I love to draw, but I always do it in bursts, never consistently. Lately I've been going out of my way to draw something every single day. I post to Instagram, and Facebook and get likes and comments and such, but then problem is, I don't like what I draw. I can't ever get past the "hating my own stuff" stage. Occasionally I have something where I appreciate that I got close to what I was trying to achieve but fell short, but I've never drawn anything I don't groan about. when someone tells me "that's amazing!" I can't take the compliment so I come to you hubski, please be completely honest, what do you like, what don't you like about this picture? I can post more pieces in the comments if youd like to help me out there too.
I like it, but here's my critique: It's difficult to tell where the light source in this is, it looks like it's front on as if the viewer is holding it (a candelabra?) and you could play off of that by putting in some highlights and reflections on the glass objects and defining more distinct shadows such as for the vertical supports and the skull at the top. The lighting is also confused by some of the objects being shaded inconsistently, a good example is the books at the top left suggest the light is off the to left, but the books in the middle show it as being off to the right. Pick where the main lightsource is and then work from there outwards. I like the wood texture you've come up with, though would suggest you look at some pictures of wood planks and rough cuts to get an idea of where rings should be moving and how knots can be placed. At the moment your knots are all very consistently sized and pretty regular, which can happen, but you may be able to get a more organic feel by roughing those planks up a bit. Still, I like it, good job and don't let that self-hating stage get to you. I cannot count the number of things I've thrown away over the years because I've hated what I've made. It takes a lot of skill to create something this good, and it's only from practising and later reflecting on your work that you can develop it.
Thanks for the honest critique! You're totally right about the lighting/shading. I went into the image with a plan in mind but broke it in a few places without realising (I was in the 'zone') and it soiled it.
I do like the style, but it feels a bit flat. Of course, it's a bookshelf, but we are looking dead-on, and there isn't a hint of depth in the wood of the shelf, or variation in lighting that suggests its direction. I like the grim cartoonish flavor. It might be an interesting exercise to redraw the same shelf from a different angle.
Cheers. The lighting is definitely off as you and others have pointed out. I rarely redraw the same thing but I think I'm going to take a second stab at this! Thanks for the comment!
Others have said similar things, here's my spin. You want to draw the viewer's eye to some focal point, preferably not dead-center. An easy way to do this is by putting the darkest dark, directly adjacent to the lightest light; the viewer's eye will be drawn to that spot, then traverse the rest of the image.
I know nothing about art, but my spouse does, and I've overheard her giving this advice more than once.
Thanks! I get exactly what you mean, its got no 'focal centerpoint' to capture the viewers eye.
It seems like you tried to fill the entire page. That is not necessarily a bad thing but your drawing looks very cluttered, with no single object really standing out. I think carefully placed whitespace could make it more interesting, e.g. a less detailed back wall. Go here and go to page 92 - his design rules can easily be applied to drawings.
Aside from the wonky lighting, you're choosing a very challenging medium, pen and ink, and it's resulting in about two values. If you want your work to pop like I suspect you do, you need a gradation of value from black to white and all things between. Try doing some exercises to practice hatching as a way of shading to get comfortable with what you can do with your tools. Come up with eight or ten distinct values from black to white. It's basic 2-d design 101 art school exercise. I can't tell what scale this is but it doesn't look very large. It's usually easier to work larger to give you more room for detail and value study.
I've always had trouble working in color, since I was a kid. My preferred medium is black ink and plain white, I have no idea why. I'd blame the bad pen I was drawing with but a bad workman blames hisntools as they say :) I have no formal art education, just what I've learned on my own from years of drawing and doodling, simple things like crosshatching are a wonder to me.
Color is a bitch. I'm not very good at it but I don't take painting very seriously and my education in such things ended in high school. I have a BFA but I studied graphic design and sculpture. Just practicing exercises like this would help: It's an easy to learn, hard to master kind of thing. You might also like ink wash to give value. You need watercolor paper but it's a bit less technically demanding that learning how to effectively stipple. Get some brushes, india ink and a well pallette, it's basically a hubski logo that holds liquid: Put about the same amount of water in each well. Leave one clean water, then put a drop of ink in one well, two drops in the next, three drops, until you have a value scale from very light to pure black. Aqueous media isn't easy either, it bleeds and runs if you aren't patient or don't know how to control it, but it's a fairly straightforward means of creating a value scale. Don't expect to run before you can crawl so making little squares of varying shades of hatching or ink wash isn't fun but it's how you get to the level I think you want to be at.
