Ranking the BEST and WORST Art Advice! (Art Tier List) || SPEEDPAINT + COMMENTARY 

S Tear: remember which is your drink cup and which is you paint water cup

"Use hue shifting while shading and lighting" is A tier in any media. S tier in pixel art. Hue shifting is the best tip that I ever have.

Flipping the canvas is such a useful skill but it’s so forgettable at times

Another thing to add with the "learn the rules before you break them" is the fact that having a strong knowledge in realism doesn't magically translate to being good at making stylized works. You being able to draw one hell of a photo-realistic fruit bowl doesn't also mean you are going to automatically be a great comic artist, they are both skills that need their own time and effort to develop. Being able to stylize and create your own visual shorthand is a skill in itself, that's why I always recommend to new artists to do both. Study basic fundamentals and draw from life, but also observe and learn from the professionals in your field of interest.

"Let hobbyists live." As a writer, I DEEPLY appreciate your ability to recognize and separate hobby artists from those trying to get better/more well-rounded/professional. Whenever people come to me for writing advice, I first ask them which group they fall under. Do you write for fun, and want advice to make this hobby more enjoyable? Or are you aiming to write professionally on some level? The amount of critique I give, and sometimes even the advice itself, changes depending on the answer.

As guilty as tracing makes me feel, it honestly saves so much time when I draw. I trace poses and then alter limbs and body builds to suit the characters I’m drawing, and as someone who just likes having fun with art and draws horribly slowly, I’d rather trace and alter than try and make my own poses when it can since it saves me hours on pieces and it already takes me hours to do a single character without a background or fancy lighting. It lets me keep a hobby a hobby without wanting to tear my hair out

Getting "just practice" "learn rules first before drawing ANYTHING" and "draw every day" put me in such a hellscape mind palace thanks to my OCD that now I have to ween myself from constantly drawing nothing but boxes, circles and cylinders every day to actually draw something I have fun drawing.

"Don't avoid weak point" should be S tier, still remember when I don't know how to draw hands, so I always draw something to hide them

Personally, I’d put using black and white to check values in A tier. Yes, it’s absolutely a great tool, but I find that doing this often fails to account for the way our eyes perceive color. For example, the exact same bright yellow, if hue-shifted to purple, would register as a darker to our eyes, because yellow registers as an inherently ‘bright’ color. I’d love to see this as a public tierlist!

The “learn rules first” always made me so upset as a kid. I hated the idea that I needed to learn how to draw realism, that I needed to perfect a realistic art style before even thinking about going to a stylized art style. I haven’t drawn in a while and as much as I want to get back into it the idea of having to learn everything again makes me want to cry when this was just supposed to be a fun hobby to begin with.

14:20 For me, the pen stabilizer tool has the opposite effect. It drives my perfectionist mind ABSOLUTELY INSANE because the lines never land exactly where I want them.

"Warm up sketches" S Tier! Draw some Doodles that it be some gesture drawings or just some random shapes before you actually work on something more serious/important, it really does help. 10/10 totally recommend! 😊

"don't shade with black" is misleading because it comes from the assumption that the artist aim for a colorful look. All the backgrounds in Over The Garden Wall are shaded with blacks and greys on multiply layers (there's a tutorial/walkthrough by the background artist), and those paintings are absolutely gorgeous - because they still used highly saturated colors for the lightened areas. It blew my mind when I found out and it changed my view on certain art advice that just say "dont do X" - because there are cases where doing the "wrong" technique is intentional!

Something underrated I don't hear about often is to train your eyes. Like just observe outside, images and analysing them on shapes, shadows, structures and colors. You can legit do that everyday and it's like you draw with your own eyes. Even If your hand skill don't catch up with your eyes right away , you will be able to auto correct yourself and have a way more objective view on your on art. This is just so useful

