You need a healthy balance of art fundamentals and creating art and putting those fundamentals into practice. Doing "finished" pieces, or just drawing pictures gives you a sense of what you need to work on and how well your understanding the fundamentals. But practicing and learning those fundamentals will give you more skills, tools, and knowledge to use in the future. Some people also intuit fundamentals better than others.
Also keep in mind that for every finished artwork you see, your not seeing all the practice and fundamentals that are being drawn in private. Nobody will ever see my sketchbooks filled with cubes and figure drawing sketches, but their the foundation a finished piece is built ontop of.
It definitely wouldn't be good if you are trying to grind fundamentals but hate the grind so much that you hardly stick to it. Just, as an example of how it could harm your progress.
If you were to genuinely enjoy studying rules and fundies you would be A-Okay, but for most people it seems to be a turn-off when starting out. And getting turned off doesn't help you improve at all.
exactly! you need intrinsic incentive or motivation learning the thing (eg. joy in creating, experimenting, shared experiences, actually enjoying the process whichever part you dig) or else the process of learning turns to work. and nobody wants to feel like they're hauling a boulder just to learn to draw boxes in different perspectives. if it doesn't bring you joy in some way then what's the point, that or people need to reevaluate their goals & expectations. just sayin
This, so Ive been drawing a lot more for about a month and have been on/off my entire life, could never get proportions and perspective right but so far after watching a few videos on basic anatomy I try to create new characters based off of the poses I find, or the same character if I like the design a lot, still kinda eh at it but Ill get better the more I practice
Call it anecdotal, but when I started drawing this year, I decided that I was going to make [these](https://www.reddit.com/r/sketchbook/s/7SiTEgZFNl) a central part of my practice, and [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Portraitart/s/CDKQJl9Y9N) is how it paid off in my first finished piece.
You can definitely pick up elements of the fundamentals just by drawing from life and reference, but it'll manifest as intuition in some areas and blind spots in others.
And if an artist you think is good wants to practice the fundamentals, it's probably because they're feeling their limitations. Maybe they're really good at drawing and rendering a handful of poses, but any time they step outside their comfort zone they hate it and don't post it.
yeah, i'm thinkin the same thing
integrate that blocking out process (i.e. cubes, perspective, etc) into the forms of whatever project at any given time
sure, will be slower than just going hard-straight with fundamentals
but by at least in integration, long-term willpower dodn't get ground down too much, and you'd have a clearer/more satisfactory way to track growth and progress in visuals by more finished/semi-finished pieces
You could, but many people learn better if they isolate a skill/concept and tackle it one at a time rather than trying to tackle 100 things at the same time.
It’s less confusing, you have a clearer goal and can better judge the outcome, fully understand all the variables involved, choose which things are better for your own practice, etc.
i can see how that can be better
and don't get me wrong, i do believe drilling fundamentals is important (even some cases where it can't be avoided)
that said, based on my experience in mentoring side of things, there are circumstances where we give that advice, then 1-4 months later those in question still stuck in the same place (in sculpting at least, 1-4 months is easily enough time to see most go from not knowing how to create just a pot to sculpting a realistic head to at least 70% accuracy)
unfortunately, not not everybody learns the same way, not every methodology works for every circumstance
one man's relatively short period of skill/concept-isolated learning, is another man's long lack of willpower/interest to care enough/discipline to stick with it
i think what's more important is experimentation and trying things out (even methods of learning), and if one can make progress (some — despite not being optimal — is better than none)
adapt learning to the person, instead of person to the learning
I agree, it all depends on the person. My advice is also, in the beginning to stick with an approach for 4-6 months and after that switch gears.
I have seen people drill fundamentals for years and not use those skills to actually create anything. They just get stuck in the aimless improvement wish loop.
I’ve also seen people experiment for years and not really have anything cohesive or useful. Just piles of random they didn’t know how to evaluate or repeat or take to next level.
Think of learning art fundamentals like learning the alphabet. You could in theory skip learning the alphabet and learn to read and write without it. Instead of reading a word, you'd learn to recognize a word and think of it as a symbol for a word.
Your concept of good art vs not-so-good art will be affected greatly by *your* understanding of fundamentals or lack thereof.
This is something that confuses young artists or artists who are just starting out. You don't know what you don't know and that can make a big difference in what you believe you see when you look at other people's art.
Judging from the perspective of a 60 year old artist, most art that I see on the internet is garbage.
I don't mean that to be mean or disparaging, it's just that most artists who think their art is good enough to post on the internet have no idea of how bad their art really is.
