A Creature Answers Art Questions

Hello, Kanjon here! We’ve got a lovely batch of questions for today’s Q and A. I’m going to do a few of these today and then we’re going to do a little bit more on the next video, which I hope to get up shortly. But I’m going to do this in a little bit more of a lightweight manner than my previous videos. Recently, I mentioned that I’ve kind of been going a little too ham on some of these, and I love to do video editing and all of this, but it just takes a lot of time, a lot of energy. It’s hard. So what I’m going to do here is actually give you sort of the less edited version. When I look back at some of my older videos, like, I think the imposter series one, it was kind of like this too. And I actually really like that, it’s more.. raw.

And I think a lot of you will like that too. So, The lower amount of editing here doesn’t mean that you’re getting something worse than my past Q&A’s. I think you might even be getting something that is just a little bit more pure. So, without further ado, let’s go ahead and hop into it. Art question time.

Tyegurr

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Tyegurr says:

I feel as if I am practicing the same things over and over, I want to move on from practicing only those things, but I seemingly struggle to get a good idea, and practicing faces and 3D shapes gets tiring over time. Is there any way I can come up with or find a new idea to try?

Yes, studies! Do studies, lots of studies. Find art that you like, find objects, or animals, or plants, or whatever you think might be cool to draw and try drawing those. A lot of them will be more difficult than you’re used to, and you’ll struggle, but try to apply what you’ve been doing with 3D shapes to kind of assemble them together. That’s called construction.

And see where you get from that. See if you can figure out through that study process how shapes were used to make that piece. If you’re looking at a piece of art, inspect every part, from the background to the characters, and see where shapes could be used to build them. Most art in you see can be built with 3D shapes like cylinders, spheres, pyramids, cubes.

Then you’ll be able to start using that in your own drawings. You can start stepping out of the bounds a little bit more of just those faces and 3D shapes by taking what you know, and combining them to start making more. Even so, if you force yourself to come up with those ideas, it’s a little hard to have them. So start with things that you already are familiar with. Rather, start with art that you already like and try to deconstruct that to see how it works. Whether that’s artwork or just stuff around you even. Sometimes even trying to draw something that doesn’t even look interesting… can be an interesting thing to draw.

Keep it small, work fast, do quick little doodles, don’t try to get too deep into any one thing because that’s how you quickly get frustrated. And during this process, if you get ideas, on what to draw, write them down, come back to them later, but just keep at some of the studies for a bit, and I think you’ll get somewhere.

arion

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arion writes:

I’m stuck on what I want my art style to look like. It seems that as I keep working at it, my style becomes more and more detailed. However it loses the charm of being concise.

Oh, concise. I like that word. That’s something I feel like I have tried to work on as well. This is a tough one and like, I’ll give you the caveat that I’m also working on this too. I’m not going to give you the most professional opinion here, but I think I see what you mean. I think about this a lot where as I go into more detail, it feels like my art starts to be noisy and I kind of like it less. Like it’s, yeah, lost some of its character, lost some of that charm. Sometimes that’s just getting used to the art that you’re drawing, and it’s different than what you were drawing before. Just getting familiar with it. But other times, yeah, it’s maybe even adding too much detail when you weren’t ready to really do that. So your excitement for it, as you’ve gone from the rough, simple, silly sketches, to details, might decrease just a little bit.

So then what can help, I think, is to take some breaks in between pieces as you work on them. Once you draw a sketch, don’t immediately go into adding a whole bunch of detail and rendering and everything if you can, unless you’re really excited. Give yourself a day or so to look at it again and just go, all right, how far do I want to go with this? Because sometimes sketches are all you want to do. Do maybe a couple tones of shading or something and just leave it at that. Sometimes you do want to do more details and that’s fine. Like if you’re like really excited to practice a new technique and you want to apply it to a piece, yeah, go for it. Do it. Don’t worry about that.

Give yourself the opportunity to do those, but also give yourself the opportunity to do something that feels less produced. Sort of like what I’m starting to do with these videos here. If you get to a point where you make a cool sketch and you’re like, oh yeah, I like this a lot. Maybe that’s the part that you share with friends and post. You could go farther. You could, you know, line it and shade it and add more detail. But as you see sometimes it doesn’t always work. And it’s fine to share those sketches right where they are. That’s where a lot of that liveliness is. The unfinished part is fine to share. Recently, I posted some gesture studies that I did and I was like, oh, I kind of want to digitize these and make them into full pieces and all that. And I thought about it a little bit. I was like, nah. I like how these look right now. And I’m gonna keep it like that. So I just took pictures and put them online. Let yourself have that mess. Don’t feel like you have to add detail and be precise about it and clean things up because that can kind of sometimes remove the life of the art that gave you that passion to draw it in the first place. Do it when you really want to. But don’t do it because you feel like you need to.