> Everyone knows they need to practice to get good at anything You'd _think_ this is true, but even though it's a common refrain you hear all the time, I think very few people have actually internalized it! This is advice aimed at complete newbies, and it would be good advice, if it was able to get the message across fully. People will often say stuff like "I can't even draw a stick figure" or "aw man, I envy your skill" and if they had truly internalized this, what they would mean is "I don't have the motivation/time/etc. to practice and learn drawing", but no, what most people mean when they say this is "I don't have the holy blessing of drawing skill, I am but a mortal." Since "Just practice" is such a common thing for people to say, it's just white noise to most who hear it. What they really need is a paradigm shift. You don't just _have_ skill, you _create_ it, you _earn_ it, you _work for_ it. You, too, can be a great artist, if you put in the effort. That's what "just practice" is supposed to mean. People expect the skill to be handed to them, and when they sit down to draw and they don't spout magic from their pen, they just give up. My preferred versions of this advice are "fail fast, fail often" or "everybody's got thousands of bad drawings in them, the good ones come later" or "anyone can learn to draw if they actually try"

I try to draw every day, but I'm disabled and sometimes even leaving the bed or using my hands for anything is hard. On those days i watch youtube and feel guilt because of how much i hear "draw everyday"

"Don't start digital" is actually some of the best advice IF you want a painterly style. I would've put it in A tier for that but if your someone who doesn't mind your work looking digital the you can ignore it no problem!

It makes me happy to see you rank "Draw Every Day" at C tier, because as a person who has focus issues (possibly ADHD), that just isn't possible for me right now. I'm busy trying to stay afloat doing the bare minimum and I don't have the energy for it.

Drawing every day is the fastest way to sucking if you don't study right, making the same mistakes every day isn't practice it is just building a bad habit. How you study is so important, I've been drawing since I was like two constantly and I suck because for like 1 through 19 of those years I was just repeating my art every day and making the same mistakes thinking it was enough for me to be better and in reality it made me worse. Now that I am studying properly I have to also unlearn the 19 years of incorrect muscle memory I taught myself and that is honestly the hardest part. also don't use stabilizer is stupid. My lines are wank on digital art because the screen is glossy and it actually hurts my wrist to control it. I can draw perfectly fine lines in my traditional, it has nothing to do with skill or ability to control a line sometimes it's just about peace of mind and taking care of your wrist on a surface with no drag.

I'm someone that prefers messy lines, I adore the way they look, smooth lines are honestly boring to me. Messy lines are one of the reasons Wolfwalkers is such a gorgeous movie

"Don't start with digital" is not really about the skills you learn. Its about aspiring artists wasting 500+ dollars on an expensive tablet that they will use for a month and then never again because it turned out that they didn't like drawing all that much, or got frustrating at trying to learn art AND every component of their software of choice at the same time instead of tackling each individually.

My favorite price of advice (for traditional art) is: Make a mark on the first page of your sketchbook. Any mark, even if it's just a line. Why? So that the stress of "it has to be pretty cause this sketchbook is new/aesthetic/ect." Is removed. If the first (or last) page, then at least one page is already "ruined" I'm bad at explaining things, apologies. But seriously. Just marking through the first page has decreased my anxiety around art SO much lower 😂

HOORAY NEW DUTCHESS CELESTIA VIDEO

I used to trace years ago, it never helped me to do anything, i didn’t get good until i stopped tracing and started practicing on my own

I have a bit of art advice myself: Find artists who have quality and an art style you admire and think about how they create, then try to implement it the next time you draw. Another thing is that if you study artists who've studied anatomy themselves, you'll have skipped a step.

drawing every day being the number one most hated thing is actually shocking to me, i knew there were people who didnt like it but i genuinely think it’s the best thing you can do as an artist and i want to clarify i don’t mean make a full rendered piece of art every day but just to doodle when you get the chance two years ago i drew every. single. day. and again most of it was just doodling, maybe only one full piece a week, but i have never had my art improve so rapidly, eventually i kinda stopped drawing for a bit and for the past year i would very rarely draw, but whenever it did i would HATE how it looked, which discouraged me from drawing for another few weeks until i eventually tried again, and the same thing would repeat at the beginning of this year i started drawing regularly again it is the happiest ive been with my art in forever, genuinely i think its the fastest way to improve and feel comfortable with your art

IF YOU forget to take care of your body when drawing, a pomodoro timer can be helpful! It doesn’t help me focus (like it’s supposed to I think?) but does remind me to eat and drink water! Plus, you can flip your canvas during the break and take a step back to look at the whole piece. Or, do some stretches!