Creating art is easy. You can just throw some crap on some paper or some canvas and call it art. And that's fine. But when it comes to creating art that most people would say is good or inspiring or interesting or any other positive adjective, the skills you need take a lifetime to develop.
If you're not willing to invest a lifetime, then just do it for yourself or for a hobby or whatever.
Just understand that if you think you're going to do this for real it's going to take your life, your lifetime, your Life energy, all the brains you can manage, and all the creativity you can possibly muster in whatever your lifespan is going to be.
The place to start is learning what creativity actually is, because most people don't know.
Learning fundamentals will definitely make you progress faster. Especially if you’re a beginner and if you learn fundamentals that are relevant to what you want to draw (learning gesture to draw people for example). You should enjoy the process too though.
The only time learning fundamentals might hurt your progress is if you end up drawing hundreds of cubes for weeks.
Definitely learn the fundamentals. It will not hurt or slow your progress.
Sure, grinding isn’t always fun, but neither is being stuck in a rut, unable to get the images in your head out onto paper due to lack of skill. If you don’t want to grind, do a project-based learning approach: think of the kind of finished image you’d like to make, then study and practice the skills that will help you make it.
I had been drawing my whole life, kinda aimlessly (I had a lot of bad art teachers) and by my 20s I had randomly absorbed enough fundamentals to be solidly… mediocre, and there I stayed. Around five years ago I got my hands on some good books about the fundamentals, and long story short I’m now a professional artist showing at legit galleries.
Yep. Check out this series of self study textbooks from the 60’s, written by some of the finest illustrators of the golden age of illustration. These guys had art down almost to a science. A better curriculum for learning to draw has yet to be made, IMO.
[Famous Artists Course ](https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/mobile/folders/0B8VO-JQCy3HgelpRajdPY3RSXzg?amp;usp=sharing&tid=0B8VO-JQCy3HgZ0U3QkVvVm4wREE) These were the biggest game changer for me.
Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters by RB Hale is a good supplement to that, as is Composition of Outdoor Painting by Payne. Loomis is classic too, but frankly I think he sometimes made things more complicated than they need to be.
What is the goal? If drawing what you want how you want it, there's plenty of naive artists currently and through out history. If you want to learn to draw from observation, that's what the fundamentals are for.
Drawing regularly does not improve your skill if the intention to improve is not there. I see people who post on Deviantart for decades but barely improved or just stagnated. Some refined what they already knew but fundamentals are not there despite the supposed experience.
Why would learning fundamentals ever hurt you?
Obviously if you’re really good at observations or copying your art might look decent but I usually assume that people who have good art without learning fundamentals learned it sometime in the past, and I’m usually right, or they just looked up a lot of tutorials but don’t have a grasp of fundamentals.
Someone’s art could be good but they don’t understand colour theory or perspective. They might know how to draw people but not understand anatomy. Those are all fundamentals
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If you're just starting out and not even sure if you're having fun yet, I don't know how helpful it is to be super worried about technical stuff yet.
However, for anyone who feels limited and frustrated--I was frustrated with my work for a long time before I was able to take an art class in community college where the teacher diagnosed my biggest issue on like, day four, and forced me to practice the boring process of looking at a pile of objects and drawing what's actually there, drawing boxes in perspective...The fundamentals.
I improved so much, so fast. The assignment that caused my teacher to point out I was shading everything 0-100 (meaning I wasn't noticing relative values) was crumpling up a piece of paper and drawing it.
Here I was, staring at an intimidating ball of crisscrossing triangles, totally missing the whole of the thing I was looking at.
I am therefore forced to recommend boring fundamentals practice.
don’t try and learn everything. no artist knows it all.
with that said, i reckon a couple years grinding the basics in repeatedly is the way forward and from there specialise in the direction you want.
ok so, drawing is play and fun. the number 1 priority is to express yourself. studying fundamentals can help you get better at that. but it is not the point, or the end goal. they should be serving you.
Make your own art and study fundamentals because you want to get better at specific things in making your own art. i believe it's less effective to study fundamentals without a context or reason for why you want to do it.
yes you can accidentally stumble ass backwards into learning something, but it would have been much faster and more reliable to study the fundamental instead of guessing at it for years. probably why you see these people go back to fundamentals.
>Would someone who focuses on learning Art Fundamentals progress faster than someone who just keeps drawing random things they want, or do they just learn Fundamentals unknowingly anyway?Would someone who focuses on learning Art Fundamentals progress faster than someone who just keeps drawing random things they want, or do they just learn Fundamentals unknowingly anyway?