I'm no expert, but I like this. Each object seems like a character and although I'm just looking at a bookshelf, I find myself interested. It makes me want to know more about whose bookshelf this is and what the rest of the house holds. There is a story here and I'm drawn in. Great style.
Thanks! I enjoy going into a lot of detail in drawings, kind of get lost in it adding little parts here and there while listening to music. Unfortunately sometimes I lose sight of the greater picture and the whole piece kind of loses focus.
It's not art. It's a drawing. Art makes you feel something. It's something risky... it exposes your own vulnerabilities. This drawing is skilled enough for a doodle, but it's not art. If you want to do art, you should focus carefully on what hurts in your life, or what makes you pine for some existence or possibility... some longing hart-felt comfort or strife or unresolved mistake. You've got to live. You've got to put yourself out there in the world and experience things. This kind of practice in drawing set-dressing like a dresser with items on it is good but it's not going to improve your ability to do art. Doing art means you're going to fucking own something and get way outside your comfort. Here's a good place to start:
I'd argue that art needn't make you feel something. In fact, the point might be not to make you feel something. Of course, art that resonates with people in such a way is more likely to be popular, and has a different merit and quality, but art is largely in the eye of the beholder. Many people prefer art that challenges them, or inspires them, but I don't think it's correct to call that which doesn't something else.
Beauty is, not art... and the video explains that when beauty was rare, art was about beauty but when everyone has access to beauty, art becomes about rare emotions, rare skill and rare ugliness. Inspiration is a feeling; if you feel inspired art has moved you. I could hardly be inspired by a wall unit of items that I had no connection to.art is largely in the eye of the beholder
mk didn't even say anything about beauty, he stated that art is mostly a subjective experience. Ignoring this, you might do well to avoid talking about something as contentious as 'what is art?' so absolutely. Even if we agree that art is no longer about beauty but instead the qualities you mentioned, they are all still subjective. A piece might make me feel a 'rare emotion' whilst to you it communicated nothing. What is it then? Whilst not specifically art, I experienced an example of this duality yesterday. On the way home from the shop I passed a bit of blood orange on the floor. Now to most this would probably be seen as litter, surely nothing of meaning. But for me it brought back a memory of when an old friend from university and I dropped a blood orange from the top of stairwell and it caused a terrible mess. I had completely forgotten about this. I felt nostalgia, amusement, and happiness. So what is one person's litter may be another's catalyst for an emotional experience. Furthermore, what even constitutes as rare in regard to these things? I may feel happiness regularly but someone suffering from depression may rarely, if ever, experience it. You may be involved in large circle of highly skilled practitioners whilst I may have no inner benchmark of what 'rare skill' is. What is rare ugliness to one person may be an everyday occurrence for another. There is no objective marker of these things and one cannot talk absolutely, or for everyone, about what they are and are not. As a result, as mk said,"art is largely in the eye of the beholder." One person cannot definitively say what is art and what is not.
Looks like woodprinting or something done via screenprinting. It has artistic value, but I see it being used more as an illustration. Reminds me of Edward Gorey. You have a definite artistic style, and you might be able to market drawings like this as illustrations for magazines, website articles, and the like. Only suggestion I can make is to slightly lighten the background. Everything else, I like. Oh, consider doing the same art piece, but turning it rube goldberg like, or inserting hieronymus bosch type oddities. The criticisms I'm seeing in this thread about it not being a typical art piece might vanish. Intricate drawings with humor I think are awesome. Oh, another thing: it's a bit difficult to differentiate between the objects and the background. Do something to separate background from foreground, if just by thickening the objects border.
Thanks for the input! Looking up Edward gorey now I can see exactly what you mean, also it seems he drew a bookshelf in this exact style while illustraing for HP. Lovecraft stories (Which are definitely inspiration for me too) , so now I feel like I've somehow ripped him off! I get exactly what you mean about objects blending into the background, at times I wish I could take away with my pen as well as add to an image. I've been experimenting with different line thicknesses because I usually stick to one uniform thickness which is boring and awkward.
Ever tried using one of those pencil sets that have black charcoal pencil, a white pencil, and you can draw on colored paper, and use the white pencil for highlights? Seems the kind of thing that might work well with your visual style. Would probably need one of the harder pencils, though, way up on the H scale. And I think last time I went to an art store they made pens that could actually write white on dark paper.
I like the picture of it more than the drawing itself. The page coming off the image a bit, the black border only on one side. It looks like the front of an Umberto Eco novel. A later printing, but still well done publishing. Beyond that, I really don't know what to say.