12:45 Is pretty real, as someone who only uses default brushes with like maybe some modified default brushes, it’s not that hard to make good art if you know what brushes you’re comfortable with. For me, I’m on ibis paint x and my go to is pen fade, calligraphy and airbrush on characters, that’s it. Backgrounds I’ll use some default texture brushes, that’s it. Ibis paint got a wide variety of it.

Thinking about the “don’t make art your career thing” fully agree on your points, im technically still a graphic design/illustration major, but am officially switching to Scientific Illustration, it’s harder to replace, and mixes my interests. Only downside is how niche and intensely competitive it is, even to get the education for it. My dream post-grad certification program only admits 18 students a year 😢

i think the one thing about flipping your canvas is that it relies on your eyes not being used to the flipped version of the image and so if you do it CONSTANTLY you’ll… get used to the flipped version of the image. and that’s bad. overall, though, it’s good advice as long as you don’t massively overdo it. at least that’s my opinion

I'm gonna give my own unsolicited advice here since I've been drawing for awhile And thats to try new things! See an elemant of someone else's art that you find stylistically cool? Try it! See something stylistically wou dont like very much? Try that too. Maybe you'll fall in love with it and it'll become a part of your style, maybe you'll learn a new skill even if you dont use it, you'll never know if you dont try! You dont have to force yourself to master something you dont like, but experimentation is key Both to creating an art style and creating further understanding of the art you surround yourself with 💜

I’ve always assumed that beginers were told to not start on digital is because it’s more affordable for some people to use pencils and paper than to get an expensive display tablet with a computer and sometimes paying softwares. For a long time, artists could only start traditionnal because it was the only possible way they could afford. That said, I also think that as more and more affordable tools for digital art are available, it became easier to start off by drawing digitaly. Therefore I would have put this advice in a low b tier / high c tier because to me, it is more of a « tools don’t make the artist » situation even though this take in particular is clearly outdated.

to be honest, a variation of "draw everyday" actually seemed to kind of work for me. though it was "draw more often", not draw everyday. cause, here's the thing; one of my biggest problems when it comes to art was being afraid to draw things simply becuase I didn't think it would turn out good. I was always telling myself I need to be in the perfect mindset for drawing something or else I will do a bad job at it. And while yes, it is good to be in the right headspace for art... not every piece of art needs to look perfect. if it did, you wouldn't be ABLE to practice or learn at all. once I pushed myself to draw more often despite not being in the "perfect" mindset for it, I was actually surprised to find I learned more that way and was able to improve much quicker. and I found that, even if I didn't start out drawing well in the first few minutes, after a few doodles I would get warmed up and then feel ready to draw whatever it was I had in mind. so yeah, drawing more often actually can be really, REALLY good art advice, but only for people like me who have trouble with perfectionism and being afraid to try/make mistakes. becuase drawing more often allows you more time to make mistakes in your art and improve from them! however, it's important to keep in mind that you should be enjoying art. if you are trying to draw every single day, but aren't enjoying it, then stop. like I said, I only had to draw more often (though I did spend a few months doing a little drawing everyday), but i wouldn't do it if i didn't enjoy drawing. drawing is my passion, and I never really stop enjoying it. so, while drawing more often worked for me to break me out of my perfectionist mindset, it definitely isn't a universally good advice. it depends on what you are struggling with.

I’m in a digital art program designed to prepare us for a creative career. This tier list helped give more perspective to my class :)

using my shoulder instead of my wrist changed everything for me, i always struggled with lineart its crazy how much of a difference it makes.

Saying “just practice” to an artist is the same as saying a sad person “just don’t be sad”💀

i struggled with hands for the longest time. I spent two weeks studying them for two hours a day, every day. now I can draw them like the back of my hand. Absolutely banger final art advice there!

Thank you Duchess, this was so incredibly helpful!! ☺️ I really needed to hear these points as an artist that is constantly being too harsh on myself. I will absolutely subscribe and watch more of your content!