Anonymous

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Anonymously sent:

Every time I want to make a new piece I have an idea of what I want to draw but I have no idea how to even start putting it on the blank canvas. And when I do I don’t like how it looks.

My immediate reaction to this is a response that I give a lot in these art block sessions, but that’s okay, because I like to say it, and that is to do thumbnails. Tiny, tiny drawings. That big canvas, that big piece of paper, even if it’s not that big, it’s daunting. This is a big blank emptiness. And you’re like, oh gosh, what am I putting down here? What’s the first thing I need to draw? Got to get it right on the first try. And maybe you’re thinking conciously, oh, I don’t need to do that. I know I don’t have to struggle and plan that out. But your brain subconsciously does that a little bit still. So you gotta ease yourself into it.

Do some warm-ups if you can first, like 5, 10 minutes. But then try making a small grid on your page of maybe 2 inch squares or even just grab a little stack of sticky notes. And start your doodling there. You can doodle the same picture over and over. You can doodle a few different things. You can change it as you go as you see what you like and what you don’t. But do that. Those little sticky notes, they’re easy to throw away, and it’s just part of your process of like getting yourself used to what you’re about to draw.

And then start doing that on a larger piece of paper. You can even work your way up to it. Slightly bigger squares or just go right for the whole page at that point. Usually by the time I’ve done like 2 or 3 little thumbnails, I’m like, okay, I’m ready to go. Then, use references to start really putting together the proper forms of things, like for poses and whatnot, but refer back to your thumbnails as well and see what you can draw then because at that point you have something to use. And in your brain, you’re taking the thing that you just drew in a little space and now you’re putting it on a big space. And that’s a lot less daunting than going right to that blank page. It’s less to commit to, mentally. It helps your brain adapt.

Viri

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Viri writes:

I’ve started to take commissions to compensate my current financial situation. But what is really bugging me is that I still don’t understand how to shade my drawings. I feel like without shading, my art is less worth than I am taking money for.

Welll your art is worth whatever people will pay. So if they’re doing that, that’s fine. It’s what they want. Not every piece of artwork has to be shaded. Don’t feel like you’re less of an artist because you’re not shading things when you see other artists do that. I see tons of artists that take commissions that are just sketches. Sometimes they might take more, but a lot of times they just want to do sketches because rendering, shading, all that stuff can take a lot more time. You get to decide what level of effort you wanna put into things. And as long as you’re upfront to people about how much that is, you know, sketches, to line work, to flat colors, all that stuff, that’s fine. That’s what they want.

It’s easy as an artist to think that your work’s not as valuable, but it really is. And a lot of times people are ecstatic to get even a sketch. And that’s the coolest part, I think. But if you do want to start learning to shade, if you feel like you’re not getting commission requests because of that, then, something I recommend taking a look at is the book Color and Light by James Gurney. That just has a lot of the principles of how light works and how shadows work, and it’s not necessarily even about shading, but what shading is, is about light. If we didn’t have light or darkness, we wouldn’t have shading, right? A good way to practice shading, especially on characters, is to look at gesture photos. Search that online, or “line of action references”, and you’ll find pictures of people posing for the sake of drawing. You’ll find parts that are clearly darker because usually they have a light pointed at that person posing. Try to shade in those parts just slightly, just one tone where the darker spots are.

It will probably be messy the first time you do it, but just kind of keep doing that through some of your warm-ups and thumbnails. Add some of those shading bits. Just one level of shading. That’s sort of cell shading once you get into it. And as you go and you understand it more, you can start to add a little bit more shading. Maybe you’ll do a couple levels of shadow. Once you get to the point of rendering, you’re kind of doing like all of the levels of shadow; it’s the smoothness to it. But sometimes when you do shading smoothly, if you do it without really understanding it, then it starts to look like too round, like everything looks like a Michelin Man or something. That’s not right. So, take it one step at a time. This is something that you kind of learn through repeated observation, but when you look at a book like Color and Light, it can help you understand it a lot more quickly. But for now, again, if folks are paying for your art. That works, you’re doing it right.

Anonymous

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Another anonymous question sent in:

I don’t feel like I can express myself. I feel like my whole life I’ve been inundated with messages about how I should be or need to be. I escaped all of that by consuming art. Eventually, I wanted to create some for myself, but then voices on what my art should be crept in and suddenly my escape became my prison. I feel like I can’t just make art for myself and I need to please someone.

So I might not have full answers for everything, but I think I can help with a little bit in here. Couple things to look at when you think about how this reflects in your art. One might be a note of how in your life you’ve been told how you should be. And the other is how you are now. And how you want to use art to get out of that.

