Do you love art, but have recently been struggling with it? Maybe every art piece you poured your heart into turns out the way you didn’t want it to look like, which gets you very frustrated? Maybe you wish to become just like your favorite artist, however you’re barely making any progress with your journey? Well, do not worry, this article is here to provide you with art tips that may help you overcome those problems, along with making your perspective of art more positive.
Tip 1 : Find your Motivation and Goal
To be able to do art, you need to set a goal and find your motivation. Whether your motivation might be pursuing a job/career relating to art, doing art for fun, or to impress your friends with art. After having some sort of motivation, you want to set a goal on how good you want to be at Art. Art goals can be simple, ranging from “I want to be better at lineart” to “I want to become the next Leonardo Da Vinci,” there’s no limit on how good you want to be.
Tip 2 : Simplify everything, literally
Beginners tend to use every brush they can find, use over 20 layers and draw every strand of hair. However, that is very time consuming and it won’t help you actually improve. Moreover it might be very overwhelming and confusing. Which is why you should simplify everything.
Find the brushes you like using and stick to it, and try minimalizing how many layers you use to keep it organized (This tip may vary from person to person but I personally keep it simple.).
Another important tip is to see shadows, light, hair, and almost everything as shapes and forms. That way, it makes it easier to place down your colors and lines without overthinking it.
(As you can see, I used a reference and simplified it into more clear and defined shapes and forms. My version is very clean, and you could easily outline the shapes without a sweat.)
Tip 3 : Use References
When you use a reference, you are studying a piece of art, painting or a photo to replicate it or take inspiration from the fundamentals in it. There’s this saying that some people passed around that, “Using references is cheating.” That claim is totally false, and referencing is actually just as important as my other advice. Referencing helps you accurately portray light & anatomy (if you are referencing real pictures) and help you work towards your art style. (If you are referencing an Artist.)
However, I suggest when you heavily reference an artist, you should consider crediting them if you are posting it on social media. Or else, people might falsely accuse you of tracing or stealing it without permission.
Tip 4 : Avoid Tracing Unless Necessary
If there’s one thing you should never do… Is to post traced art on social media. Trust me, if you trace from an artist, you will get flamed soon enough. Moreover, tracing over artists’ works won’t help you improve and understand what they are trying to portray. However, you can trace a piece of work to try to get the outline of it or break down its parts. Another exception includes if you’re really struggling to draw something, and if that’s the case, don’t be afraid to trace over an image of the object. But before you do that, I highly recommend using references first to see if that helps before you decide on tracing. As long as you don’t intend to use tracing for malicious purposes and clout, it is acceptable.
Tip 5 : Have Contrast & Values
Values are how dark and bright a certain color can be. While contrast is how 2, or more different colors stand out from each other. Both, as you probably would’ve guessed, ties in with having a source of light in your piece. However, it doesn’t take a light source to make your contrast & values interesting and appealing.
A common mistake, especially when picking colors, is that the contrast is too weak, and the values are too close to each other. Which makes the picture very dull and boring, overall unpleasant to look at. Moreover, it seems as if they are all the same color, and hard to see. To fix this, pick colors that stand out from each other and aren’t close in values.
As you can see, the first image looks very dull to look at because the values are too close to each other, resulting in low contrast. On the contrary, the 2nd image has stronger contrast which is more appealing to look at.
Well, that concludes the end of this article on art tips that will improve your art pieces. In summary, have a goal and motivation, simplify and keep things simple, use references, avoid tracing unless you really need to, and have good contrast & values. Hopefully, you’ll take this advice to heart and apply it to your drawings. Then maybe, you’ll start seeing positive changes within your pieces. Good luck with your art journey!
Sophia Huynh