I love having your videos playing in the background as I draw so very excited w a new video

I always agree with Flip Canvas. One time my sister was drawing and she asked me- "Do you know what's wrong with this picture? Something feels wrong..." I then told her that I often flip the canvas when I feel something is amiss but I can't tell what. She flips her picture and- "Oh, it was the eyes." Flipping your canvas helps massively! It allows you to notice errors that are not immediately obvious.

the pen stabilizer is a huge saviour of shaky lines and when you flip an eye, you have to alter it depending on the perspective of the head but people sometimes forget to do that

I find that I draw with my shoulder more consistently than most artists I know, and the difference seems to me that I stand at an easel, while they sit at computers or with sketchbooks or tablets. From the standing position, the whole body from toe to hip to shoulder to forearm becomes relevant to the body mechanics of your drawing. You can move your body, try drawing with your shoulder while positioned in different ways, leaning your hip in different manners, etc... you may find you get more comfortable lines when you find the positions you feel most comfortable drawing in that day. I often stretch before I draw like this, and sometimes while taking breaks during it. Drawing from the shoulder becomes very natural in my experience when on your feet. This process is especially well suited to large pieces in traditional medium.

I just stumbled across this video while searching for a helpful tutorial/guide how to color digitally. As I heard your words saying that ones style comes with time I felt that. In my current sketchbook there are drawing and doodles I did from around two years ago and some current drawings and practices. You can clearly see how my style developed over a period of time. Thank you for those comforting words, they brightened up my day

This was a fun video to watch haha. There certainly is a LOT of different means of art advice and definitely can vary on how effective they are from person to person and situation to situation. Loved hearing your perspective on each of these advice tips !! One advice bit I definitely feel even more nuance to is the "don't draw the same things" one because of my own personal growth but it has nuance to that tip as well. There was an old post on twt iirc saying something along the lines of a good way to improve is to find a character/ship you really enjoy and draw them a lot. I've definitely found my biggest growth spurts were linked to having periods I had a pairing/character I wanted to draw a lot since it made art more fun and thus I experimented more. Definitely if you only draw the same subject matter the same it can probably halt/slow down progress a bit but I definitely back the finding a subject matter you want to draw a lot helps. Presently I've been focused strongly on the ship SettPhel and it's been the thing to FINALLY get my butt to learn how to better understand more muscular masculine figures as Sett is quite muscular haha. I actually struggle more with masculine figures than feminine so this has been a challenge but oh so fun for me. Not to mention adding experimentation alongside your focus helps so much too. Truly you NEVER know what'll be what helps you finally understand that artistic subject matter you've struggled over for decades. Today I chuckle how Sett League of Legends finally got me to learn how to draw muscles. Bless that fictional man's heart.

In my opinion, I really think drawing everyday helped. Im not saying like full rendered art, but like quick doodles and sketches. I don't usually have time to draw at home, but at school I'm able to make quick doodles in notes or after I complete my schoolwork, I even had a separate notebook for drawing during class. My artstyle improved a lot over time, and I still use this tip. This is from my experience, so it might not work for everyone.

Take the time to learn how to make your own brushes!!!! This has saved me SO much time searching for that "perfect brush" that doesn't seem to actually exist! It took about 2 days of painful trial and error but now that I understand how to make one and how they function, I can save myself even more time by recognizing when I could detail something by hand or just whip up a new brush and do it in 2 strokes instead

I find your voice so soothing! I’ve also learned a lot from you, thank you!

So glad I watched this vid in it's entirety. Never heard of pen stabilization untill you talked about it. I am both raging and relieved that shaky lines can now be less of an issue now.

Holy crap! Your voice is so awesome and calming! You have to make a podcast!