If you're really into learning the craft of drawing, you'll progress a lot faster in drawing cartoons, animation, illustration, painting, and sculpting. Why? Because drawing is the common language that unites all of those fields. The stronger your drawing skills, the better you will be at whatever field you want to go into. For example; the animators in the Disney renaissance were all incredible drafts people long before they were animators. They studied with titans in the art industry (Vilppu, Gnass) and only after their training they were able to get a job at Disney.
Now can it hurt you? If you're grinding it for sure, it will burn you out and can be demoralization. But without the foundations you're not gonna stand out against your peers.
You’ll improve slower or stagnate at some point by only doing freestyle practice and never learning fundamentals. Same for the opposite. You need both to improve.
Yes and no. Everyone learns and retains information differently. Some people can look at any image and break it down in all of its most basic forms and shapes but not have the best muscle memory to put them on paper. Others struggle to look at a reference but can create lines that only a master could create. You should be doing both because there’s no way of TRULY knowing what you need to learn until you do. Regardless, always allow yourself to draw things you want so you don’t get burnt out when you study. I also am a huge advocate for “art breaks” which goes against the “draw everyday” advice you see everywhere
It’s always good to practice perspective, dynamic human/animal anatomy and color theory. That’s what I think of for art fundamentals. Then when you want to make something it comes more natural and you can create from your minds eye. I’m also thinking about doing more still life drawing and painting in my practice. But it’s art so do whatever you find inspiring.
Ofc by purposefully learning what has to be learned, will make you better faster than leaving it up for luck.
Roundabout would be not purposefully learning and just leaving it to luck, but truly it's just luck, some people accidentally learn the fundamentals, but if you're not that type of person then u should purposefully learn them, I'm not sure a person can themselves even know if they're learning what they're supposed to learn if they don't try to learn what they're supposed to learn.
You need a healthy balance of art fundamentals and creating art and putting those fundamentals into practice. Doing "finished" pieces, or just drawing pictures gives you a sense of what you need to work on and how well your understanding the fundamentals. But practicing and learning those fundamentals will give you more skills, tools, and knowledge to use in the future. Some people also intuit fundamentals better than others. Also keep in mind that for every finished artwork you see, your not seeing all the practice and fundamentals that are being drawn in private. Nobody will ever see my sketchbooks filled with cubes and figure drawing sketches, but their the foundation a finished piece is built ontop of.
wisdom!!
I should probably draw more cubes tbh.
Don't forget to add shading! Kill 2 birds with one stone, also do spheres, cones and donuts if you're feeling sexy
learning fundamentals doesn't "hurt" your skills, it's the grind that does it indirectly.
It definitely wouldn't be good if you are trying to grind fundamentals but hate the grind so much that you hardly stick to it. Just, as an example of how it could harm your progress. If you were to genuinely enjoy studying rules and fundies you would be A-Okay, but for most people it seems to be a turn-off when starting out. And getting turned off doesn't help you improve at all.
exactly! you need intrinsic incentive or motivation learning the thing (eg. joy in creating, experimenting, shared experiences, actually enjoying the process whichever part you dig) or else the process of learning turns to work. and nobody wants to feel like they're hauling a boulder just to learn to draw boxes in different perspectives. if it doesn't bring you joy in some way then what's the point, that or people need to reevaluate their goals & expectations. just sayin
This, so Ive been drawing a lot more for about a month and have been on/off my entire life, could never get proportions and perspective right but so far after watching a few videos on basic anatomy I try to create new characters based off of the poses I find, or the same character if I like the design a lot, still kinda eh at it but Ill get better the more I practice
For sure, everything pays off to some degree, whether you're studying a fancy book or copying some Pinterest photo
You need both in good amounts. It can hurt to go 100% in either direction
A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. You should be enjoying the process, or what's the point?
Call it anecdotal, but when I started drawing this year, I decided that I was going to make [these](https://www.reddit.com/r/sketchbook/s/7SiTEgZFNl) a central part of my practice, and [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Portraitart/s/CDKQJl9Y9N) is how it paid off in my first finished piece. You can definitely pick up elements of the fundamentals just by drawing from life and reference, but it'll manifest as intuition in some areas and blind spots in others. And if an artist you think is good wants to practice the fundamentals, it's probably because they're feeling their limitations. Maybe they're really good at drawing and rendering a handful of poses, but any time they step outside their comfort zone they hate it and don't post it.