A little bit of thinking of what your audience is in your head can help. Who are you making art for? What do you think they want? How is that different from what you have thought you’ve wanted? Can you puzzle out the differences, even if it’s only little clues? Why is that audience there? And where do you think it comes from? Do you think it comes from social media? Do you think it’s from people that tell you this stuff directly? They tell you, I want to see that you create this kind of art? This will be difficult. You’ll have a lot of stuff to try out. You’re gonna have to work through it and ask yourself a lot of questions as you go. If you notice yourself doing this, trying to cater to some audience, pause and wonder, why did I think that? Try to think abstractly, like separate yourself from it when you notice yourself doing this.

But ultimately, this is something where because it’s a circumstance of how you grew up, whether that’s from family or friends or environment or at school or anything, this is something where it might actually be very beneficial to talk with a therapist or another mental health professional. I think it’s a really positive thing to do. See if you can if you weren’t already. Try to work through these exact thoughts with them, like you wanted to try art to escape that in your past, but it keeps coming back. And they might be able to help you work through that with different kinds of mental practices, different kinds of activities, art or otherwise.

Otherwise, in terms of concrete things to try with your art, try some studies, because those are things where it’s a specific task and you try to draw that specific thing. There’s no pleasing anyone. It’s just learning. When you do that, you might find a little bit of inspiration to draw something and try to note down what those ideas are when they come up. Try to note them down before you think about whether or not someone else will even like it. Later on, you can try sketching those and see how you can approach them. But it will be hard and it will take a lot of practice. I believe in you though. Keep at it.

Ignimon

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Ignimon wrote:

I stopped drawing for months now… I wish to start over and try again every day but when I try I aways get a bad feeling, like my brain is telling me to stop. I used to have fun until I started studying with books and practicing, since then I can’t draw only for me, I always want to do better drawings or just have fun, but everything I do looks ugly and makes me want to stop again. :/

A big part of this is the whole ability at seeing versus ability at drawing. They’re getting out of sync and that’s how that happens with your skill of any creative kind of hobby. The more you draw in practice, the better your skill gets, but the more you look at another piece of art, especially through books and whatnot, the better your skill at seeing and observation gets, and you start to recognize what makes art good. And then you start to recognize that your art isn’t quite there and it makes you feel kind of bad, right? But then once you do start to practice and your skill improves, you start to feel good again. But then you go back to look at those books and it keeps flipping back and forth. It’s totally natural.

This is part of learning any kind of creative skill. But particularly with art, and it’s the most noticeable because there’s a lot of art to see and there’s a lot of art to make. So try to force yourself to alternate between drawing to learn and drawing for fun. When drawing for fun, throw away any kind of notion of how you’re supposed to practice. Just if you have things that you would like to draw, draw them. You can draw with thumbnails, or big pages, throw them away, or keep them if you change your mind. But they’re just for you, they’re just for your sake.

Same with drawing to learn, actually. When you’ve done some fun stuff and then you want to be like, all right, it’s time to improve. Get some scrap paper, cheapest paper you can find. Start drawing your studies on that. Practice the art that you see, practice the techniques that you see in books and whatnot. But tell yourself that you’re gonna toss these out. And that helps free you a little bit. You’re not gonna share them with anyone. There’s no pressure to make it perfect. You gotta tell yourself this a few times as you’re drawing, try it out loud even if that sounds silly. It like, oh wait, this doesn’t matter. I’m gonna scribble it. If it looks bad, doesn’t matter. No one’s gonna see it. There’s no guilt of trying to hide it or anything, who are you hiding it from? It’s experience in physical form. Keep that variety up. Alternate between fun things and learning. Sometimes they intersect. But, if you go into it with that mindset, that they’re different, it can help make you feel more interested about the process.

DIOJY

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DIOJY gasp hi! Hi! Sent this in:

I’ve kind of been feeling not welcomed from a number of people in the community. Although my work isn’t perfect, its often met with criticism for what it doesn’t do rather then what it does. I know I can always keep improving but it feels like I’m not wanted here half the time, because of how I’m so easily brushed off, but I want to be here! It’s just hard when I don’t have that support.

Yes… this does exist in a lot of creative fields, whether that’s art or music or performance or anything. Where you’ll get a lot of people, both within that hobby and outside of that hobby, that decided is their mission to tell you that they don’t like something. To tell you that something’s missing or something’s wrong. A true professional in that space knows that there’s a time and place for feedback and then there’s those that give that sort of unsolicited critique. They are not at that point. Unsolicited feedback, even the smallest things, even if it’s completely correct, can be some of the most damaging things to our motivation. It sucks. Now, I’m not saying like people complimenting something and going, oh, I really like how you did XYZ. That’s not what I mean by unsolicited feedback. When I mean unsolicited feedback, I mean someone saying that they want to see something changed.