On the "use high quality supplies" one, Ive actually "downgraded" in a lot of the supplies I use regularly now. I used to use microns for line art, now I use those ballpoint pens that you can get like 20 of for 1.50 in any stationary section just because I like them better. Same with graphite pencils, instead of the artist sets I just use mechanical plastic ones that my family gets a giant pack of at the beginning of each school year. I now gravitate to water based markers over alcohol ones (tombow markers, which are still fancy but significantly less expensive than alcohol markers) because I like drawing in sketchbooks. I don't buy sketchbooks, I make my own with any decent paper I have laying around, cardboard and fabric. I do acrylic painting on paper instead of canvas because I don't like the texture of canvas, and also regularly use like, craft paint because it's good enough for my purposes, I've run out of a lot of my fancy ones and I don't do acrylic painting enough to justify spending a lot of money. There's still fancy art supplies that I use all the time and am incredibly grateful for (my prismacolor color pencils and my mission gold watercolors) but it's not necessary whatsoever and I've been having so much more fun with art since I stopped thinking I had to use high quality art supplies.

It's pretty validating watching this as a fairly new artist and agreeing with/understanding all placements. It's nice to see someone else kinda echoing a lot of the things I've learned during my journey. I've been tracing, which was a stereotype I had to unlearn to even try and ended up being a massive boon over the past year of me actively learning. I've also straight up ignored learning to shade, because frankly... I don't wanna x3 I do pixel art, but the way other artists shade has yet to click with me. I understand how to do a little shading on bigger pieces, but there are certain styles that I just can't grasp yet. So, yeah, it's nice to hear 'draw what you want and ignore skills you don't want' as advice.

Wow, hearing Chillhop in the background of a video in 2024, and songs I actually recognized?? And I haven't checked in on them in litearlly over a year... That was a blast from the past! I appreciate your perspective on these advice bits - I feel like I get a well-rounded perspective seeing both the good AND bad advice, and seeing them sorted on a spectrum, it's really satisfying. Tier Lists really do that well, huh! :D And your comments section is so great too! So much great advice, and people explaining how and why they use certain advice bits and for what - the personal stories that contextualize sound-bites are invaluable!

I am way, WAY too bisexual for properly ergonomic sitting posture, thank you

I purposfully chicken scratch the crap out of my lines, lol. I just love the way it looks, gives a sense of dynamic movement and emotion that I feel gets lost if I make my lines too refined. Sometimes, after i've coloured in a traditional piece, I take a black pen to it to rough up the lines.

Occasionally I see advice that’s just “this is the only way to achieve this outcome you must do it like this (specifically with traditional art forms, like pencil or ink) like yes the technique is great to know and be able to to, but if someone can achieve the same look in a different way, they should

Great tips. Thank you.

BOUNGO STRAY DOGS MENTION!? AAAAA AYAYAYAY

References are so important, I drew my oc who had a old tv for a head without any knobs on the size for so long since I had no refrence

I started drawing every day not to help my art skills, but to help my discipline and whatnot, before hand I was drawing like, once a month even though I REALLY wanted to, and while it definitely helped my art skills, even as a beginner I have noticed my skill with just this is peaking or capping so I'm now starting to try and incorporate other stuff to help me get better:] all of this to say i basically agree with you, i just personally would put it higher in C tier for its other benefits:D

Subbed the moment you put "Just Practice" in D tier, nice to meet you. I wanted to become an artist when I was younger, but my art friend refused to give me any advice other than "just practice" and that soured me against practicing anything for a few years out of spite because even I knew that was BS advice, especially for a total newbie that didn't know How to practice art. All I wanted was for them to share the tutorials they had bragged about following to get good when they first started, but they refused. I've gotten over it, and I like being a writer a lot now so it worked out.

tell me why i’ve actually been waiting for this ever since her community post.

Oh another thing to consider is when using good quality paints some of them have hazardous chemicals. To get the brighter warm colors alot of pigments have cadmium. We are still using chrome, cadmium, and cobalt for some pigments so consider that when handling paints.

This is a very good tier list. I think with art advice the main thing is that almost none of it is universally applicable. Everything can be bad in one situation and good in another situation. My favorite example is that for drawing long smooth lines from the shoulder -- yes, a great advice for drawing the polished lineart, but a really bad advice when thumbnailing and doing the first rough.

14:20 interesting that you put it in s tier, because every other single RU-vid video I’ve seen talking about pen stabilization always says to turn it off completely, so you can become better at drawing confident lines without having training wheels on.