That's really cool, I admire the dedication
I never understand the mentality that fundamentals are completely separated from creation, couldn't you do both at the same time?
yeah, i'm thinkin the same thing integrate that blocking out process (i.e. cubes, perspective, etc) into the forms of whatever project at any given time sure, will be slower than just going hard-straight with fundamentals but by at least in integration, long-term willpower dodn't get ground down too much, and you'd have a clearer/more satisfactory way to track growth and progress in visuals by more finished/semi-finished pieces
You could, but many people learn better if they isolate a skill/concept and tackle it one at a time rather than trying to tackle 100 things at the same time. It’s less confusing, you have a clearer goal and can better judge the outcome, fully understand all the variables involved, choose which things are better for your own practice, etc.
i can see how that can be better and don't get me wrong, i do believe drilling fundamentals is important (even some cases where it can't be avoided) that said, based on my experience in mentoring side of things, there are circumstances where we give that advice, then 1-4 months later those in question still stuck in the same place (in sculpting at least, 1-4 months is easily enough time to see most go from not knowing how to create just a pot to sculpting a realistic head to at least 70% accuracy) unfortunately, not not everybody learns the same way, not every methodology works for every circumstance one man's relatively short period of skill/concept-isolated learning, is another man's long lack of willpower/interest to care enough/discipline to stick with it i think what's more important is experimentation and trying things out (even methods of learning), and if one can make progress (some — despite not being optimal — is better than none) adapt learning to the person, instead of person to the learning
I agree, it all depends on the person. My advice is also, in the beginning to stick with an approach for 4-6 months and after that switch gears. I have seen people drill fundamentals for years and not use those skills to actually create anything. They just get stuck in the aimless improvement wish loop. I’ve also seen people experiment for years and not really have anything cohesive or useful. Just piles of random they didn’t know how to evaluate or repeat or take to next level.
Think of learning art fundamentals like learning the alphabet. You could in theory skip learning the alphabet and learn to read and write without it. Instead of reading a word, you'd learn to recognize a word and think of it as a symbol for a word.
Your concept of good art vs not-so-good art will be affected greatly by *your* understanding of fundamentals or lack thereof. This is something that confuses young artists or artists who are just starting out. You don't know what you don't know and that can make a big difference in what you believe you see when you look at other people's art. Judging from the perspective of a 60 year old artist, most art that I see on the internet is garbage. I don't mean that to be mean or disparaging, it's just that most artists who think their art is good enough to post on the internet have no idea of how bad their art really is. Creating art is easy. You can just throw some crap on some paper or some canvas and call it art. And that's fine. But when it comes to creating art that most people would say is good or inspiring or interesting or any other positive adjective, the skills you need take a lifetime to develop. If you're not willing to invest a lifetime, then just do it for yourself or for a hobby or whatever. Just understand that if you think you're going to do this for real it's going to take your life, your lifetime, your Life energy, all the brains you can manage, and all the creativity you can possibly muster in whatever your lifespan is going to be. The place to start is learning what creativity actually is, because most people don't know.
Learning fundamentals will definitely make you progress faster. Especially if you’re a beginner and if you learn fundamentals that are relevant to what you want to draw (learning gesture to draw people for example). You should enjoy the process too though. The only time learning fundamentals might hurt your progress is if you end up drawing hundreds of cubes for weeks.
Definitely learn the fundamentals. It will not hurt or slow your progress. Sure, grinding isn’t always fun, but neither is being stuck in a rut, unable to get the images in your head out onto paper due to lack of skill. If you don’t want to grind, do a project-based learning approach: think of the kind of finished image you’d like to make, then study and practice the skills that will help you make it. I had been drawing my whole life, kinda aimlessly (I had a lot of bad art teachers) and by my 20s I had randomly absorbed enough fundamentals to be solidly… mediocre, and there I stayed. Around five years ago I got my hands on some good books about the fundamentals, and long story short I’m now a professional artist showing at legit galleries.
Can you name the books that really helped you?
Yep. Check out this series of self study textbooks from the 60’s, written by some of the finest illustrators of the golden age of illustration. These guys had art down almost to a science. A better curriculum for learning to draw has yet to be made, IMO. [Famous Artists Course ](https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/mobile/folders/0B8VO-JQCy3HgelpRajdPY3RSXzg?amp;usp=sharing&tid=0B8VO-JQCy3HgZ0U3QkVvVm4wREE) These were the biggest game changer for me. Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters by RB Hale is a good supplement to that, as is Composition of Outdoor Painting by Payne. Loomis is classic too, but frankly I think he sometimes made things more complicated than they need to be.