Kind of what you say when people criticize with something they feel it’s missing. You might hear comments like that and they might completely miss the point of what you made. And sometimes you even make the thing conscious that it doesn’t have something that someone’s going to later comment on. And people will still ask about it, and it still feels shitty, even if you had reasons to do it your way. And all you can really think is… get outta here. Sometimes it’s something that you forgot, or you genuinely missed, messed up, and that feels even worse, right? You’re practicing getting your stuff together, or you’re trying something new, and of course you’re gonna make some mistakes, but when people call that out, it’s like, okay, well, thanks, but, let me celebrate a little bit, right? It just sucks. Sometimes you do want feedback and it’s good to ask it for, you know, improvement, when you’re ready for it. But that’s well after you’ve made the thing. After you’ve shared it, celebrated a little bit. And moved on to your next work. A lot of folks feel like they want to give opinions on stuff that they really have no knowledge about, whether that’s how it’s made or the art form or really they’re just giving you feedback that is even completely inconsistent with their own logic. People are like that. Anyway, I’m rambling a lot about the problem here without actually talking about a solution. Let’s think about this.

In any kind of creative space, you’re going to have a wide variety of people, both learning that skill. And those advanced in that skill. And then another group that’s off to the side, they enjoy the result of that skill, that enjoy seeing movies and artwork and music and performances and all that. You’ll often find the feedback of the unsolicited variety comes from the people who enjoy it, that think they know what they want out of something, but often might misunderstand a work, often in different ways from one another. Try to not let that group get to you because that just kind of is always there. With the folks that are in that creative space, whether that’s experts or other learners, sometimes people are eager to give feedback because they think it might help, but people make mistakes and it’s not really helpful to you. I think the best way to try to find people that can support you in this will be in finding other people who are also kind of going through the same struggle, the same learning experience or even just similar circumstances. They will understand the same problems as you and they’ll be great to chat with. You can help each other with feedback when you’re each ready for it. Now, you might be like, well, I’ve already got friends in this space, and yes, keep your friends. I am not saying ditch them. But keep trying to find even more people. Sometimes friends might not give you the right kind of feedback, whether or not they’re watering something down, or whether they think that they can tell you something because they’re your friend. Sometimes that’s just not the right thing.

It’s good to find other people that you only really know through that hobby. Through that creative practice. And then you can form some really good friendships with those folks too. And really expand and grow. I even recommend finding folks that might seem a little more shy. Those that don’t seem to comment a lot on things or might participate in a creative hobby, but don’t really interact that much. Those folks can be some of the ones that are the best to make friends with because they might have a lot of useful things to say, they’re just not the loudest about it. You might all learn from each other, and build up trust. Being really aware that there’s a time and a place for criticism and feedback. This is probably what you already kind of know. And I know it doesn’t really say that much out loud. But I’m hoping that by kind of emphasizing this a little bit, it might help you to keep participating and keep doing what you want to do. Keep growing, keep having fun. Because every creative field has folks like this. I wish it didn’t. Yet, at least you can find some common ground in the struggle and come out of it by making some great new friends and improving even more.

JohantheAries

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JohantheAries sent me this little cookie:

Hi Kanjon! Thanks a lot for all the helpful content you make :3 Your vids really make my day. My question is something I keep forgetting myself: Why did you start making art, and what makes you keep at it? Love from Holland! (a country of great artists, btw :)

Well, thank you. This isn’t usually the kind of question I get here, but why not? Maybe at some point I’ll do a general AMA for this sort of stuff too. So I got into art, honestly, out of a curiosity, when I saw some statement that anybody could learn to draw. That was something that I hadn’t realized, and that was before I even considered myself to be like… a… furry. It wasn’t even that evident to me. I was like, wait, what? Anyone can learn it? Bullshit, I wanna try. And then I realized that you could. I was like, oh, holy shit, that’s really cool. And I was learning with Drawbox at the time. Just making art of abstract things, like just starting with like lines, ellipses, cubes, and it was kind of neat and I was starting to draw a box and then I was doing plants, and then I started to, well, try to draw vehicles, but I kind of stopped with that. And then I wanted to start drawing animals because those seemed fun. And then I took a little bit of a break because, I don’t know, COVID happened and I was just starting to get burnt out on everything. And then I picked it back up and I was like, fuck it, I’m gonna start drawing animal people. That looks fun too. As you might guess, I really dove into that fandom, and, well, here we are.

And there we are. Intermission time. I like these Q&A a lot and will get right to the next set sent in; just give me a few days for that. I won’t be able to get to everyone time time, as much as I want to, but I’m trying to show some questions that are still relatable enough to help. Anyway, see you then.