Getting good critique is a great tip. Im a beginner digital artist and I always go to my best friend (who is also a traditional artist) to look for critique and instead of just saying "yeah it looks good" she suggests things that could make it look a bit more alive or detailed.

A lot of the controversy around the “don’t shade with black” and “don’t chicken scratch” advices comes from people who don’t know the difference between a stylistic choice and an actual mistake imo, especially because those types of advices are catered to beginners. Yes, professional comic artists using pure black shading and actually making it look good is a stylistic choice, beginner artists airbrushing black paint all over their drawing because they don’t know how else to shade and making it look absolutely horrific is not. On one hand, people shouldn’t be discouraged from trying a more bold approach to shading using black, but on the other, it’s better for complete beginners to steer clear from it

18:25 Most of my art teachers have always been big on telling us to experiment and do different things for the sake of learning, and also were very staunch that we were definitely too young to know what our style was yet. I did have one teacher (who I already really didn't like) who was very insistent that we needed to have our exact style and subject matter and media of choice decided NOW and that we needed to have a really consistent theme in all our art. My art was all over the goddamn place and was spread out across painting, making really ugly sculptures, paper mache, and comics. That class was maybe 7 or 8 years ago and I've only now started to dial in what makes my art "mine". And how to make sculptures that are less ugly, lol.

(Don't mind me, not hating or anything, just here to share my opinion respectfully 👍) I understand why "just practice" was put in the tier it was placed in. Though, in my opinion, I think it could be placed higher, but not S tier necessarily. It's because it's advice I always give in conjunction with other pieces of advice. My frequent go-to if I'm asked is, "I know people hate to hear it, but practice. Art is like a muscle and you need to build it, then exercise it frequently. There are times I went without drawing for a while, and I forgot how to draw things and had to go back and study resources again to relearn. Study what you want to learn, but PRACTICE." The other reason I would place it higher is because some people just don't know or understand that practice *is* important. I've been in/seen situations which people think it's pure born talent and didn't take into consideration the extensive amount of time, effort, and study it takes to improve. I loved seeing your take on the tier list, there are some bits of advice I haven't actually heard before, so it's really cool to learn about what other people have gotten in terms of advice!

while i mostly agree, i think there is some benefit with not starting out digitally. the biggest one being you can't just undo every mistake you make, you need to either erase it (which is much more difficult than ctrl z) or live with it. either way, its a lot more annoying to make mistakes with traditional art. this can be good or bad because it could motivate you to be as conscious as possible to not make mistakes or it could just make art annoying. it isnt perfect, but i dont think its D tier.

Learn how to learn, what to learn and how to practice, getting out of your comfort zone, is the best advice for begginers. So many try and draw every day or regularly, but do not evolve as they wanted because they don't know what they need to do in order to attain that goal.

Interestingly when I draw I pet my lines because my main form is clay sculpture. I’m used to roughing in a shape and cleaning it up afterwards.

Another thing about tracing is that it's a skillset on its own and actually a crucial skill for specific techniques and even certain industries, such as tattooing

A tier advice: If you draw using any type of pens, digital or traditional or otherwise, buy artist gloves, trust me in this.

I feel like sharing this. Recently this new year, I was determined to improve my art and reveal it in posts so people would know my talent. By doing this, I joined several art competitions, unpopular ones (more chance of winning top3) slowly to more popular (less chance of winning 1st). It was actually not that bad, I was using other artstyles and used lighting. But then again, this meant drawing almost everyday while I have schoolworks. At first, it made me tired, but I got used to it and wasnt really burnt out. I guess its how much determiination uou have. In my opinion.

I mostly agree with these, and I wouldn't necessarily bump "Always use references" down a tier, but I think it comes with the caveat of using references *thoughtfully*. I've seen artists use references and follow them way too closely to a point that it looked out of place or stiff in their art style. It's kind of similar to the subject of tracing. Tracing and referencing can both be unhelpful when they're not done thoughtfully.

i use the pixel brush on ibspaint for my sketchs bc its messy and i dont have to worry ab it being perfect now obviously i dont use that brush for everything but basically anything but i use it for the majority of a peace and i think that's pretty helpful :3

my one and only quarrel with this video is putting the pen stabilizer in S tier rather than A tier - personally, having the stabilizer enabled held me back a lot because it slowed down my efficiency in general. i always make sure the stabilizer is set to 0 before i do anything, and it's actually helped me a lot with drawing consistent, fast, steady lines. it also motivated me to draw a looot more because it made me So Angry when the line didn't appear as fast as i drew it. this is just in my experience though!! i love watching/listening to your content ! keep it up :D

In conclusion, take everything with a grain of salt.

