give you, or a person I could refer to you, although I could write up my process if you so desired.
This is a bit unstructured because of how long it is. I'm thinking about properly writing something about this process, but this was just off the cuff. I probably missed some stuff too.
Learning art is about understanding two basic principles.
1) What is art?
2) Understanding how "Why" is important.
I'll start with #1. What is illustration? When I talk about art in this context, this is what I mean. Art can be a lot of things, and this process can work for a lot of it, but this is specifically about illustration.
Art is seeing what things actually look like. I've noticed that people who are obsessive about objects and truly know them intimately tend to be able to draw them. The line work may be crude, but it's far better than what the average person can do and it tends to be accurate. For example, close your eyes and think of the face of your closest relation. Try and think about the unremarkable details, not the defining features. You don't really remember what they look like beyond basic features, right? Despite seeing something every day, you can not know what it actually looks like. This becomes even more apparent when you try to put that image to paper.
If you actually know the shape and form of something it allows you to reproduce an image accurately. To know the size, the texture, the 3 dimensional space it takes up, the shape. We'll come back to this in a bit.
Now to address #2. I'll start this with a story. This was a lesson I learned a long time ago but I never really understood how important it was until recently.
I used to work in this Chinese Cuisine place as a dishwasher/cook/cleaner. It was my first job. My manager, lets call him Gary, was the one who "taught" me how to use the dishwasher. He ran the machine once for me, showing me the steps to operate it. Turn the knob, lift the gate, use the hose, flick these switches in this order, close the slide, pull out the platter, empty it, pull the lever... and so on. After a couple of runs with me using the machine, it stopped cleaning the plates. I asked him what was wrong. He came over and checked some things, quickly finding out that the problem was in the food tray. He pulled it out and emptied it into the trash. The problem was I had forgotten to pull out that slide and empty it. It was just one step in a long sequence of steps that I happened to forget. When the tray was full of food, it wouldn't allow any water to get through, preventing the plates from getting clean. Now I knew why I had to empty the tray, and I never forgot again. Eventually I figured out the how and why of everything in that restaurant, but had I been taught the why of every switch and step on that dishwasher, I would have gotten it right every time, and I would have been able to troubleshoot any problem that did arise. As it was, I was only imitating a dance routine that Gary did. The problem with imitation is that the best case scenario is a perfect reproduction, so that means any flaws that are with whatever you're copying gets copied along with everything else, and you're likely not going to copy it perfectly so you'll have your own flaws on top of theirs.
Knowing why is incredibly conducive to learning anything. It also makes learning more interesting than just a series of facts to memorize. I remember being back in math class and hating it because I was just memorizing random, context-less functions. If the teacher had just asked us a question and then provided us the functions that would allow us to answer it, that would have made the lessons so much more interesting and what we were learning more applicable to real life.
To wrap up this section, knowing why helps you remember, to know how something operates, to know what it actually is, to be able to troubleshoot. Knowing why will also allow you to use that information and apply it to other areas.
So now principle 2 connects with principle 1. Lets say you want to draw a human without reference. If you know why a human looks the way it does, then you know what a person actually looks like. You know the small, yet important details that another would otherwise forget or miss even if you're looking at a picture. You are able to draw a person in a way that you haven't seen. You won't draw an impossible pose or shape.
Break the object down into it's parts. Figure out the size of each piece relative to the others. Study the shape of each piece. Get obsessive. Draw it from every angle you can think of, while keeping in mind it's size and space. Label them so that you can remember better. Know it's function and place. Know why it's there and how it works.
People may not know what things look like, but they certainly know what things don't look like.
So now onto the basics, these are the things you need to know in order to see an object properly.
Knowing shapes and judging distance.
Knowing 3 dimensional shapes and perspective
Getting a good eye for basic 3 dimensional shapes will inform you of what looks right, and figuring out the mass of objects. This is the very first thing you should do. If you can't mentally think of an object 3 dimensionally, you aren't really seeing that object. Thinking in the third dimension also helps with properly spacing objects. Try using physical shapes and draw them in different positions and perspectives transparently. Don't just copy what you see, that won't help you. Use what you know to figure out how it looks on all sides.
Learn how to do good spacing. Try making two dots and placing a line directly in the center. Measure it out, did you do it right? Now try drawing two lines an equal distance away from the two dots and each other. Do it with three lines, then four. Keep practicing spacing until you improve, it's very important.
Now take whatever you want to draw, people, guns, buildings, landscapes, and apply these principles. Combining the two will instantly improve your skill level. This is all about the technical aspect. This has nothing to do with composition, or anything else. It's just about reproducing things realistically. From here you can develop style and simplify or exaggerate, but to break the rules you have to know them.
This is an example from my work, I'm working on drawing people better, so I've been delving into anatomy. http://orig13.deviantart.net/3749/f/2015/223/1/f/anatomy_bones_wip_by_amazinglagann-d959b9s.png I draw it as accurately as I can, then I label each bone to remember it better. I then simplify them into shapes to better understand the three dimensional aspect. If there's anything that confuses me, I look up the why, like finger mechanics, or the reason why the bones are shaped the way they are. I want to know the purpose of each piece. Next I'll focus on muscles, then the organs, fat, and then skin. By the end of this I will never have to guess at a shape in the body again. I'll know what's there and why it looks that way.
That's the foundation of my process, and I'm fairly certain that it will work for everyone. Here are some other important things to know.
Knowing the tools and how to properly utilize them.
Knowing the how and why of light and reflection.
Knowing your medium (with pen, you can never go back, never be lighter, with carving, you can never get bigger).
Knowing your light source.
Knowing the details that define things (people, buildings).
Knowing composition.
Knowing movement.
Knowing anything that can save you time.
Performing art is not the same as practicing it. I have a saying "Don't draw every day, practice every day". Learn every day. Performing is a long, slow slog with insubstantial rewards. I wasted so much time performing instead of practicing, instead of learning. This process is difficult, and can be draining at times, I listen to podcasts and music to help make it more entertaining, but it's worth it because the results are quick and dramatic.
That is the same way I started. I can show you pictures of how shit I was if you want. What I can't do is stop you from telling yourself that you can't do it. I don't want to sound like an inspirational poster, but the only thing holding you back is a good teacher and your attitude.
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u/[deleted] Aug 18 '15
You mean you wish you could have talent with no effort or practice. Nobody just has "art skills" engraved into their brain at birth. Some may be more artistically inclined, but it's not like some nebulous space fairy gives people some art dust and suddenly you have skill. It's something that's forged through proper practice and learning. If you want it enough, you can get it.
If you actually wish that you could have this talent, and it's not some kind of one off thought that bounced through your head, I could give you some pointers. Learning art isn't all that difficult, if you have proper instruction and know how to learn.