Thanks for the comment! I did add anslight contrast change to the picture after taking it because of poor lighting, and now I think I prefer the image more than the drawing myself too :)
I like it a lot but I feel your style is sort of halfway there. I would either streamline it more or go all in with the dark shading and exaggerate this aspect of the picture more. It's very good but try playing with extremes to give it even more personality. Have you ever re-drawn the same image multiple times improving it or do you keep drawing new stuff? Disclamer: i'm no artist so that might be a bad recommendation but worth trying it out no?
I've never properly redrawn the same image, sometimes I'll draw the same kind of things when doodling bits and pieces on the same page, but full pictures like this I tend to draw once and hate forever because of the flaws I can't fix :) I think I understand what you mean about "halfway" on the style, I was trying to stick to clean detailed lines but kind of veered into scrubby rough edges part way through.
In my experience, it's easier to trust someone's opinion about your art if they have history with your body of work, and have critiqued your work over time. I find that I trust a friend who's seen what I've done, and who's some times told me a piece needs changing, or there are elements that are good, etc. So when they say "that's amazing" it has past support. The first step to getting an honest critique is to show a body of work, and not just one piece. Additionally, it also helps to explain what you were trying to achieve, because artist's goals can be wildly different. A good critique is tailored to you very specifically.
I get what you mean, my issue is I feel my friends can be creative "yes men" as they are all musicians or artists or writers in one form or another who find it hard to honestly critique each others work. Even myself, only recently told a friend I hated a song he wrote. I tried to be honest about why I didn't like it and as helpful as s to why I felt that way. He didn't take it well. As for what I was trying to achieve; I'm not sure to be honest. When I draw its usually spontaneous. Out some music on and sit for a few hours and start out and see what comes to me. Mostly I think this was influenced by the music I was listening to at the time (Electric Wizard) so I'd hazard a guess and say 80s swords and sorcery fantasy a la Conan the barbarian and dungeons and dragons. The evils wizards library, strange tonics and occult books of power, that kind of thing. I've always had a huge interest in the old role playing games art style, black and white drawings on yellowed paper of fantastical landscapes and heroes and monsters.
You don't necessarily have to know what you want to achieve with a piece of work. Some artists do, some artists don't. I vacillate between the two, actually, depending on my medium. And now that you list your influences and interests, I can completely see them in your work, it's really cool, and interestingly made the work resonate with me a bit more. On to a critique of the work: one thing I would mention: I don't think the background, or "wall" markings need to be so uniform across the page. If you vary them more, with more gaps of white, it will create more movement around the picture, and will have the effect of making the solid, more blocked in spaces stand out more. ... If that's what you want. :) I know that when I did pen and ink work, I had this need to cover the page more uniformly, which actually made the piece more static. Additionally, it could help to lay on some more black in some areas, to move the eye more dynamically as well. SO...on to more thoughts about all this...it's kinda long so I ended up separating it out a bit.... See, a lot of critiquing is about saying not "oh that will make x y or z "better"" but is about saying "this change will bring about such and such result." And the question is, do you want "such and such result." For example, I recall someone mentioning that the skull looks a little "cartoonish". In the creative art world, this is not a judgement call. The question is truly, were you aware that it is cartoonish? Is that the effect you were going for? Yes? Perfect! No to both? then perhaps you want to change it. Or perhaps you like it that way. I understand about the yes men. I think that is the one major benefit of having taken art classes. It teaches you to critique art work, and also TAKE criticisms without it become personal. Generally the goal is to get away from phrases such as "I like x y or z" Or, at the least, figure out WHY you like them, so that technique is understood. This can be taken to an extreme, of course; It's part of the reason why art history books can be such verbosely dense to the point that they make little sense. I will never forget the description I read: "space where human refuse heap goes to be discovered" or some such (plus like 15 other words). What did they mean? City garbage dump. I mean, really? Or perhaps all I wrote is just too much analyzing of art, which is totally cool, too.
Thanks for the comment. I'm getting some great and honest criticism here which I love. Makes me want to post some more drawings and get more feedback so I can improve!
I don't know much about art, so I can't critique you on technical skill or anything, but I think it's cool. It's moody. It reminds me a bit of Roman Dirge or Jhonen Vasquez where it's trying to capture that pop goth feel, where it's quasi dark and edgy, but accessible and non threatening.
Thanks! I'm quite a fan of Vasquez from Johnny the Homicidal maniac and invader zim. I love the style and themes he uses.