Yippee Dutchess Vid Stray Dogs living rent-free in Celestia

You know I've never really thought of judging/comparing the quality of advice before, I've kind of just rolled with whatever worked best. But I think it would match up similarly (with one exception) to what you've done (aside from the digital art stuff, I'm only able to use Paint rn for digital stuff so I don't think I could properly judge any advice for that). My main disagreement would lie with where "Draw Every Day" is placed. I've been trying to do 10-20 minute studies everyday and I found that's what's helped my art improve at a rapid pace, I would argue the benefits would at least warrant it being put in A or B tier (although the disadvantages are still there, I just don't think it should be as low as C). Other than that, great video Duck And Bless Selena!

I love tracing vor Studies I take a pice I like and brake it down to the raw shapes(cubes,Zylinders ect.) while trying to figure out what the thought process of the artist was.

I chicken scratch during the sketching phase because it helps my brain figure out where i want to put things. Then i try and do lineart with one stroke (though if i fail at that i mess with line weight and such) i really just draw for fun, XD. I look at art like a puzzle that i need to figure out myself.

Usining references is definitely an S teir in my books. There is so much nuance you tend to forget if you don't have a reference image in front of you. Using references is different to copying 1 to 1 There's no reason not to use the tools you have available to you unless you. Unless you just feel like being stubborn about the definition of "true" art. As if you invented the human form from scratch, lol.

I'm a big fan of drawing everyday lol. I do take breaks, some days I just don't feel it, but I'm never forcing myself to draw everyday. I think too many people just kind of shut their brain off when drawing, which is fine if you just want to relax and have fun, but if you wanna get better, you have to think about every line and why you're putting it there. I will say though, as someone whose only been drawing for a year, I don't understand coloring what so ever. I'm gonna have to try to practice it eventually, but for now it's just b&w lol.

There is one piece that I found that does fall under "Tracing", but in a way that can be usefull. Essentially, the piece of advice is "Make a 3D model", and I do know that not everyone can do it, but I can, so I started doing it for backgrounds and perspective(Two things that I really struggle with), and it is really helpfull, just don't do it when you don't need to.

i personally don't do warm ups because my motivation is extremely limited so if i do a warm up i'll just start and get bored of it and not only will i lose all my motivation right away but both waste time and have yet another unfinished piece i'll have to do, which just thinking about it makes me EVEN LESS motivated to do art. so i basically don't do warm ups to not get burnt out and tired of art and actually work on what i want right away and possibly make changes later

“Always use reference” I would downgrade to c ENTIRELY because of the “always” if it was “Use a lot of references” I d happily keep it at S tier. You can’t expand your mental library if you don’t practice information retrieval.

12:35 I only draw with shoulder when I need to draw clean perfect circles and straight lines or a huge poster

with the "don't shade with black", sometimes either: a) you want a very specific color and hue shifting it may make it seem like something else (like red accidentally becoming hot pink when hue shifted too much) b) if you to, under using hue shifting can give a grimy feel

One of my biggest annoyances with the don't use black and white with color that ive seen so much of is when people think the same applies to resin as well.... resin is very different in how it looks it looks fine im sick of people telling me to not use it let alone when they have never worked with resin