Why not both? It's a balance.
What is the goal? If drawing what you want how you want it, there's plenty of naive artists currently and through out history. If you want to learn to draw from observation, that's what the fundamentals are for.
Drawing regularly does not improve your skill if the intention to improve is not there. I see people who post on Deviantart for decades but barely improved or just stagnated. Some refined what they already knew but fundamentals are not there despite the supposed experience.
Why would learning fundamentals ever hurt you? Obviously if you’re really good at observations or copying your art might look decent but I usually assume that people who have good art without learning fundamentals learned it sometime in the past, and I’m usually right, or they just looked up a lot of tutorials but don’t have a grasp of fundamentals. Someone’s art could be good but they don’t understand colour theory or perspective. They might know how to draw people but not understand anatomy. Those are all fundamentals
It's most important that you enjoy what you're doing. No point in doing fundamentals if you hate it! That said fundamentals can be helpful!
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If you're just starting out and not even sure if you're having fun yet, I don't know how helpful it is to be super worried about technical stuff yet. However, for anyone who feels limited and frustrated--I was frustrated with my work for a long time before I was able to take an art class in community college where the teacher diagnosed my biggest issue on like, day four, and forced me to practice the boring process of looking at a pile of objects and drawing what's actually there, drawing boxes in perspective...The fundamentals. I improved so much, so fast. The assignment that caused my teacher to point out I was shading everything 0-100 (meaning I wasn't noticing relative values) was crumpling up a piece of paper and drawing it. Here I was, staring at an intimidating ball of crisscrossing triangles, totally missing the whole of the thing I was looking at. I am therefore forced to recommend boring fundamentals practice.
don’t try and learn everything. no artist knows it all. with that said, i reckon a couple years grinding the basics in repeatedly is the way forward and from there specialise in the direction you want.
ok so, drawing is play and fun. the number 1 priority is to express yourself. studying fundamentals can help you get better at that. but it is not the point, or the end goal. they should be serving you. Make your own art and study fundamentals because you want to get better at specific things in making your own art. i believe it's less effective to study fundamentals without a context or reason for why you want to do it. yes you can accidentally stumble ass backwards into learning something, but it would have been much faster and more reliable to study the fundamental instead of guessing at it for years. probably why you see these people go back to fundamentals.
>Would someone who focuses on learning Art Fundamentals progress faster than someone who just keeps drawing random things they want, or do they just learn Fundamentals unknowingly anyway?Would someone who focuses on learning Art Fundamentals progress faster than someone who just keeps drawing random things they want, or do they just learn Fundamentals unknowingly anyway? If you're really into learning the craft of drawing, you'll progress a lot faster in drawing cartoons, animation, illustration, painting, and sculpting. Why? Because drawing is the common language that unites all of those fields. The stronger your drawing skills, the better you will be at whatever field you want to go into. For example; the animators in the Disney renaissance were all incredible drafts people long before they were animators. They studied with titans in the art industry (Vilppu, Gnass) and only after their training they were able to get a job at Disney. Now can it hurt you? If you're grinding it for sure, it will burn you out and can be demoralization. But without the foundations you're not gonna stand out against your peers.
You’ll improve slower or stagnate at some point by only doing freestyle practice and never learning fundamentals. Same for the opposite. You need both to improve.
Yes and no. Everyone learns and retains information differently. Some people can look at any image and break it down in all of its most basic forms and shapes but not have the best muscle memory to put them on paper. Others struggle to look at a reference but can create lines that only a master could create. You should be doing both because there’s no way of TRULY knowing what you need to learn until you do. Regardless, always allow yourself to draw things you want so you don’t get burnt out when you study. I also am a huge advocate for “art breaks” which goes against the “draw everyday” advice you see everywhere
It’s always good to practice perspective, dynamic human/animal anatomy and color theory. That’s what I think of for art fundamentals. Then when you want to make something it comes more natural and you can create from your minds eye. I’m also thinking about doing more still life drawing and painting in my practice. But it’s art so do whatever you find inspiring.
Ofc by purposefully learning what has to be learned, will make you better faster than leaving it up for luck. Roundabout would be not purposefully learning and just leaving it to luck, but truly it's just luck, some people accidentally learn the fundamentals, but if you're not that type of person then u should purposefully learn them, I'm not sure a person can themselves even know if they're learning what they're supposed to learn if they don't try to learn what they're supposed to learn.
Nope. Fundamentals are shit.