Few little personal anecdotes for for some of these art advice: >Flip the canvas: I don't know why, but even though doing so is very useful, I just straight-up refuse to flip the canvas. Something about it never felt right, and even now I'm kinda doing it out of spite for no reason >Use pen stabilizers: another one of those rebellious things I don't do. I just like ever so slightly uneven line, makes it more "natural" looking. Though, I do turn on the stabilizer if I absolutely need perfect lines in those rare cases. >Don't avoid weak points: For this one I took it to a whole new level and designed a character that includes nearly everything I hate drawing. Made it so much easier for me to get good at art because I wanted that character to look good >Don't draw the same stuff: For me I hate when someone does that literally, as in literally drawing the same drawing over and over again. What are supposed to learn when you do that? That you're 1% better than the last time you drew it? Actually draw something different when it gets to that point. >Don't flip the eye: I just use construction lines to get the job done. basic shapes are all you need anyways and it's easy to just draw two (or three) horizontal perspective lines with the basic shape of the eyes between them (like a circle, oval, square, triangle, or trapezoid). Never liked using the copy/paste tool for any of my work, but it's probably because I'm more traditional with my digital art. >Don't trace: I never trace my work, but I don't mind if others do it as a studying tool. Basically if you have a hard time imagining stuff (aphasia), tracing is good to learn these shapes, and then you can use this little paper you traced on as a reference for your real drawing. >Draw every day: for someone who's done that for a year straight...don't...not unless you're willing to destroy yourself while racing the clock every day. Even when I took the time to study, I never had enough time to experiment with anything, so to repeat: *DO NOT DRAW EVERY DAY!* Ruining your body for bragging rights is not something to be proud of. >Don't start digital: For this one I have better advice: "Don't invest in digital drawing equipment if you're not sure you like drawing". Good drawing tablets are expensive, while pencil and paper is dirt cheap. If you're not sure drawing is for you, you're better off starting with a simple pencil and paper setup before spending some good dough on a quality drawing tablet. That's just me though.

I used to draw every single day, & you know what I got out of it? Callouses & Cubital Tunnel Syndrome. It was so bad, I couldn't draw or even write a shopping list for several years.

one thing i will say about the "don't start with digital" advice. a stack of 500 printer paper sheets is $8 from walmart. a wacom intuos M is $200. it is way cheaper *starting out* with traditional supplies. obviously in the long run digital is much cheaper as you want/need more supplies for traditional art, but its a much lower barrier to entry for beginners starting out (speaking from my own experience at least)

I do tons of abstract digital art but I like doing more representational and realistic art w/ pen and paper, the only reason I personally prefer this method is because the pen has a sharper point than the Apple Pencil I have. But if I felt more confident with the smaller tip of the Apple Pencil I wouldn’t mind doing it digitally at all

For the "not shading in black" advice, I mostly agree since shading in black can be good if you're a storyteller artist and want to make a scene look moody, sad, scary, anything that isn't positive. Plus, shadows irl actually are kind of black in some instances: if the sky is grey, you're in a city or inside, there is no lighting other than the sun (that is behind the clouds) basically when everything around you is grey shadows will be kind of grey, since it's the reflection of light on objects around or, if outside, the sky. But it's true that it doesn't look very good in most instances, if you draw a character in a white void, I advice to use blue or purple shadows as a base shadow color, it looks good everytime I think.

Can I talk about how much the "Line of action is the spine" is so bad!? It never worked for me! My friends all found it bad for some reason, too. It's almost never the line of action ends up being my spine, and I think it's really bad advice for beginning artists.

One of the things that was top tier for me was 'Get really obsessed with something' in getting motivation to practice/draw. I got obsessed with Nichijou for 3 years(its a long story) and my art ended up developing a lot because I kept making fanart of it. But then again, I guess that's a bit luck-dependent 😅

The biggest issue with art tips is that artists always think that people are pursuing art with the same goal as theirs, I mean, to become professional artists. And let's be true, 95%+ of people watching art tutorials won't make a penny of drawing in life. They want to learn to satisfy themselves, and developing deep knowledge about some of the fundamentals won't satisfy people as much as drawing their favorite character will.

The critique that a particular piece of advice doesn't consider people just drawing for fun is kind of silly. If someone is giving advice it is likely because a person asked them for it - which typically means they were asked for advice on how to improve. Seldom do people who just draw for fun ask for advice on how to keep drawing for fun. There is usually more context around a piece of advice that makes it more or less reasonable to give to people.

I never really thought about petting the lines, it's something that I've just gotten in the habit of but I don't like how it looks most of the time.